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beefmaster's review
4.0
Weirdly sexless. Character interactions are positively charged with sexual potential but whenever things turn to the bedroom, the “camera,” as it were, cuts away. An odd repetition
Very 1980s in style and execution. Felt like reading a mix of Ann Beattie and Bret Easton Ellis and a dash of Carver. As a collection, suffers from some repetition: narrators are almost always passive, cars are always being driven to restaurants, apartment complexes are always hotbeds of zany interactions. Individually and discretely the stories are immaculate, beautifully observed and oblique in the way 80s stories were. There’s maybe only one or two midrange stories; the rest are fabulous
Very 1980s in style and execution. Felt like reading a mix of Ann Beattie and Bret Easton Ellis and a dash of Carver. As a collection, suffers from some repetition: narrators are almost always passive, cars are always being driven to restaurants, apartment complexes are always hotbeds of zany interactions. Individually and discretely the stories are immaculate, beautifully observed and oblique in the way 80s stories were. There’s maybe only one or two midrange stories; the rest are fabulous
bhirts's review against another edition
3.0
Legendary but defunct twitter feed @Apathyiscool once tweeted something re the potential pleasure that could be derived from Barthelme's fiction vs that derived from completely dismissing him.
jeremiah's review
sappy dirty realism:
"I told her I was ready for anything. I thought that sounded pretty good—wry and romantic, something from a modern movie full of wood-sided station wagons and blue-green pools, the kind of movie Hollywood started making in numbers about five or six years ago, in which ordinary life is made fun of and made mysterious and beautiful at the same time" (The Browns, 74.
"I told her I was ready for anything. I thought that sounded pretty good—wry and romantic, something from a modern movie full of wood-sided station wagons and blue-green pools, the kind of movie Hollywood started making in numbers about five or six years ago, in which ordinary life is made fun of and made mysterious and beautiful at the same time" (The Browns, 74.
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