The Teachings of Don B.

First Edition.
The Teachings of Don B. is a weird and wonderful salmagundi of Donald Barthelme’s uncategorizable shorter works, most of them previously unpublished or uncollected: satires and fables, stage and radio plays (the actual stage script of Snow White is included here), the author’s little-known collage stories. In addition, as described by Thomas Pynchon, there are “literary send-ups, intriguing recipes, magisterially extended metaphors, television programming that never was, strangely illuminated dreams, elegant ranting, debonair raving, and more, much more.”
“For those unfamiliar with Barthelme’s work, this book hopes to introduce them to some of the things that are so remarkable about it: its brilliant and sudden juxtaposition of modes, its accent and pace and intonation, its irreducibility, its problematic engagement with the world, its bereaved amusement, its power to influence an entire generation of writers who came after him. For those who are already familiar with Barthelme’s work, this book is a kind of replenishment. And it will remind them, too, of what they have been missing.” — from Kim Herzinger’s preface
Here is a movable feast for Barthelme’s many fans, a work that will acknowledge his rightful standing as, in the words of Robert Coover, “one of the great citizens of contemporary world letters.”