Donald Barthelme's Visual Approach in the Short Story “At the Tolstoy Museum”

Abstract

Donald Barthelme's short story “At the Tolstoy Museum” belongs to his "Picture Texts" and "Art Gallery" that pastes common objects obtained from the world in unexpected proximity on the picture plane and overturns their predictability as artistic symbols. The paper reaches the conclusion that Donald Barthelme's visual approach in the short story "At the Tolstoy Museum" is similar to René Magritte's process of "resemblance". A composition's "resemblance" to the world deceives the viewer into thinking that he can successfully categorize among and interpret his perceptual experience, while the vague relationships among the graphic and verbal fragments, varied and repeated, counter his ordering activity with disorientation.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s2p200