Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts by Donald Barthelme

I've been slowly becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Donald Barthelme over the last couple years. When I was first exposed to him in McSweeney's issue 24 I didn't get him and like him very much. Since then I keep running across him in anthologies and the new yorker fiction podcast as authors particularly love him. They've definitely convinced me, I'm officially in awe of his works. This collection I found at a local used book store and couldn't believe how anyone could get rid of it. The collection of short stories included 3 that I had read before, The Indian Uprising, The Balloon & Alice all of which I liked the first time and love now that I've reread them. Even though they're very different stories, I love the surrealness of The Indan Uprising & The Balloon. The Indan Uprising is a story that seamlessly switches between a fort being sieged by Native Americans & the story of a rocky relationship in current times. The Balloon is about a giant balloon that the author creates and places in Manhatten. There are breakdowns of it that do a much better job than I ever could about it being a metaphor for Bathelme's writing, all I can really say is that it's fantastic. Another story I really liked was Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning that has a little extra significance as it was published only a few months before his assassination.