[Donald Barthelme's] Great Days, is about success. "Yes, success is everything," says one of his characters, or rather one of his half embodied, half-unrealized voices. The voice goes on:

Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are. This allows, if not peace of mind, ongoing attention to other aspects of existence.

The paragraph illustrates Barthelme's much-praised ability to switch from style to style, from the professorial "absolutely quite" to the bureaucratic "ongoing attention," all within fifteen words, and all while holding things together with an unfaltering sense of rhythm. This is the kind of fingering people expect from a regular writer for The New Yorker, and Barthelme's surrealist intensity never distorts his civilized charm. Indeed, this charm serves as a reminder that surrealists, unlike some other members of the avant-garde...