18 Facts About Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme was one of the original founders of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

The family moved to Texas two years later and Donald Barthelme's father became a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Donald Barthelme would later study journalism.

Donald Barthelme won a Scholastic Writing Award in Short Story in 1949, while a student at Lamar High School in Houston.

Two years later, Donald Barthelme was drafted into the US Army, arriving in Korea on July 27,1953, the day of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, which ended the Korean War.

Donald Barthelme spent much of his free time in Houston's Black jazz clubs, listening to musical innovators such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelley, an experience that influenced his later writing.

Donald Barthelme went on to teach for brief periods at Boston University, University at Buffalo, and the City College of New York, where he served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974 to 1975.

In 1964, Donald Barthelme collected his early stories in Come Back, Dr Caligari, for which he received considerable critical acclaim as an innovator of the short story form.

Donald Barthelme continued his success in the short story form with Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts.

Donald Barthelme would go on to write over a hundred more short stories, first collected in City Life, Sadness, Amateurs, Great Days, and Overnight to Many Distant Cities.

Donald Barthelme was a director of PEN, the Authors Guild, and a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Donald Barthelme's relationship with his father was a struggle between a rebellious son and a demanding father.

In later years they would have tremendous arguments about the kinds of literature in which Donald Barthelme was interested and which he wrote.

Donald Barthelme's brothers Frederick was born on 1943 and and Steven was born on 1947 and are respected fiction writers.

Marion and Donald Barthelme remained married until his death in 1989.

Donald Barthelme's fiction was hailed by some for being profoundly disciplined and derided by others as being meaningless, academic postmodernism.

Donald Barthelme called his cutting up and pasting together pictures "a secret vice gone public".

At the University of Houston, Donald Barthelme became known as a sensitive, creative, and encouraging mentor to young creative writing students even as he continued his own writings.

Donald Barthelme was quite interested in and influenced by a number of contemporary artists, particularly the "found object" collage techniques of Robert Rauschenberg.