# The Glass Mountain

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/donald-barthelme/the-glass-mountain

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- Authors: [Donald Barthelme](https://www.bookquiver.com/donald-barthelme)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 2014-03-06
- Genres: Modern and contemporary fiction: literary and general

## Description

A glass mountain sits in the middle of a city and at the top sits a 'beautiful, enchanted symbol'. Seeking to disenchant it, the narrator must climb the mountain. Confronted by the jeers of acquaintances, the bodies of previous climbers and the claws of a guarding eagle he, slowly, begins to ascend. In true postmodernist form, subject and purpose collide as Donald Barthelme uses one-hundred fragmented statements to destabilise a symbol of his own - literature's conventional forms and practices. With a quest, a princess and an array of knights, Barthelme subverts that most traditional of genres, the fairy-tale; irony, absurdity, and playful self-reflexivity are the champions of this short story.

## Editions

### The Glass Mountain

- Publisher: Penguin
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-07-1819-626-4
- Published: 2014-03-06
- Language: en_GB