Moon Deluxe

Book excerpt: Frederick Barthelme's wry and wonderful stories have given us a stunning, cautionary, funny, sometimes bleak, and often transcendent portrait of contemporary life in the sprawl of suburban America. Barthelme made his remarkable debut with these tender and affectionate stories, most of which were originally published in The New Yorker. Moon Deluxe received the high praise of such writers as John Barth, Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, and Margaret Atwood, and earned Barthelme a permanent place in the pantheon of contemporary American writers. In these stories he delicately probes the peculiar corners of contemporary culture, capturing the fast and often touching ways we relate to each other and to the time in which we live.