A Donald Barthelme Collection


Title:  Forty Stories
Printing:  first published by Penguin 1989
Year of publication:  1987
Publisher:  A Penguin Handbook
City:  New York
Number of Pages:  256
Cover:  paperback
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:  88-28925
ISBN:  0-14-011245-6


Table of contents
  1. Chablis (previously uncollected)
  2. On the Deck (previously uncollected)
  3. The Genius (Sadness)
  4. Opening (previously uncollected)
  5. Sindbad (previously uncollected)
  6. The Explanation (City Life)
  7. Concerning the Bodyguard (Great Days)
  8. Rif (previously uncollected)
  9. The Palace at Four A.M. (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  10. Jaws (previously uncollected)
  11. Conversations with Goethe (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  12. Affection (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  13. The New Owner (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  14. Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916 (Sadness)
  15. Terminus (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  16. The Educational Experience (Amateurs)
  17. Bluebeard (previously uncollected)
  18. Departures (Sadness)
  19. Visitors (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  20. The Wound (Amateurs)
  21. At the Tolstoy Museum (City Life)
  22. The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace (Sadness)
  23. A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking (Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts)
  24. The Temptation of St. Anthony (Sadness)
  25. Sentence (City Life)
  26. Pepperoni (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  27. Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby (Amateurs)
  28. Lightning (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  29. The Catechist (Sadness)
  30. Porcupines at the University (Amateurs)
  31. Sakrete (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  32. Captain Blood (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  33. 110 West Sixty-First Street (Amateurs)
  34. The Film (Sadness, titled A Film)
  35. Overnight to Many Distant Cities (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  36. Construction (previously uncollected)
  37. Letters to the Editore (Guilty Pleasures)
  38. Great Days (Great Days)
  39. The Baby (Overnight to Many Distant Cities)
  40. January (previously uncollected)


beginning:

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby's almost two. My wife says that the baby wants a dog.

My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn't have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, "Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy's girl?" The baby says, "Momma," and she doesn't just say it once, she says it repeatedly, "Momma momma momma." I don't see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.