susan can make formica disquieting. Many photographers have been on the road, few have taken a picture and left it hanging, lighter than air and about to break and drop to the floor under the weight of a trip, like Ms Lipper has. And there is a book of these wonderful, thoughtful photographs.

Do not buy this book looking for familiar signs of travel or a destination. The "trip" you, the viewer, embark upon is not the sort which gets you "there". Rather it is an experience akin to the wakening one might have following a long, vacant stare and realizing that, despite your own logic or familiarity with the world, the most common object has the potential for revealing puzzling, but significant, meaning.

Through the use of her camera's frame and lens Lipper evokes/creates/invents realities that force unanswered questions and pose mystery. Frederick Barthelme's fiction hauntingly echoes the quality of dislocation permeated in the photographs. Together the text and photographs create an ambitious concept of contemporary existence.

"Trip" is a beautiful, smart, funny and disturbing book.

Susan Lipper has taken a bold leap in presenting a body of work which touches on the real, imagined, mundane and the bizarre. A lonely trip of images which are echoed by the strange and brilliant narrative by Frederick Barthelme. Trip is a provocative voyage, part fictional, part reality through a maze of back roads, bayous, motels and various unidentified locales. The resultant work is one which alternately confuses and enlightens. Is this work theater, documentary, fantasy, dream, nightmare or some sad reality? Probably a little of each. Trip is a huge departure from Lipper's previous book "Grapevine" and I applaud her courageous step towards the new and unknown. I recommend this unique book.

"Moon Deluxe" has the sexier title, but Frederick Barthelme's second collection cuts just as deeply and then some. The characters are people who are trying their best to do the decent thing, but can't quite shake the urge to do the wild and crazy thing. Romance collides with love, safety breeds ennui, material comforts and cultivated irony fend off, but can't cure, yearning and restlessness. Heartbreak is the frequent result. Tight and subtle as the stories are, Barthelme's prose style is often dazzling and virtuosic in a way which should make any reader think twice about calling them "minimalist." Some of the shorter numbers ("Trick Scenery," "Cut Glass") have the lyricism and condensed energy of poetry. But don't let me spoil it for you. Go out and read it yourself.

Here's a writer whose style and substance are perfectly matched. While some of the plots will make you laugh out loud, the characters are poignant. Highly recommended.

The night after I finished this book I found myself before a slot machine in a small casino. I had a feeling and put a quarter in. I won and won again. I stuffed the quarters in my pockets but there were no buckets available. When I lost two quarters in a row I left. Unfortunately this was a dream and I awoke empty handed. Bob the Gambler is a beautifully observed, enviably perfect novel by a master who doesn't seem flashy because he stays within his means. It is also a surprisingly, even surreally loving story. The novel centers around the fissioned nuclear family of down-on-his luck Biloxi architect Bob Kaiser, a plump transplant moved by the Mississippi coastal decay before it was invaded by "gussied-up Motel 6 hotel rooms [and] an ocean of slicked-back hair," his pretty, witty, and wonderful wife of nine years Jewel, who is tough and stable, and yet the first to thirst for casino action, Jewel's daughter RV, an amazingly rendered, very sweet fourteen year old mid-90's teenager whom Bob adores, and Frank, the family dog. All the principals, as well as Bob's mother, whom we meet later in the book, are expert at the art of the cryptic tough-talking but secretly loving epigram. One of the great charms of this book is the depths of love of the family members both concealed by and revealed by their fragmented banter and quips. There are some wonderful moments and descriptions of daily life and teenage rearing, the euphoric swirl of casino gambling, and the decrepit Mississippi coast. The lasting impression one is left from this book, aside from the controlled brilliance of Barthelme's prose, is in my opinion a meditation on the meaning of money vis-à-vis love. Bob's wife's name, Jewel, is a token of facets of wealth unobtainable by any number of markers or wild infatuation-like risks; theirs, an irreducible love that includes and absorbs others (such as RV) in its understated wake, is the multicolored antithesis of liaisons such as those between David Duke (who make a cameo appearance)-and a sprightly young thing-of any coupling that can be price tagged, exchanged, or discarded. The casino and noncasino lights that surround Jewel, in her preternatural (and perhaps ultimately unrealistic, or at least extremely rare) stability, enact a preciousness beyond money and its temporary accumulations. They symbolize the nonmonetary values of the gift of being, the privilege not of accumulating but of existing-of the privilege of being alive, a spectator of phenomena in a world whose mortal decay, far from being its downfall, guarantees the preciousness of the light show it displays. Anyone who has taken junkets to Atlantic City may have noticed how on the flight there everyone chatters; they are full of excitement on hope. The way back is different. Everyone, or almost everyone has lost. They are quiet-until the plane lands, at which point they clap. Why? Because, although they have lost their money, they are newly appreciative of the far more precious gift of being alive. That is the mini-miracle, the lottery ticket, the stiff Barthelme hits for us in this wonderful paean to human frailty and true, tough love. In a way, Barthelme, his heart bigger than any red chip, says in this book the exact opposite of comedian Steven Wright's quip, "You can't have everything, where would you put it?" Barthelme says (with mathematician Paul Erdos) you do have everything, you have it all, already-you are infinitely rich.

I read this book as soon as it came out, have recommended it to friends, and just now purchased another copy as a gift. It's one of the best books I've read in years. The characters are so acutely observed, the dialogue so on target, that I got carried away with it. The well-written gambling scenes made my hands sweat at points. And the ending -- the ending is absolutely perfect.

Barthelme's new book is fantastic. Rich in detail like his earlier "Two Against One," and chilling in its ability to paint the down and out life of its characters.

FB's style in these stories is mainly to set you up with a scene and characters (which he brings to life fairly easily and quickly) and then end the story right on the brink of when something's going to happen.. or not happen.
In many of these stories, the sexual frustration between characters is leaping off the page; just when you think something will break, it gets even more intense. Most of the stories involve a male and female as the main chars.
A handful of stories are written in 2nd person, which is extremely difficult to pull off. FB does an okay job of it, but doesn't convince me.
I enjoyed the collection and will definitely consider other works by him.

So many books are filled with lousy, hothouse prose, so many are overwritten or underwritten, or have no ideas other than the ideas you might hear on any newscast on MSNBC. Even books that get a lot of press seem sort of mundane and off-the-rack when compared with Barthelme's. He sees the world we live in from an odd angle, seems to like the really plain stuff that's always going on around us, and in his hands it tends to take on a magical glow. How he does it I don't quite know. Maybe it's just good writing, maybe it's the particular ideas that he elects to write about, maybe it's finding the slightly miraculous in the utterly ordinary. Anyway, it's a pleasure to read stories that have a different slant. I like the story where the meat slides down the counter, and the one where they go to the Home Depot, and the one where the girl writes her number on his arm, and the one where the big strange guy gets to drive the car. I like the crazy story about the runaway girl in the back and the story called Ed Works in which almost nothing happens. These characters have a realness about them that so much fiction misses--the people are just going though their lives and stuff is happening to them and they're reacting and sometimes it gets out of hand or there's a big moment that's really lovely and they don't miss the moment, but they don't make a religion out of it either. And best of all, these stories don't preach. That's rare these days.

For two decades Frederick Barthelme has been turning out an impressive collection of some of America's best short stories. Intimate, funny, economical, and quirky -- and usually set in a recognizable limbo of suburban estrangement and surrealness -- Barthelme's stories detail relationships that almost happen and ones that almost don't, the ways we look at each other when we mean things we can't bring ourselves to say, and the overflow of feelings we all share but can't always, or even often, come right out and express. The Law of Averages is a stunning collection of old and new stories, fully representing a master's broad range of accomplishments, while deservedly winning an audience of new admirers; recommended without reservation.

The authors, two writer brothers who teach at the same university, slipped into a gambling fever, losing a quarter million dollars in the years following their aged parents' deaths. This is a lucid, compelling book: the sense of addiction, the timeless, weird feeling one gets when gambling, is brought vividly to life. There's also some measure of self-analysis: the brothers conclude that guilt and grief fueled their two-day-long losing sprees, and they appear to aptly judged themselves. They are falsely and bizarrely accused of cheating the casino (they lose thousands in the night they're accused); their description of the indictment and booking, their sudden notoriety and helplessness at the indifferent, lying corporation that is the casino, is a scarily real morality tale. On the minus side, the book does engage in a bit too much of this analysis; it gets repetitive. Also, they drop the story of their indictment too early, leaving the conclusion (dismissal of the charges on the DA's request) unexplained.

This slim book by the Barthelme Brothers, recounting their descent into gambling hell, is both elegantly written and horrifying. After all, the Barthelmes are college professors and literary stars, and if their lives could veer out of control so suddenly and so badly, then so could yours and mine. The brothers end up throwing away all their money, including a $300,000 inheritance, at a riverboat casino during the year or so after their parents' deaths. Then -- as if the story couldn't get any more gruesome -- they are indicted on charges of cheating the casino! I've spent a lot of time in casinos myself, and can vouch for the accuracy of the Barthelmes' portrait of the casino scene: the mood of the place and the behavior of the various participants are captured perfectly. They are especially good at describing the feelings that run through a gambler while winning and losing. The only shortcoming of the book is the repetitious (and sometimes shallow) analysis of their behavior. Or maybe I've just read one too many books where it all goes back to Mommy and Daddy. I would like them to have stayed more focused on the story, and allow the reader to provide some of the analysis for himself. Also, if the brothers had waited a few months longer before publishing, they would have been able to provide the conclusion to this story, which, as it stands, is anti-climactic. Nevertheless, I would put this on a rather short shelf of great gambling literature, maybe not to far away from Dostoyevsky's "The Gambler."ÿ

I thought this book was excellent: a memoir by two brothers who lost $250,000 in riverboat casinos. They describe in detail how they would spend 12 hours or more losing thousands in the slot machines, or, more often, at blackjack. And how it escalated slowly, and then how the addiction got completely out-of-hand after both of their elderly parents died. Apparently, their pattern on each gambling spree was to lose a lot, and then spend the rest of the night (and sometimes day) winning back the lost amount. What amazed me is that even after they were indicted for a crime allegedly committed while gambling, they continued their addiction, albeit in another casino. Astounding! This memoir is remarkable on many counts. For one, it is beautifully written (both authors are writing professors), and also, they attempt to analyze their behavior, the big "WHY"? I commend them for revealing so many intimate details. It seems that perhaps the loss of their father, who had been a brilliant architect but an insensitive father to both, put them over the edge. Raised not to show feelings, coupled with their belief that their parents were their only true "community", perhaps put them in a hard, "no win" position when they died. And the only way to "win" (or attempt to) was at the casino. They are excellent at drawing out the allure of gambling - that, no matter win or lose, they were finally "feeling" something at the blackjack table. A sad tale of an attempt to deal with loss in a desperate, impossible way.

Perhaps he's an acquired taste, or maybe you just need an attention span longer than a Buzz Clip, but no one writes about real people, real life, and the quiet at the heart of the insane neon whirlwind of modern existence quite the way Barthelme does. He understands the tragedy of the lonely traffic light, the way the sting of salt in the air can smell like renewal, the peculiar magic of parking lots at 3 am, the messy reality of road trips that don't take place in Hollywood movies. Painted Desert, like his other works, is less a conventional novel told to you like a bedtime story and more a glimpse of a particular time and place, a specific person and what they were wearing, the awkward rhythm of a conversation with someone you can never really know well enough. The absence of the standard narrative tropes is disorienting at first, but ultimately liberating: the first time I read anything of his I was unnerved by how immediate it was...months later it still haunted me and I had to go back for more. Painted Desert is like a ride in someone else's mind: come along and take that ride, baby it's all right.

This book concerns media and traveling and cyber-culture. It is about connections where there seems to be a lack of connection because people commit outrageous acts. The main character's friend seeks to right the wrong, but in the midst of the road trip from Mississippi to Arizona, discovers that looking at the scenery and marriage may be more certain avenues of growth.

Like so much of Barthelme's work, Painted Desert tracks misfit middle-aged American males through quirky metaphysical journeys into the millennium. His dialogue is clever and always rings true, his characters are charming, and the situations they face are wonderful, surreal, terrifying. His descriptions -- whether of a motel room during a storm, or a car that seems so big its passengers move their stuff from the trunk to the back seat so they won't "be as lonely", are exquisite and revealing. Only Barthelme can juxtapose the portrayal of a world of mindless violence careening out of control, with gentle humour, touching revelation and a sustaining, almost religious optimism: "Putting one foot in the Painted Desert is more satisfying, fulfilling, more rich and human and decent, than all the vengeance in the world. This country is making us into saints, making us feel like saints, and that's worth everything". And reading and re-reading Barthelme's well-crafted work is also well worth it.

Frederick Barthelme, Tracer (Penguin, 1985)

When you're a writer, and your brother is a writer, you have to expect the comparisons, especially if the two of you tend to float in the same water. The particular swimming pool that is eighties literature, [urinated] in on a fairly regular basis by Papa Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis, is home to the Barthelme brothers. And as much as I hate to draw obvious comparisons and judge by them, Donald's the better writer.

Still, Fred is capable of turning a decent tale. His protagonist is on the cusp of divorce, staying in Florida with his soon-to-be-ex-wife's sister. The two never quite get romantically entangled, but they share bed space every once in a while, which makes things slightly uncomfortable when the wife shows up.

Frederick Barthelme's strength resides in his ability to create minor characters and setting; much of what goes on around the main triangle here is memorable, in ways (as much as I hate to do it again... it's the same kind of semi-dada whimsy that inhabits Donald's more notable works). The problem is that the main plot, what little there is of it, never really gets off the ground. The main characters don't have the emotional depth to hold the minimal changes in their emotional states that Frederick is trying to use to signal the way their relationships are changing towards one another. He's also guilty of giving just enough in places to be ambiguous about what events will transpire, then cutting to the next morning without us knowing exactly what went on, and then never following up.

Could've been good. Left a lot to be desired. **

In this slight novella Frederick Barthelme, one of the new generation of serious Southern writers, presents a thin story that covers several days in the breakup of a marriage. Martin, the central character, leaves his home after his wife declares her intention to divorce him and goes to visit (we never quite know why)his wife's sister who runs a down-and-out motel on the Gulf shore of Florida. Almost immediately they begin an affair which, since they really know nothing about one another, is only a substitute for what each wants in life at that moment. The wife decides to come visit. Again, the motivation for this is not clear. She knows about the affair and when the sisters are together they alternately attack and support one another, leaving Martin (and, I suspect, the reader)puzzled as to what is going on and where it is headed. An interesting cast of supporting characters, including the sister's ex-husband and his eccentric brother, provide the real interest in the 'story', such as it is.

There are arresting images and colorful dialoge in parts of this book, but nothing binds it all together into any kind of emotional or intellectual whole. The scenes that worked best would probably make a good minimalist play. Something like Pinter with a bit of wry humor. But as a novel, this book is just too thin in every regard and one reaches the end knowing nothing more about the central characters than when the book began. It is a promise unfulfilled.

I finally read the book, bought it about 8 years ago, tried more than once to finish it. Finally got myself up to do so and was pretty disappointed. Boring, too far from any reality, characters unbelievable.

"Two Against One" gives a somewhat detached third-person account of the story of Edward, whose wife Elise returns after a six month absence for a not-so-tumultuous-as-you-might-think weekend. The situation is this: Elise acts as though nothing has changed between them during this time. After all, they're still husband-and-wife. She talks to friends as if the separation never took place, sleeps in his bed, talks about Edward as someone more intimate with him than even himself, etc. Later we learn that she wants to re-engage the marriage. But what that will mean and entail she leaves up to Edward. Oh, and there's a catch, she's in a relationship with another man that she is not in a position to end. So for Edward to take her back and resume an active marriage he will have to do so with a third person who he will also sort of be married to, or who at the very least he must live and share his wife with. The situation is further complicated by the appearance of Elise's pseudo-boyfriend Roscoe, Edward's nymphomaniac ex-girlfriend Kinta, and a nosy but concerned friend Lurleen. This turns both the marital situation and Edward's own existential shadowboxing into a community ordeal.

This could be handled as a modern relationship comedy, and it would be awful. But though there are lots of funny moments, and though the characters sometimes seem like they'd feel at home in a sitcom, Barthelme is a better writer than that. Instead, the characters appear to be acting the part of a relationship comedy that they've somehow walked into. At the same time there is an overwhelming sense of discomfort and a feeling that this relationship comedy may be messier than they are prepared for, and they know it.

Edward is confronted by the I suppose ever-present threat of what love may potentially require of a person, as well as the possibility that he may not be able to meet those requirements. He is confronted with his own sexual problems (never entirely specified), as well as Elise's sexual exploits with other men. He is forced to face the possibility that he may just hate women. And he has to argue his case in front of a whole cast of characters.

The novel is ambitious, and reading it I felt the weight of so many "crises of modernity" squeezing as much as could be had from the prose. Fans of Douglas Coupland (I am not one) will go mad for this. "Two Against One" covers a lot of Coupland-overused territory, addressing suburban life, consumerist living, the sexual revolution, gender politics, and morality (particularly different people's incompatible moral codes). Ultimately the book deals with the pursuit of happiness in the modern world. And yes, before you ask, I do feel that the scope and ambition of "Two Against One" detract from our intimacy with the characters, the story, and the author, and I do feel that a sense of realism is expunged in favor of functionality to a subtext far larger than the mere text. And yes, I do feel this is a problem. I came to this book after something like seven readings of "Moon Deluxe," which has the aforementioned intimacies and realism in spades. "Moon Deluxe" allows the reader to consider and judge such big issues on their own when faced with what seem like fairly unremarkable situations and realistic characters who appear, I dunno, effected by their settings, but not artifacts of it. "Two Against One" never approached heavy-handedness, but by overtly raising big issues (sometimes this is done literally in the dialogue, sometimes it is simply inevitable given the situations), even if not confronting them, it is difficult to read the characters or situations outside the context of these big issues. Maybe this is the novel's greatest strength, but unfortunately it prevents the characters from ringing true, turns the specific global, and comes off as calculated.