Great Pyramids: Collected Stories

Frederick Barthelme's fiction portrays the immensity of feeling that saturates the uneventful details of ordinary life. From parking lots to grocery stores, and swimming pools to morning traffic, the inner landscape of Barthelme's characters is one of underlying tension arising from the seemingly mundane. Meaning breaks down and is doubled, and becomes a representation of the small in-between spaces--lyrical, mysterious, ordinary--within the routines of daily life.

Starting out his career ...