(born 1931); d: 1989 Barthelme became well known thanks to his innovative short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker. A literary postmodernist who argued that collage was the art form of the twentieth century, Barthelme was often linked to other experimental writers such as John Hawkes, William Gass, John Barth and Robert Coover. His stories featured surreal situations, outlandish characters and parodic takes on weighty intellectual issues such as the death of God and existential alienation. Behind Barthelme’s playful style, however, was a more serious concern with how to respond to the moral and epistemological doubts of our age.