Some Concepts Helpful (or at least harmless) in Reading Donald Barthelme
the
opening of "Will You Tell Me?" by Donald Barthelme Hubert
gave Charles and Irene a nice baby for Christmas. The baby was a boy and
its name was Paul. Charles and Irene who had not had a baby for many
years were delighted. They stood around the crib and looked at Paul; they
could not get enough of him. He was a handsome child with dark hair, dark
eyes. Where did you get him Hubert? Charles and Irene asked. From the
bank, Hubert said. It was a puzzling answer, Charles and Irene puzzled
over it. Everyone drank mulled wine. Paul regarded them from the crib.
Hubert was pleased to have been able to please Charles and Irene. They
drank more wine. Eric
was born. Hubert
and Irene had a clandestine affair. It was important they felt that Charles
not know. To this end they bought a bed which they installed in another
house, a house some distance from the house in which Charles, Irene and
Paul lived. The new bed was small but comfortable enough. Paul regarded
Hubert and Irene thoughtfully. The affair lasted for twelve years and
was considered very successful. Charles
watched Hilda growing from his window. To begin with, she was just a baby,
then a four-year-old, then twelve years passed and she was Paul's age,
sixteen. What a pretty young girl! Charles thought to himself. Paul agreed
with Charles; he had already bitten the tips of Hilda's pretty breasts
with his teeth.... One
of the disorienting features of Donald Barthelme's story is that it skims
rapidly over the surface of emotional and sexual relationships that we
are accustomed to seeing treated in fiction with detailed deliberation....
Barthelme,
who died in 1989, was one of the key figures in American postmodern fiction,
whose stories continually tested the limits of fictional form. It is not,
of course, only duration which is being handled rather unconventionally
in the opening of this story: causality, continuity, cohesion, consistency
in point of view--all the attributes that bind together the ingredients
of realistic fiction into a smooth, easily assimilable discourse--are
also discarded or disrupted....In this story he reports bizarre or alarming
behavior in a matter-of-fact, faux-naïf style that owes something
to primary-school reading books and children's "compositions"
(an effect generated by the simple declarative sentences, absence of subordination,
repetition of words in close proximity, and omission of quotation marks).
The characters are hardly more defined than Janet and John and their parents
[the British equivalent to Dick and Jane --LW], and sometimes seem as
witless....In twenty-odd lines we have covered enough events to fill an
entire novel in the hands of another writer. This kind of writing does
indeed depend on the reader's familiarity with a more conventional and
realistic fictional discourse to make its effect. Deviations can only
be perceived against a norm. (--from
"Duration," in The Art of Fiction)
How to Pronouce His Name Apparently Barthelme never went on the record about how he wanted people to say his surname. After consulting over a dozen sources, I have found three possibilities: "BART-helm" (could this be right???), "BART-hel-me" (rhymes with Bartleby, as in Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener") and the most likely pronunciation, according to the author website Bartelby.com, BARTH-ul-me. To hear an audio wave file of this last version, click on the link; use your browser's "back" button to return to this page.
The Absurd The word itself: "[fm L. ab + surdus deaf, stupid]
: ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous." As a literary
term, "the absurd" denotes narratives, characters, and situations
that are illogical, dream-like, or unreal. Often "absurd" stories
are nightmare or dreamscape narratives; just as often they are satiric.
The basic impulse arises in 20th century literature because of the widespread
belief (to be very simplistic about it) that life does not make sense.
Events are random and meaningless. Absurdity is a constant theme in Barthelme's
work, but the story that addresses it most clearly is "A Shower of
Gold." Absurdity, which is primarily a philosophical concept, is
closely linked to the artistic concept of-- 
surrealism : "a modern French movement in art and literature
that purports to express subconscious mental activities through fantastic
or incongruous imagery or unnatural juxtapositions and combinations."
The classic example of a surrealist piece of art is Duchamp's teacup and
teaspoon lined with fur. When you look at it, it makes the inside of your
mouth cringe--which is what the artist intended. The term "surrealism"
as applied to literature is very broadly used. Example: When Gregor Samsa
(in the first sentence of Kafka's "Metamorphosis") awakens one
morning to find himself transformed into a huge beetle, is it surreal,
irreal, or absurd?
collage "[fm F. coller to glue] : 1. an artistic composition
of fragments of printed matter and other materials pasted on a picture
surface 3. an assembly of diverse fragments." Barthelme has admitted
to a "perverse pleasure" in "mixing bits of this and that
from various areas of life to make something that did not exist before."
An example from "The Glass Mountain": "nightingales with
traffic lights tied to their legs." In a widely repeated comment,
Barthelme has said that "Fragments are the only forms I trust."
His fragments and collages are both linguistic (social-science jargon,
for example) and visual ("clip art"). Watch for examples.
parody "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author
or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule." Parody
is humor based on form. "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live
is a parody of a newscast, for example. Barthelme's stories often draw
on earlier literary forms, such as fairy tales ("The Glass Mountain")
or novels and stories from previous literary eras ("Eugenie Grandet,"
"The Phantom of the Opera's Friend"); he also parodies pop culture
("The Joker's Greatest Triumph," a story about Batman, is my
favorite example).
metafiction: fiction about itself: fiction about fiction. A metafictional
author will often remind the reader that she or he is reading a story,
written by the author. John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" is
probably the most famous example.
art for arts' sake: the opposite of didactic
art, this aesthetic theory argues that art does not have to mean; it just
has to be. In other words, the purpose of art is to be art, not to instruct
or inspire or give a moral lesson.
postmodernism No one knows what it is anymore. It comes after Modernism,
and it's self-reflexive, and the rest is up for grabs. But Barthelme is
often pointed out as an example of postmodern writing.
Barthelme on "The Ugly Sentence" (--from his introduction
to the story "Paraguay" in Writer's Choice) What I like
about "Paraguay" is the misuse of language and the tone. Mixing
bits of this and that from various areas of life to make something that
did not exist before is an oddly hopeful endeavor. The sentence "Electrolytic
jelly exhibiting a capture ratio far in excess of standard is used to
fix the animals in place" made me very happy--perhaps in excess of
its merit. But there is in the world such a thing as electrolytic jelly;
the "capture ratio" comes from the jargon of sound technology;
and the animals themselves are a salad of the real and the invented. The
flat, almost "dead" tone paradoxically makes possible an almost
lyricism. I think my Paraguay is an almost-beautiful place.... Every writer
in the country can write a beautiful sentence, or a hundred. What I am
interested in is the ugly sentence that is also somehow beautiful. I agree
that this is a highly specialized enterprise, akin to the manufacture
of merkins, say--but it's what I do. Probably I have missed the point
of the literature business entirely. But "Paraguay" is for me
a hint of what I would like to do, if I could do it.
Hilda.
David Lodge on the opening of "Will You Tell Me?"