City Life

Barthelmes latest collection of fiction is the most successfull example of a new strand of American writing that draws on surrealism, Kafka and Borges. Barthelme uses exact and simple language to describe dreamlike rearrangements of private, literary and public situations, in a play of elegant anachronisms and ambiguities. City Life seems notable less formalistic than Barthelme's previous works and is made even more accessible by his use of illustrations -collages in a witty Pop heroic style.