Jonathan Baumbach, "who upended traditional ideas of narration, linear progression and more in his novels and short stories and helped found a collective that gave experimental writers the ability to publish their own works," died March 28, the New York Times reported. He was 85. Baumbach had published two of his 12 novels "when he and Peter Spielberg created the Fiction Collective, a publishing house run by authors, in an effort to give avant-garde works a clearer path to publication."
In a 2003 interview, he said, "What F.C. offered us all was the possibility of following our deepest impulses as artists while having a publisher, unconcerned with the world of commerce, open to value what we did on its own merit."
Baumbach's books include Reruns (1974), Dreams of Molly (2011), Babble (1976), Chez Charlotte and Emily (1980), Separate Hours (1990), A Man to Conjure With (1965), What Comes Next (1968), Seven Wives: A Romance (1994), and The Life and Times of Major Fiction (2007).
His son, filmmaker Noah Baumbach, wrote and directed The Squid and the Whale, which was based in part on his own life, with his father as the inspiration for the character played by Jeff Daniels.
Baumbach was also a critic, writing about film for Partisan Review and reviewing books for several publications, including the Times, which noted that in a 2015 interview with the Berkshire Edge, he "talked about having never quite achieved the fame of either his father the painter or his son the filmmaker. 'I haven’t tried to avoid it,' he said simply, 'but it hasn't come to my door.' "