APF

stories published in the earliest of those books (by my count, nine from Caligari alone). Of
course, this was not per se an editorial decision on Herzinger’s part, bequeathed as she was with
all of the leftovers not already included in the first two omnibus volumes. Nevertheless, the
effect is the same. Readers curious enough about the provenance of the stories in this book to
scan the “Notes” section can’t help but wonder whether Caligari or Unspeakable Practices
might just have been apprentice work, interesting in an archival sense but finally dispensable,
when in fact each still provides a bracing reading experience over 40 years after they first
appeared and contains such classic Barthelme stories as “Me and Miss Mandible,” “The Joker’s
Greatest Triumph,” “A Shower of Gold,” “The Indian Uprising,” “The Balloon,” and “Robert
Kennedy Saved From Drowning.” The man who wrote these stories was already in full
possession of his literary powers, but future readers of Barthelme will have a much diminished
appreciation of this fact if Caligari, Unspeakable Practices, and City Life are not available, or at
least if some future collected edition of Barthelme’s fiction does not maintain these books’
complete contents as its organizing principle.
Flying to America does, on the other hand, collect a few of Barthelme’s stories that have
never before appeared in book form (in some cases, never before published), and to that extent
does perform a useful service to Barthelme’s readers. It allows us to read both what the editor
identifies as Barthelme’s first published story, “Pages from the Annual Report,” and what may
be his final story, “Pandemonium.” (Although, again the reasons for their placement in the book,
as nos. 24 and 33, respectively, are not in any way clear.) If anything, “Pages” demonstrates that
Barthelme’s peculiarly angled vision was fully focused when he began publishing short fiction,
as it is a recognizably Barthelmean portrayal of the essential absurdity of post-World War II
American life that could easily have been included in Come Back, Dr. Caligari. “Pandemonium”
shares the earlier story’s setting in a white collar workplace, but unfortunately this story doesn’t
really seem much of an advance beyond the kind of skewed satire at which “Pages” already
shows Barthelme to be especially adept. Perhaps if “Pandemonium,” as the editor suggests, was
left incomplete, Barthelme might still have made something more distinctive of it; as it is, the
story testifies to a continuity in Barthelme’s career that needs to be acknowledged, although
ultimately Flying to America provides little or no context or critical framework within which to
profitably consider the interplay of continuity and innovation in Barthelme’s work.
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