Biography of Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme was born in Philadelphia in 1931. He won a Scholastic Writing Award in Short Story in 1949, while being a student at Lamar High School in Houston. Later on, he studied journalism at the University of Huston where his father taught as a professor. Barthelme's father was also a respected writer, but he and Barthelme had totally different writing styles. His father's style was more avant-grade, but Barthelme approved the style of postmodern and deconstruction schools. As a result Barthelme's relationship with his father was a struggle and his attitude toward his father is delineated in the novels The Dead Father and The King.
Barthelme started to write articles for the Houston post in 1951. He wrote articles for the Houston Post, the US Army newspaper in Korea and the Public Information Office. Also, he worked as a museum director. However in his later life, he devoted his time mostly on writing short story. His stories appeared in The Paris Review and in his New Yorker publication. At this time he continued to take classes, but he never received a degree, because he spent much of his free time in Houston's black jazz clubs, listening to musical innovators such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly, who later influenced his writings. Until 1989, when he died because of throat cancer at the age of 58, he wrote about hundred of short stories and published 4 novels.