A volume of the National Book Award-winning author's uncollected--and three previously unpublished--short stories "arrives like a wondrous jewel unearthed" ( Literary Journal ). Donald Barthelme is widely recognized as one of the most influential and inventive writers of the 20th century. In this volume of unpublished or previously uncollected stories, he displays his keen eye for the absurd as well as his uniquely engaging, epiphanic, and richly textured style. The stories collected here delve into the themes that most fascinated Barthelme: the perils of the unfulfilled existence; the relationships between politics, art, sex, and life; and the importance of continuing to ask questions even though we are unable to learn the answers. Spanning Barthelme's career, this posthumous collection includes his first published story, "Pages from the Annual Report," which appeared in 1959 under a pseudonym, as well as his last, "Tickets," published in The New Yorker shortly before he died in 1989. From this broad scope, "it is possible . to trace the author's development from an early postmodern baroque . to the fragmentary, almost minimalist style of his late-'60s and early-'70s prime" ( Los Angeles Times ).