SOURCE: A review of The Teachings of Don B., in The New York Times Book Review, December 6, 1992, p. 30.

In the following review, Marcus offers a commendatory assessment of The Teachings of Don B.

At a glance, this collection of material by Donald Barthelme—who died of cancer in 1989, at the age of 58—might be mistaken for a bit of valedictory barrel-scraping. In fact, it's nothing of the kind.

Culled from a variety of sources, including his signed and unsigned contributions to The New Yorker, the pieces in The Teachings of Don B." (most of which have never' previously been collected) offer a superb cross section of what Thomas Pynchon, in his live introduction, calls Barthelmismo. The author's straight parodies—of Michelangelo Antonioni, or Carlos Castaneda or Bret Easton Ellis—are expert and amusing. Yet Barthelme's art was pre-eminently one of surprises, darting from satire to lyricism to poker-faced...