![]() One of them is a quotation from The Thesaurus of Book Digests summarizing the novel’s plot another the single sentence, “A great many people are interested in the question: Who will obtain Eugénie Grandet’s hand?” another the word “butter” repeated 113 times. All that remains of Balzac’s intricate psychological drama is a series of faux-naïf fragments. ![]() A bit like Borges in “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Barthelme takes a hefty canonical text and runs it through his particle accelerator of an imagination. In August 1968 The New Yorker published Donald Barthelme’s short story “Eugénie Grandet,” a two-page absurdist parody of Balzac’s 1833 novel about a wealthy provincial miser’s only child and her tragic efforts to defy him. Jenny Offill illustration by Ellie Foreman-Peck ![]()
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