Donald Barthelme - Influences

Influences

In a 1971-72 Interview with Jerome Klinkowitz (now collected in Not-Knowing), Barthelme provides a list of favorite writers, both influential figures from the past and contemporary writers he admired. Throughout other interviews in the same collection, Barthelme reiterates a number of the same names and also mentions several others, occasionally expanding on why these writers were important for him. In a 1975 Interview for Pacifica Radio, Barthelme stresses that, for him, Beckett is foremost among his literary predecessors: "...I'm enormously impressed by Beckett. I'm just overwhelmed by Beckett, as Beckett was, I speculate, by Joyce." What follows is a partial list gleaned from the interviews.

  • François Rabelais
  • Arthur Rimbaud
  • Heinrich von Kleist
  • Franz Kafka
  • Gertrude Stein
  • Flann O'Brien
  • Samuel Beckett
  • William H. Gass
  • Rafael Sabatini
  • S. J. Perelman
  • Ann Beattie
  • Walker Percy
  • Gabriel García Márquez
  • John Barth
  • Thomas Pynchon
  • Kenneth Koch
  • John Ashbery
  • Grace Paley
  • Machado de Assis

Barthelme was also quite interested in and influenced by a number of contemporary artists.

Read more about this topic:  Donald Barthelme

Famous quotes containing the word influences:

    “Whoever influences the child’s life ought to try to give him a positive view of himself and of his world. The child’s future happiness and his ability to cope with life and relate to others will depend on it.”
    —Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)

    “Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor defense of their profession, and the professors of science, who are frequently men of great intelligence but of limited interests and education, feel a politely disguised contempt for it; and thus the study of one of the most pervasive and powerful influences on human life is traduced and neglected.”
    —Yvor Winters (1900–1968)

    “However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
    —Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)