Forty Stories collects forty of Donald Barthelme's

Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...

 short stories, several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

. The book was frst published by G. P. Putnam's Sons

G. P. Putnam's Sons

G. P. Putnam's Sons was a major United States book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.-History:...

 in 1987.

While Sixty Stories

Sixty Stories (book)

Sixty Stories collects sixty of Donald Barthelme's short stories, several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The book was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1981.-Stories:...

includes many longer narratives, the stories in Forty Stories are pithy. Many last for fewer than five pages, and display Barthelme's flash fiction

Flash fiction

Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...

al tendencies. They also abound in historical references and surreal juxtapositions. One story involves a World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 Secret Police investigator, a trio of German warplanes, and the artist Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

. Another is a parodic rewriting of the fairy-tale Bluebeard

Bluebeard

"Bluebeard" is a French literary folktale written by Charles Perrault and is one of eight tales by the author first published by Barbin in Paris in January 1697 in Histoires ou Contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the...

, perhaps inspired by Angela Carter's

Angela Carter

Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...

 story "The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber is a collection of short fiction by Angela Carter. It was first published in the United Kingdom in 1979 by Gollancz and won the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. All of the stories share a common theme of being closely based upon fairytales or folk tales...

." Yet another consists of a single seven-page-long sentence (without a concluding period).

The following stories appear in the book:

1. Chablis
2. On the Deck
3. The Genius
4. Opening
5. Sindbad
6. The Explanation
7. Concerning the Bodyguard
8. RIF
9. The Palace at Four A.M.
10. Jaws
11. Conversations with Goethe
12. Affection
13. The New Owner
14. Paul Klee [full title: "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft Between Milbertshoffen and Cambrai, March 1916"]
15. Terminus
16. The Educational Experience
17. Bluebeard
18. Departures
19. Visitors
20. The Wound
21. At the Tolstoy Museum
22. The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace
23. A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking
24. The Temptation of St. Anthony
25. Sentence
26. Pepperoni
27. Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby
28. Lightning
29. The Catechist
30. Porcupines at the University
31. Sakrete
32. Captain Blood
33. 110 West Sixty-first Street
34. The Film
35. Overnight to Many Distant Cities
36. Construction
37. Letters to the Editore
38. Great Days
39. The Baby
40. January

Sixty Stories

Sixty Stories

Sixty Stories (book)

Sixty Stories collects sixty of Donald Barthelme's short stories, several of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. The book was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1981.-Stories:...

, a companion volume to Forty Stories, was published six years earlier, in 1981. It contains stories from Barthelme's first five collections.