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Title: Blithering inanity
Review: This book, like most fictions, is about personalities and social interactions. There is no requirement that an author create likeable personalities or nice interactions, and Barthelme demonstrates that here. Actually, he has gone out of his way to create disagreeable characters, chronically drifting and unskilled. The dialog is banal and jittery, reflecting speakers' shallowness and irrelevance. Characters talk past--not to--each other.Sequences are unpredictable and implausible, as though lives are completely out of personal control. Needing a plotline? Invent your own. If you are looking for existential anomie, this may satisfy you, although you might save some time by just reading a bunch of newspaper classified ads.
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