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“A Haunted House” by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists and essayists. She occasionally wrote shorter fiction, such as “A Haunted House.” She published the story in Monday or Tuesday (1921), the only collection of her short fiction released during her lifetime. The story is a modernist take on the ghost story genre. The narrator, an unnamed woman, tells of living in a house in which a ghostly couple wanders unseen through the house looking for an unknown treasure and remembering their past lives. In just shy of 700 words, Woolf packs in an eerie yet artful exploration of death, loss, love, memory, and struggle—ideas similar to the struggles discussed in “The School.”
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five (1969) is a postmodern anti-war science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an unlikely hero, who becomes “unstuck in time,” traveling uncontrollably from one point in his life to another. Vonnegut’s fragmented, nonlinear plot and dark humor are similar to Barthelme’s in “The School.” Like the teacher, Edgar, Billy Pilgrim responds passively and without emotion to the tragedy and death that surrounds him. Vonnegut also uses escalation to create both humor and horror. With each time jump, Billy finds himself thrust into increasingly outlandish and absurd situations. The jumps may at times be confusing, but the story rewards the reader for managing its challenges.
White Noise by Don DeLillo
In White Noise (1985), American author Don DeLillo explores the fear of death and the pervasiveness of technology, media, and consumerism in modern life. The postmodern novel follows Jack Gladney, who is a middle-aged professor of Hitler studies at a small college in Ohio. Jack suffers from an acute fear of dying, which he is forced to confront when a large, fiery chemical spill creates an “airborne toxic event” in his town. Throughout the story, Jack pulls together seemingly unrelated events, dates, and facts, in an unsuccessful attempt to make sense of his world. Like Barthelme, DeLillo balances the story’s serious subject matter with dark, absurdist humor.
