Natural Selection, Frederick Barthelme's brilliant fourth novel, is the story about a man faced with a crisis that is either personal or existential/political. Peter Wexler is frustrated by his job but just as much by politics or what passes for politics on cable news, which had just been invented (or spawned) in the early 1990s when this book was written. This isn't all. Cable News and the idiots on Crossfire are the symptom or rather symbol of the larger disease: "Just look around, anywhere, any direction, somebody's lying."

In his day, Frederick Barthelme, the younger, far less famous brother of Donald, was referred to as a K-Mart Realist. I guess it is because he wrote books set in the immediate present in which they written, had Cassevettes-like plots and was not adverse to name-checking popular brands, movies, and fashions of the day.

Here is a taste from the second to last chapter:

"Lily was out of bed, hopping around pulling on her pants. 'I'm going,' she said. 'Are you coming? I'm going to show you
stuff you've never seen before. We're going to burn this town. I've got an all-night fish market in my head, a train
station, a lonely street in the rambunctious district, I've got high high wires and signing rivers and the long dark
shadows that ride in lime-colored light. I'm going to show you stuff, scorching crazy stuff, ore ships on fire at the
edge of Orion--'

'Attack,' I said. 'In the movie they were attack ships.'

Here is another taste, one that almost --taken out of context as I have unfairly presented it-- could be mistaken for self-parody. (This is the worst example I could find.):

"Ray groaned and rubbed his stomach. 'God, I was crazy then. I must've been nuts. She was killing me about
something or other, and then did the dinner thing, you know--' he did a mincing imitation of Judy that made
her look like a bad TV homosexual. 'Like what did I want for dinner right in the middle of this huge brawl
we were having, and I said I wanted Malomars and went out to the store and bought about twenty packages
and bought 'em back and dumped 'em all out on the table and sat there eating all night while she punched
around on a salad with a tiny fork. Next day she told me I had the stink of the Malomar about me.'"

K-Mart Realism, of course, was a term created by other writers and readers to disparage certain writers. Those doing the disparaging were writing literary books, or books they saw as literary, about circuses, jewish mobsters, political machines in mid-sizeed American cities. What was their beef with the K-Mart Realists? I guess, was that they saw the K-Mart Realists, who were writing about people living in the suburbs and exurbs and floundering through relationships and careers, as monopolizing the literary journals and magazines. ( )