sᴇʟᴇᴄᴛᴇᴅ ᴡᴏʀᴋ: "ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʜᴀɴᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴘᴇʀᴀ's ғʀɪᴇɴᴅ" ʙʏ ᴅᴏɴᴀʟᴅ ʙᴀʀᴛʜᴇʟᴍᴇ

                79 - 81

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           Life and Work

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Donald Barthelme (1931-89)

postmodernist short stories, novels, children's book

do not feature traditional plot structures

collection of details, form collage

characters in absurd situations

Me and Miss Mandible - 35 yr old man reassigned to 6th

grade after adult mistake

The Balloon - enormous balloon over NYC, "munching,"

"quelle catastrophe", anticipate giant fabric sculptures of 

artist Christo

Report - parody on weapon design in 20c

hut shrinking chemical, rust that attacks alphabet

The Dolt - man who wants to be writer cannot pass writing

section of exam

some stories are random selection of words, determined by 

chance

odd characters that have little direction

essay "Not Knowing"

2007 - McSweeney publish special volume "Come Back

Donald Barthelme" (nod to Come Back, Dr. Caligari)

21 contemporary authors, including George Saunders

pay homage

influence on Karen Russell, Ben Marcus, Steven Millhauser,

Ivan Vladislavic

take fabric of society apart, reassemble for readers to see

absurdity

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               Analysis

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yearning to belong vs yearning for distinction

Romanticism of original Gaston Leroux text vs mundane

realities of Barthelme's revision

Leroux's novel, serialized in 1909-10

Opera Ghost, Christina as Angel of Music

chandelier drop into audience, one died

kiss from Christine, phantom dies

Phantom of the Opera's friend published in The New Yorker

on 2/7/1970

Christopher B. Strain's The Long Sixties: America 1955-1973

published before Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical

Michael Crawford on Broadway in 1986

1925 - silent movie featuring Lon Chaney

male friendship between 2 unmarried man

narrator hopes to rehab Phantom through plastic surgery

9 sections

6th section - metafiction, Gaston Leroux appears

begin The Secret of the Yellow Room, ignore Phantom

4th section - mentions Christine

Phantom reluctant to commit himself to operation

unqilljing to sacrifice uniqueness

Barbara L. Coe suggest 2 literary precursors

Edgar Allen Poe - Roderick Usher from The Fall of the House

of Usher

Dante's Inferno - cites Phantom's sins

hope for Purgatory rather than heaven

reminds readers that there is no notion of self without language

in which to express it

language often misleading, myths subject to change

fragments, collage, narrative dead ends, parodic revisions