Summary Of Donald Barthelme's Snow White

When asked about his thoughts about Donald Barthelme’s first novel Snow White John Barth remarked, that the term should not be applied to Barthelme’s works at all, as “Is there really any ‘early Donald Barthelme’? Like Mozart and Kafka, he seems to have been born full-grown.” (Barth [qtd. in] Hudgens 78). This opinion seems to permeate the critics community which considers Barthelme as one of the well-respected post-modernists writers. Barthelme’s Snow White is typically post-modernists in its structure and as such exhibits numerous features of experimental fiction. Not only it is resistant to any kind of definite narrative structure, but it also uses Barthelme’s so called “chief stylistic device” – the collage. A device which, according to

(Barthelme 3)

The author uses the visual representation of Snow White’s beauty spots to foreground the physicality of her character – negating at the same time the traditional trope of a woman as a mysterious entity and in turn focus on the materiality of both the text and Snow White’s body.

There are many elements which make Ronald Barthelme part of the canon of post-modernist writers. His skill in incorporating different discourses and texts into his own works; the way in which he uses parody and irony; the way in which he grafts his own language onto an indeterminate signifying system; and the way in which he refuses to create any definite system of meaning of his own - are only a few of them. All of the abovementioned elements can be found in Snow White. The novel, despite being written over fifty years ago, contains many elements which are still considered experimental in fiction, including genre mashup, experiments with language and narration techniques, metafiction, as well as features in the book pointing towards its materiality. Those features make Snow White interesting in the structural sense, the story itself, however is only highlighted by the experimental devices visible throughout the