Forty Stories

Blurb

Forty Stories collects forty of Donald Barthelme's short stories, several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The book was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1987.
While Sixty Stories includes many longer narratives, the stories in Forty Stories are pithy. Many last for fewer than five pages, and display Barthelme's flash fictional tendencies. They also abound in historical references and surreal juxtapositions. One story involves a World War I Secret Police investigator, a trio of German warplanes, and the artist Paul Klee. Another is a parodic rewriting of the fairy-tale Bluebeard, perhaps inspired by Angela Carter's story "The Bloody Chamber." Yet another consists of a single seven-page-long sentence.
The following stories appear in the book:
Chablis
On the Deck
The Genius
Opening
Sindbad
The Explanation
Concerning the Bodyguard
RIF
The Palace at Four A.M.
Jaws
Conversations with Goethe
Affection
The New Owner
Paul Klee [full title: "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbertshoffen and Cambrai, March 1916"]
Terminus
The Educational Experience
Bluebeard
Departures
Visitors
The Wound
At the Tolstoy Museum