Snow White

The author, Donald Barthelme, is known for his short stories.

In this book he tries to experiment with some poetry, some parts as if they are a play and some regular fiction. The result is an unreadable mishmash.

The story is a modern retelling of Snow White who is waiting for her prince.

I did not like this book and wouldn't recommend it. ( )

Much of this novel went straight over my head - my problem, not the book's - but Barthelme's Snow White is such a reflection of the era of its creation that, as time goes by, the wordplay and allusions have become increasingly obscure. At publication, the writing must have seemed intensely colorful, and often sharply funny. I would gladly read an annotated edition.

From what I could absorb, this book transplants Snow White and her associated characters into a post-Freudian, post-Jungian world -- or, tighter than that, into a mishmash of early 1960s intellectualism and consumer pop culture. It's a mind game, not exactly emotionally shallow, but the emotions are conveyed through bits and pieces of tone in the writing - an ironic passage, a bored passage, an angsty passage - sort of the way that, in an impressionist painting, the mood is conveyed through dabs of color rather than through the formal depiction of a scene or character. Thus, the emotional impact of the book stems from the direct experience of reading rather than from absorbing the plot or content of the book. Indeed, Barthelme's Snow White doesn't have developed characters in a traditional sense, certainly not characters that invite empathy or appear to have their own internal lives. This style of writing is risky - the author has to be pitch perfect most of the time - which is easier to do in shorter bursts, like short stories -- but I'm glad to have encountered this experiment. ( )

The retelling of Snow White, or rather, turning the story inside out with a post-modern flourish. Prince Charming can't make up his mind to approach, Snow White is vain, lascivious, and lives with the 7 whatevers in the East Village, but there is a meme in the middle of the book - just to give you a little break.

I didn't think I'd put a fairy tale on here (my read but not owned list), but this one was just awful so I'm going to trade it. Basically, we've got a semi based on Snow White and other fairy tales highly sexual societal critique. The main problem with this is that it gets so abstract that it becomes meaningless. I think that really good fairy tale retellings critique by following the tale and deviating in important ways. This one was just like the author spit out a bunch of words almost at random. Occasionally there's meaning, but my favorite part was honestly the quiz in the middle that some previous owner of the book filled out. "Do you like the story so far? Yes ( ) No (x)" ( )

Many of the tricks, gimmicks and quirks of post-modernism are hardly as novel as most of their practitioners seem to think. The fact that most everything these mass-produced literary units from the MFA programs of America use to add that edgy post-modern flair to their otherwise bland prose can be traced back to Donald Barthelme. Retelling fairy tales as tales of modern alienation, breaking the narrative flow to include such self-referential material as quizzes and discussion questions, surreal narratives marked by absurd dialog and actions; all of these things that are still considered hip when done by some writers were perfected by Barthelme more than 30 years ago in his scattered short stories and novels.

"Snow White" is one of his more cohesive extended fictions, though like its companion piece, "The Dead Father," it's really only for those already attuned to Barthelme's sometimes difficult style. Telling the Snow White tale in a disjointed manner, Barthelme strips the characters of any fairy tale purity, giving them modern human emotional instability. The legend basically stalls because no one knows how to fulfill their role. Snow White becomes an alabaster sex goddess, killing time with the dwarves while waiting for Prince Charming to take action. Unfortunately, Charming seems content to spy on her and imagine taking her away than he does to actually do anything. The dwarves are stuck in a love/hate relationship with Snow White, alternately obsessed with her every action and sickened by her vanity, feeling miffed whenever their pleas for attention go unnoticed. The fractured storytelling can wear you down over time (Barthelme is always better in small doses), but as an example of post-modern recontextualization, this is a dozy.

(This review originally appeared on zombieunderground.net) ( )