The fourteen stories in "Come Back, Dr. Caligari" all share a hard and brilliant surface, a marvelous black humor, a half-delicate, half-ferocious emotion. Mingling the grotesque with the matter-of-fact, they produce in the reader an immediate, exciting sense of encounter.

Mr. Barthelme does not take for granted the form in which he works, but instead he baits it, insults it, turns it inside out. Testing the possibilities of parody, insanity, discontinuity and collage, he achieves finally an art that is deeply involved in the mystery of human gesture and response.

Contents:

• Florence Green Is 81
• The Piano Player
• Hiding Man
• Will You Tell Me?
• For I'm the Boy Whose Only Joy Is Loving You
• The Big Broadcast of 1938
• The Viennese Opera Ball
• Me and Miss Mandible
• Marie, Marie, Hold on Tight
• Up, Aloft in ihe Air
• Margins
• The Joker's Greatest Triumph
• To London and Rome
• A Shower of Gold