In the 1960s Donald Barthelme came to prominence as the leader of the Postmodern movement. He was a fixture at The New Yorker, publishing more than 100 short stories, including such masterpieces as "Me and Miss Mandible," the tale of a thirty-five-year-old sent to elementary school by clerical error, and "A Shower of Gold," in which a sculptor agrees to appear on the existentialist game show Who Am I?His dynamic relationship with his father influenced much of his fiction. Barthelme was at the forefront of literary Greenwich Village, developing lasting friendships with Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe, Grace Paley, and Norman Mailer. Married four times, he had a volatile private life. The recipient of many prestigious literary awards, he is best remembered for the classic novels "Snow White", "The Dead Father", and many short story collections, all of which remain in print today. Barthelme died of cancer in 1989. This is the first biography of Donald Barthelme, and it is nothing short of a masterpiece.