Frederick Barthelme

A fiftyish graphic designer forced into retirement discovers, via a parade of unlikely events, that it may still be a lovely day in the neighborhood, by "the master of the low-key epiphany." (The New Yorker) Wallace Webster lives alone in Kemah, Texas at Forgetful Bay, a condo development where residents are passing away at an alarming rate. As he monitors events in the neighborhood, Wallace keeps in touch with his ex-wife, his grown daughter, a former coworker for whom he has much averted eyes, and a somewhat exotic resident with whom he commences an off-beat affair. He sifts through the curious accidents that plague his neighbors, all the while reflecting on his past and shortening future. Required to reflect upon his own mortality, he wonders if "settling for" something less than he aspired to is a kind of cowardice, or just good sense. Beneath the arresting repartee and the ever-present and often satisfying banality of our modern lives--from Google searches to real life mysteries on TV--lies Frederick Barthelme's affection for and curiosity about our human condition. THERE MUST BE SOME MISTAKE is warm and wry, beautifully written, and completely irresistible.

A Novel

There Must Be Some Mistake

A collection of short fiction, written over the course of two decades, appears in a definitive anthology that includes both old favorites and new original works that eloquently capture the interactions among his characters. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

New & Selected Stories

The Law of Averages

In a darkly funny love story, Ray and Jewel Kaiser dive headfirst into the gambling lifestyle of middle-class hedonism that has developed near their hometown, only to find themselves yearning for their peaceful earlier world

Bob the Gambler

Frederick Barthelme has been applauded as one of the finest fiction writers in America today. In Chroma, he offers fifteen odd, elegant, and heartbreaking stories in which wives give away husbands, lovers dispatch each other, and grown men steal stray dogs from parking lots at dawn. With his elegant, laconic style and his perfectly tuned dialogue, Barthelme creates an unforgettably wistful cast of characters, ordinary people moving carefully and curiously through a gently painful world.

Stories

Chroma

Two Against One (Barthelme, Frederick)

Vaughn Williams and his girlfriend, Greta, are invited to move in with Vaughn's ex-girlfriend, Gail, after she is assaulted by her hot-tempered new boyfriend, and soon complications follow, including the untimely arrival of Vaughn's annoyingly successful brother, in a novel about love and regret set on the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.

Waveland

Second Marriage

The Brothers

Frederick Barthelme's wry and wonderful stories have given us a stunning, cautionary, funny, sometimes bleak, and often transcendent portrait of contemporary life in the sprawl of suburban America. Barthelme made his remarkable debut with these tender and affectionate stories, most of which were originally published in The New Yorker. Moon Deluxe received the high praise of such writers as John Barth, Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, and Margaret Atwood, and earned Barthelme a permanent place in the pantheon of contemporary American writers. In these stories he delicately probes the peculiar corners of contemporary culture, capturing the fast and often touching ways we relate to each other and to the time in which we live.

Moon Deluxe

Weaves a tale of tangled loves and desires in the story of a newly divorced man named Martin who decides to spend a weekend with his ex-sister-in-law Dominica, and promptly becomes her lover. Martin, in the middle of a divorce, is seeking solace. Flying off to the neon-lit south Florida coastline, he settles in for some rest and rehabilitation with his soon-to-be ex-sister-in-law. Martin quickly settles into her bed too, creating a situation that is bound for trouble--especially when his ex-wife also appears on the scene. Cautiously, the threesome try to sort things out, engaging in varied rituals of mating, hating, forgetting, and forgiving. A funny and unforgettable novel about friends, family, and the kind of quirky, complicated relationships that will keep readers rapt through the final pages.

Tracer

Twenty-nine stories celebrating ordinary American life showcase the humor and compassion found amongst the delicate, private, and quiet aspects of surburban life.

A fiftyish graphic designer forced into retirement discovers, via a parade of unlikely events, that it may still be a lovely day in the neighborhood, by "the master of the low-key epiphany." (The New Yorker). Wallace Webster lives alone in Kemah, Texas at Forgetful Bay, a condo development where residents are passing away at an alarming rate. As he monitors events in the neighborhood, Wallace keeps in touch with his ex-wife, his grown daughter, a former coworker for whom he has much averted eyes, and a somewhat exotic resident with whom he commences an off-beat affair. He sifts through the curious accidents that plague his neighbors, all the while reflecting on his past and shortening future. Required to reflect upon his own mortality, he wonders if "settling for" something less than he aspired to is a kind of cowardice, or just good sense. Beneath the arresting repartee and the ever-present and often satisfying banality of our modern lives -- from Google searches to real life mysteries on TV -- lies Frederick Barthelme's affection for and curiosity about our human condition. There Must be Some Mistake is warm and wry, beautifully written, and completely irresistible.

Motivated by the horrors of the L.A. riots and the spectacle of O. J. Simpson's Bronco ride, Jen and Del decide to take a road trip to Los Angeles, and their mission takes them into the heart of American culture. Reprint.

Painted Desert

Exploring the lives of men and women caught in the odd, sad, and funny regimens and rituals of American life, this story collection examines relationships between friends, brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, and lovers

Trip is celebrated Grapevine photographer Susan Lipper's new, conceptually ambitious artist's book: an assembled narrative of a fictional road trip in America, destination and starting point unknown. Adrift. The date is the present, but only slightly so. The viewer is cast without aid amongst snatches of text and vernacular objects, staged or found, that render the landscape neither familiar nor foreign. Semiotic interplay is introduced with seemingly objective signs and symbols, readable in a traditional sense. Re-appropriating the documentary tradition of road photography, Lipper's "trip" is a new American narrative, perfectly suited for our hyper-mediating times. Riffing the documentary tradition a la Walker Evans and Robert Frank, Lipper's "head trip" is a new American photo journal, accessible on many levels, making the freshman photo student and the semantics graduate equally at home.

Trip

When his estranged wife, Elise, arrives unannounced on Edward's fortieth birthday, a series of events are set in motion that reveal the workings of a twenty-year marriage

Two Against One

Steven Barthelme

“An exquisitely crafted memoir” by two brothers who lost their parents, lost their inheritance—and almost lost their freedom (The Wall Street Journal). Frederick Barthelme and his brother Steven were both accomplished, respected writers with stable adult lives when they lost both of their parents in rapid succession. They had already lost their other brother, just a few years earlier. Suddenly they were on their own, emotionally unmoored—and unprepared for what would happen next. Their late father had been a prominent architect, and the brothers were left with a healthy inheritance. Over the following several years, they would lose close to a quarter million dollars in the gambling boats off the Mississippi coast. Then, in a bizarre twist, they were charged with violating state gambling laws, fingerprinted, and thrown into the surreal world of felony prosecution. For two years these widely publicized charges hung over their heads, shadowing their every step. Double Down is the wry, often heartbreaking story of how Frederick and Steven Barthelme got into this predicament. It is also a reflection on the allure of casinos and the pull and power of illusions that can destroy our lives if we aren’t careful. “One of the best firsthand accounts ever written about organized gambling. Like Goodman Brown, taking a walk with a hooded stranger into the darkness of the New England woods, the Barthelme brothers suddenly find themselves inside the maw of the monster. The compulsion to control, to intuit the future, to be painted by magic, could not be better or more accurately described.” —James Lee Burke “Beautifully evoking the gamblers’ addiction, their mesmerizing account is best read as a novel Camus might have imagined, with the writer/protagonists as their own lost characters. A work of high art; enthusiastically recommended.” —Library Journal

Frederick Barthelme

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