The Early Posthumous Work
There’s a much-vaunted notion of writing as craft, but precisely what is meant by this is not often clear. Steven Barthelme’s essays serve as the best of definitions.  They afford us the complete pleasure of hearing a thing said with utmost economy and utmost elegance, the two being one.  In essay after essay, Barthelme finds memory’s perfect pitch. His experience becomes ours: a 1966 TR4-A in need of endless reassembly, Speckled King snakes in their unsung beauty, boyhood dogs whose humans mirror them, a father whose belief that all was possible, and that a good house was not made and left alone, but constantly remade in pursuit of a happy ideal: “All you needed was the willingness to care”—a willingness found everywhere in this collection, along with the compensatory and permanent power of words, crafted by a master.—Angela Ball  ReadingThe Early Posthumous Workof Steve Barthelme is like having a scintillating conversation with a much smarter friend, a friend with an enterprising sense of wonder and a faithfulness to the ambiguity of life. There’s not a moment of self-absorption in these wise, wry, and wildly entertaining essays. Barthelme pays attention to our world, celebrates our fragile and complicated lives, and opens a space in front of us so we can see more clearly.—John Dufresne,Requiem, Mass.