Snow White

nice book

my introduction to donald barthelme were his short stories. i learned of this book, dove right in and discovered quite a romp! i feel for the other reviewers that may have felt that this was a faithful rendition of grimm classic. it certainly is not!! it is twisted and thought provoking. my favorite passages are the quiz and the end of part one, and the letter that jane (the evil stepmother) writes to a stranger in the phone book, mr. quistgaard. that truly makes you stop and think about the way things are today and how we insulate ourselves in our own plenum. in a rather strange way, it made me want to do the same thing!i know absolutely nothing about post-modernist literature. i don't even know what it means. what i do know is that barthelme creates and recreates his own personal universe with each story and book. each one unique and provocative. i have read that barthelme is the master. i can believe it.

Deconstruction is not my thing. It is a good book for others though.

This novel--although it really shouldn't be called that--is a wonderfully fragmented romp in the mud that is our bloated western culture. Don't go into this expecting an emotionally compelling narrative. While there are characters who do things, I'd hardly describe their actions as "plot," at least in the conventional sense. Moreover, though, I found my attachment to What Happened being continually, purposefully undercut.The moment-to-moment thrill, however, is unmistakable. These were some of the most enjoyable passages (if cynically so) I've encountered in awhile. If you're in the mood for an assertive tour-de-force (which actually does NOT go on for too long at all--precisely because things ARE happening!...plus the book is pretty short, not to mention a quick read), try this one out!

EM Forster asked in his famous Aspects of the Novel why can't the novel invent a form less rigid and more suitable to its genius. I agree. So much of what is served up these days to the public is a waste of time and obviously exists simply for commercial purposes. Not Snow White. Here we have real literature with a capital L and here we have real imagination too. Based on the original tale, alert readers will love how a master writer converts the simple to the complex, the silly to the profound, and yet keeps us entertained as he goes. Oh, I know in this democratic era questions of elitism are de trop. But so what? Go ahead and read an elitist book. It won't hurt and you will have a lot of fun in the process.

It is a m o d e r n writing, and the "old" Grimm story provides only a framework and pretext for Bartheöme to discuss several aspects of relationships, in a playful, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes phylosophical

Self indulgent foolishness by a write who should have know better.

My son is a student at Columbia in NYC. He had a class with the author last semester and wanted to read this book. He loved it.

Barthelme (1931-89) is generally held to be one of Postmodernism's torchbearers (but he's better than that), and to be more adept at short stories than longer forms of fiction (but he's better than that too). 'Snow White' is hardly, you can at least assume, the traditional tale retold. In a series of short chapters the captious heroine is obliquely revealed as a woman regularly pleasured in a shower cubicle by the seven dwarves for whom she performs 'horsewifely' duties; the prince is a fop, and the stepmother is almost an incidental presence in relation to the potently amoral Hogo (one of several 'introduced' characters to the fable). But the characterisation, no more than the narrative, is largely beside the point. The real pleasure of Barthelme's fiction is in the curiously mutating narrative position (large chunks of the story are told by various dwarves) and the flash of succinct sentences that seem to circumscribe an original world view ("...those girls who, right this minute, are trying to find the right typewriter, in the correct building"). This is quite an early book (1967) and perhaps more playful than his later pieces. Intelligent and excellent, it harbours no designs to change your life: that, after all, would be altogether TOO uncool...

The only good thing about this book is that it was so bad to read that I became interested in the author and the idea of post-modern writing and researched it but the reading experience was horrendous!

Some people say this book is Marmite but I failed to love it or hate it. One thing’s for sure, it’s “creative”, which is why (apparently) pro copywriters look at it for inspo. Take it as it comes and make of it what you will. Oh and if you're looking for smut, look elsewhere… it is not as scandalous as its reputation suggests, times have changed I guess!

The cover and printings inside look worse than a xerox-copy from the seventies.You can count the pixels in the capitals, and the ink is a kind of light-grey instead of black.It says 'Printed in Great Britain by Amazon.co.uk, Ltd.' I hope they still have their day-jobs.The cover has had various illustrations over the years, this is the most awful 'design'.This is seriously the worst printing I've ever come across.Still, a humorous 60's rework of an old fairy-tale.Nice read (if you can get past how horrible it looks).

Nicht besonders spannend und der Erzählstil ist recht fragwürdig.