The Millions

A Great Short Story Has a Pulse: Donald Barthelme’s ‘Game’

A few months before Donald Barthelme’s “Game” appeared in the July 31, 1965, issue of The New Yorker, a cloud moved over Los Angeles. The cloud originated in Jackass Flats, Nevada, born from a nuclear rocket test. The Atomic Energy Commission wanted a “controlled excursion.” That excursion rode hundreds of miles before drifting into the ocean.

This was the era of . A time when hundreds of kilograms of Uranium-235 went

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