What do you think?
Rate this book
Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
novel.
173 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
About the author
Donald Barthelme
133 books719 followersDonald Barthelme was born to two students at the University of Pennsylvania. The family moved to Texas two years later, where Barthelme's father would become a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme would later major in journalism. In 1951, still a student, he wrote his first articles for the Houston Post. Barthelme was drafted into the Korean War in 1953, arriving in Korea on July 27, the very day the cease-fire ending the war was signed. He served briefly as the editor of an Army newspaper before returning to the U.S. and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies at the University of Houston, studying philosophy. Although he continued to take classes until 1957, he never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in Houston’s “black” jazz clubs, listening to musical innovators such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly, an experience which influenced his later writing.
Barthelme's relationship with his father was a struggle between a rebellious son and a demanding father. In later years they would have tremendous arguments about the kinds of literature in which Barthelme was interested and wrote. While in many ways his father was avant-garde in art and aesthetics, he did not approve of the post-modern and deconstruction schools. Barthelme's attitude toward his father is delineated in the novels The Dead Father and The King as he is pictured in the characters King Arthur and Lancelot. Barthelme's independence also shows in his moving away from the family's Roman Catholicism (his mother was especially devout), a separation that troubled Barthelme throughout his life as did the distance with his father. He seemed much closer to his mother and agreeable to her strictures.
Barthelme went on to teach for brief periods at Boston University, University at Buffalo, and the College of the City of New York, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor from 1974-75. He married four times. His second wife, Helen Barthelme, later wrote a biography entitled Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound, published in 2001. With his third wife Birgit, a Dane, he had his first child, a daughter named Anne, and near the end of his life he married Marion, with whom he had his second daughter, Kate. Marion and Donald remained wed until his 1989 death from throat cancer. Donald Barthelme's brothers Frederick (1943 - ) and Steven (1947- ) are also respected fiction writers and teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Barthelme's relationship with his father was a struggle between a rebellious son and a demanding father. In later years they would have tremendous arguments about the kinds of literature in which Barthelme was interested and wrote. While in many ways his father was avant-garde in art and aesthetics, he did not approve of the post-modern and deconstruction schools. Barthelme's attitude toward his father is delineated in the novels The Dead Father and The King as he is pictured in the characters King Arthur and Lancelot. Barthelme's independence also shows in his moving away from the family's Roman Catholicism (his mother was especially devout), a separation that troubled Barthelme throughout his life as did the distance with his father. He seemed much closer to his mother and agreeable to her strictures.
Barthelme went on to teach for brief periods at Boston University, University at Buffalo, and the College of the City of New York, where he served as Distinguished Visiting Professor from 1974-75. He married four times. His second wife, Helen Barthelme, later wrote a biography entitled Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound, published in 2001. With his third wife Birgit, a Dane, he had his first child, a daughter named Anne, and near the end of his life he married Marion, with whom he had his second daughter, Kate. Marion and Donald remained wed until his 1989 death from throat cancer. Donald Barthelme's brothers Frederick (1943 - ) and Steven (1947- ) are also respected fiction writers and teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
July 20, 2022
Donald Barthelme turns on some weird ultraviolet light and in this light our everyday life at once turns into Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts…
There really is a generation gap. The younger is the young generation and the older is the old one the wider is the gap:
And there is a very easy way to acquire knowledge and become sagacious:
And whatever one does one always must fight wars:
And any human being has a very sinful nature so one must confess regularly and sincerely:
But despite all the absurdity and unnaturalness of our practices and acts we continue to live and enjoy our ways of living.
There really is a generation gap. The younger is the young generation and the older is the old one the wider is the gap:
The little girl jabbed again hitting the thin thigh that time and said ‘we know exactly how little it is and even that is money down the drain why don’t you die damn you dirty old man what are you contributing?’ Then I explained about this newspaper here sprinkled with rare lies and photographs incorrectly captioned accumulated along a lifetime of disappointments and some fun.
And there is a very easy way to acquire knowledge and become sagacious:
In the West, wisdom is mostly gained at lunch. At lunch, people tell you things.
And whatever one does one always must fight wars:
‘Yes, yes,’ the chief engineer said, ‘there is doubtless much truth in what you say, but we can’t possibly lose the war, can we? And stopping is losing, isn’t it? The war regarded as a process, stopping regarded as an abort? We don’t know how to lose a war. That skill is not among our skills. Our array smashes their array, that is what we know. That is the process. That is what is.’
And any human being has a very sinful nature so one must confess regularly and sincerely:
Kellerman falls to his knees in front of the bench. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I committed endoarchy two times, melanicity four times, encropatomy seven times, and preprocity with igneous intent, pretolemicity, and overt cranialism once each.’
But despite all the absurdity and unnaturalness of our practices and acts we continue to live and enjoy our ways of living.
July 20, 2022
A string of memorable postmodern, metafictional quick reads straight from the outrageous imagination of Donald Barthelme. Many of these tales I love, but none more than The Balloon, a story with such special beauty it clearly deserves its own write-up. Here goes:
Postmodern: Lyrical and light, as light as a very large feather, this Barthelme’s short-short begins with a narrator telling us he engineered a balloon expanding twenty city blocks north to south over buildings, from Fourteenth Street all the way up to Central Park. With such a whimsical happening, we are a world away from Hemingway’s old man sitting in the shadow of a café. In an interview, Donald Barthelme recounts when he first began writing, he wrote Hemingway-like stories but could see his efforts were awful and how his writer's voice needed to develop in a radically different direction.
Well-Constructed Fragments: This giant balloon is mostly muted grays and browns contrasted with walnut and soft yellows giving the surface a rough, forgotten quality and anchored by sliding weights on the inside. In his own creative writing, Barthelme was not so much influenced by other writers as by Abstract Expressionist painters like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning and Dadaist Collage Artists like Marcel Duchamp and Jean Arp.
Mark Rothko - Work in Gray and Brown
If I squint, I can even see one of the Rothko colors turning into Barthelme's balloon!
Metafictional Meaning: “There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the “meaning” of the balloon; this subsided because we have learned not to insist on meaning, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomenon.” In many ways, this letting go of the search for hidden meaning is the shared fate of those Abstract Expressionist paintings. However, perhaps ironically, the search for the meaning in works of fiction, both modern and postmodern, continues apace, including meaning in Donald Barthelme’s short fiction.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but what is the purpose?: Such is the prime question forever posed in America, land of the pragmatist, the land where the only things really worth anybody’s time are those which have a useful function and, even better, make money. Thus, initially, the apparent purposelessness of the balloon proved vexing for all the hardheaded city officers and municipal officials. Sure, kids can run, jump, slide and bounce on the thing but why the hell is it there in the first place?! But since the balloon could be neither removed nor destroyed (the officials tried secretly at night) and a public warmth arose for the balloon from the ordinary citizen, the balloon became a city landmark.
Balloon Takes Center Stage: Of course, occupying such a prominent position in the city, people began using various aspects of the balloon in many different ways: civic pride, sheer visual pleasure, enrich their metaphors, metaphysical speculation and, most frequently, as a point of reference to locate themselves, for example: “I’ll be at that place where it dips down into Forty-seventh Street almost to the sidewalk, near the Alamo Chile House.”
Quote from Jacques Derrida’s The Truth of Painting: “Aesthetic judgment must properly bear upon intrinsic beauty, not on finery and surrounds. Hence one must know – this is a fundamental presupposition, presupposing what is fundamental – how to determine the intrinsic – what is framed – and know what one is excluding as frame and outside-the-frame.” And since the balloon is certainly a work of art, what would Jacques have to say about this public artwork stretching over half of mid-town Manhattan, a balloon with no hard edges, where what is inside or outside-the-frame is not clearly limited or defined?
French Deconstructionist Philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy chimes in: “Construction and deconstruction are closely interconnected with one another. What is constructed according to a logic of ends and means is deconstructed when it comes into contact with the outermost edge.” Well, turns out, the outermost edge for the balloon happened after twenty-two days: the flexible, undefined, mostly unlimited balloon became depleted fabric, trucked away to be stored in West Virginia, awaiting some other time when it can make its return to be reconstructed to deconstruct all the hard edges of city life.
Again, this little short-short is but one of an entire list of imaginative snappers in this collection. Please treat yourself to some metafictional fun and postmodern brain teasing by picking up this collection of Donald Barthelme. I mean, have you ever encountered better story titles than See the Moon?, The Dolt, Game, The Indian Uprising, The Police Band, The Picture History of War or Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning?
Read
October 31, 2014Questo è un libro cui è impossibile assegnare stelle. Sono 15 brevi racconti assurdi, privi di una struttura narrativa, che colgono attimi di vita e la reinterpretano secondo l’occhio visionario dello scrittore, considerato il padre della letteratura post moderna americana. Faccio degli esempi, per far capire: nel racconto “Robert Kennedy salvato dalle acque”, il senatore americano è rappresentato con “berretto nero, mantellina nera e spada”, uno Zorro moderno. Nel primo racconto della raccolta, “la rivolta degli indiani”, troviamo una città americana presa d’assedio dai pellerossa, in cui le barricate sono formate da portacenere, padelle, bottiglioni di liquori, vasi di fiori. C’è un racconto, “Alice”, privo di punteggiatura, in cui ci si perde dietro le parole. Perché Barthelme dice che “corde di linguaggio si dilatano in tutte le direzioni per legare il mondo in un tutt’uno impetuoso, scurrile”.
In questa disgregazione del linguaggio che Donald Barthelme realizza, solo apparentemente c’è caos, perché al lettore è lasciata la libertà di oltrepassare la barriera linguistica per trovare le idee e far emergere la saggezza dello scrittore. Una lettura difficile.
In questa disgregazione del linguaggio che Donald Barthelme realizza, solo apparentemente c’è caos, perché al lettore è lasciata la libertà di oltrepassare la barriera linguistica per trovare le idee e far emergere la saggezza dello scrittore. Una lettura difficile.
December 31, 2017
Sperimentazioni innaturali, racconti insofferenti
originalità 3*
Barthelme tira la corda osando molto con questi 15 racconti postmoderni. E sovente, la corda si spezza: mancanza di punteggiatura, periodi degni di voli pindarici nell'iperspazio, plot e trame insensate rendono questa raccolta un esempio di sagace punteruolo fastidioso che molesta i neuroni. Penso che il suo più grande limite sia bearsi dell'estrosità fine a se stessa e non rendermi partecipe del processo creativo.
Migliori racconti:
1) Il pallone
2) Partita
3 La banda della polizia
I peggiori racconti:
x) Parliamo pure
y) Storia fotografica della guerra
z) La vedi la Luna?
originalità 3*
Barthelme tira la corda osando molto con questi 15 racconti postmoderni. E sovente, la corda si spezza: mancanza di punteggiatura, periodi degni di voli pindarici nell'iperspazio, plot e trame insensate rendono questa raccolta un esempio di sagace punteruolo fastidioso che molesta i neuroni. Penso che il suo più grande limite sia bearsi dell'estrosità fine a se stessa e non rendermi partecipe del processo creativo.
Migliori racconti:
1) Il pallone
2) Partita
3 La banda della polizia
I peggiori racconti:
x) Parliamo pure
y) Storia fotografica della guerra
z) La vedi la Luna?
June 11, 2015
In the final story we find the following sentence : “Fragments are the only forms I trust.” This was jumped upon rabidly by many commentators on Donald Barthelme’s spaced-out, intellectual, reserved, lunatic cut-up short story capers. Ah ha! Here is the key! So much so that in a written interview in 1972 DB issued the following response:
“WRITER CONFESSES THAT HE NO LONGER TRUSTS FRAGMENTS”
“Trust ‘Misplaced’,” Author Declares
“Will Seek ‘Wholes’ in Future” He Says
NEW YORK, June 24 (A & P) – Donald Barthelme, 41-year-old writer and well-known fragmentist, said today that he no longer trusted fragments. He added that although he had once been ‘very fond’ of fragments, he had found them to be ‘finally untrustworthy’.
The author, looking tense and withdrawn after what he described as ‘considerable thought’, made his dramatic late-night announcement at a Sixth Avenue laundromat press conference, from which the press were excluded.
“Fragments fall apart a lot,” Barthelme said. Use of antelope blood as a bonding agent had not proved….
***
In this little book of 15 littler stories you will find yourself alternating between suppressed cries of Brilliant! Unspeakably recherché yet humane humour! and What is this crap? An 11 year old could have written this! Hucking fell, what tosh! For for every "Blackbird" or "Long Long Long" there is a "Bungalow Bill" or "Rocky Raccoon" – it’s a White Album experience. & having made that comparison (they both came out at roughly the same time in 1968) I noticed that "Happiness is a Warm Gun" is the most Barthelmelike song :
She's not a girl who misses much. She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on a window pane. The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors on his hobnail boots lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime. A soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the National Trust.
Sounds just like some of the more experimental (read “can’t make head nor tail”) items here.
The famous ones here are “The Indian Uprising”, “The Balloon” and “Robert Kennedy saved from Drowning” – this latter I thought was too cool for school and in need of tripping up but others think differently. (RFK read it and asked "Well, does he like me or not?") DB descends into squishy spaced-out autobiography in the middle (“Edward and Pia” and “A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking”); but the best are just I mean stunning –
The Balloon
Report
Game
Alice
See the Moon?
And to nail down this unconscious Beatles/Barthelme intersticity – the last song on the White Album is John Lennon’s surprising tender lullaby "Goodnight", sung by Ringo :
Close your eyes and I'll close mine
Good night, sleep tight
Now the sun turns out his light
Good night, sleep tight
Dream sweet dreams for me
Dream sweet dreams for you
And Donald ends with a lovely one called “See the Moon?” an uncharacteristically poignant meditation to his unborn son:
In another month Gog leaps fully armed from the womb. What can I do for him? I can get him into A.A., I have influence. And make sure no harsh moonlight falls on his new soft head.
Hello there, Gog. We hope you’ll be very happy here.
Read
April 27, 2020a me è piaciuto il primo racconto, "la rivolta degli indiani" (ma non solo), dove si racconta di un'invasione di New York da parte degli indiani Comanche, e la costruzione di barricate con mezzi di fortuna: pentole, posacenere, guanciali e coperte, caffettiere... mi ha fatto pensare alla situazione attuale in questi tempi di covid e a quelle immagini che ogni tanto vedevo in tv di animali selvaggi che passeggiavano tranquillamente per le strade delle città. (non sto paragonando i Comanche agli animali, solo il loro lato selvaggio). Poi c'è "il pallone", che è il racconto forse più celebre e famoso di Barthelme. Un gigantesco pallone aerostatico si solleva sulla metropoli, fino a oscurare il cielo. In alcuni punti tocca quasi terra in altri se ne distanzia, tanto che gli abitanti possono decidere di usare il pallone per orientarsi nella città. avviene sempre nella vita che un imprevisto cambi il nostro modo di guardare le cose e di orientarci in mezzo ad esse. alla fine si scopre che è stato il narratore a sollevare questo pallone aerostatico e che il pallone è l'oggetto che ha soppiantato la sua donna lontana, gonfio come la sua astinenza sessuale. è surreale che un pallone aerostatico, che ha finito per modificare la vita di tutti agli occhi del narratore, abbia sostituito sentimenti così umani; sorprende la sproporzione. eppure io ho trovato il tutto così naturale.
poi ci sono anche altri racconti, vabbè...
Ci incontrammo sotto il pallone, al tuo ritorno dalla Norvegia. Mi chiedesti se era mio; ti risposi di sì. Il pallone, dissi, è una spontanea apertura autobiografica, connessa con il disagio da me provato in tua assenza, e con l’astinenza sessuale, ma ora che il tuo soggiorno a Bergen è terminato, esso non è più necessario e neppure pertinente. Rimuovere il pallone non fu difficile: autofurgoni con rimorchio portarono via il telone ormai sgonfio, che ora giace in un magazzino nel West Virginia, in attesa di un nuovo periodo d’infelicità. Un giorno, chissà, quando io e te avremo litigato.
poi ci sono anche altri racconti, vabbè...
Ci incontrammo sotto il pallone, al tuo ritorno dalla Norvegia. Mi chiedesti se era mio; ti risposi di sì. Il pallone, dissi, è una spontanea apertura autobiografica, connessa con il disagio da me provato in tua assenza, e con l’astinenza sessuale, ma ora che il tuo soggiorno a Bergen è terminato, esso non è più necessario e neppure pertinente. Rimuovere il pallone non fu difficile: autofurgoni con rimorchio portarono via il telone ormai sgonfio, che ora giace in un magazzino nel West Virginia, in attesa di un nuovo periodo d’infelicità. Un giorno, chissà, quando io e te avremo litigato.
January 14, 2013
Sono 15 brevi racconti assurdi, privi di una struttura narrativa, che colgono attimi di vita e la reinterpretano secondo l’occhio visionario dello scrittore, considerato il padre della letteratura post moderna americana. Faccio degli esempi, per far capire: nel racconto “Robert Kennedy salvato dalle acque”, il senatore americano è rappresentato con “berretto nero, mantellina nera e spada”, uno Zorro moderno. Nel primo racconto della raccolta, “la rivolta degli indiani”, troviamo una città americana presa d’assedio dai pellerossa, in cui le barricate sono formate da portacenere, padelle, bottiglioni di liquori, vasi di fiori. C’è un racconto, “Alice”, privo di punteggiatura, in cui ci si perde dietro le parole. Perché Barthelme dice che “corde di linguaggio si dilatano in tutte le direzioni per legare il mondo in un tutt’uno impetuoso, scurrile”.
In questa disgregazione del linguaggio che Donald Barthelme realizza, solo apparentemente c’è caos, perché al lettore è lasciata la libertà di oltrepassare la barriera linguistica per trovare le idee e far emergere la saggezza dello scrittore. Una lettura difficile. Non è il mio genere.
In questa disgregazione del linguaggio che Donald Barthelme realizza, solo apparentemente c’è caos, perché al lettore è lasciata la libertà di oltrepassare la barriera linguistica per trovare le idee e far emergere la saggezza dello scrittore. Una lettura difficile. Non è il mio genere.
April 3, 2017
Troppo strampalato per le mie vedute ristrette.
Mi ha fatto ricordare quando a vent’anni ho provato a leggere Pynchon per tirarmela, fallendo miseramente.
Anche adesso che sono un ometto il postmoderno estremo mi dà qualche noia.
Qualche picco, in generale parecchio irritante. [53/100]
La rivolta degli indiani ✖✖
Il pallone ✖✖✖✖✖
Questo giornale qui ✖✖✖
Robert Kennedy salvato dalle acque ✖✖
Relazione ✖✖✖
Il testone ✖✖✖
La banda della polizia ✖✖✖✖
Edward e Pia ✖✖
Qualche momento di sonno e di veglia ✖✖
Parliamo pure ✖
Partita ✖✖✖✖
Alice ✖
Storia fotografica della guerra ✖
Il presidente ✖✖
La vedi la luna? ✖
Mi ha fatto ricordare quando a vent’anni ho provato a leggere Pynchon per tirarmela, fallendo miseramente.
Anche adesso che sono un ometto il postmoderno estremo mi dà qualche noia.
Qualche picco, in generale parecchio irritante. [53/100]
La rivolta degli indiani ✖✖
Il pallone ✖✖✖✖✖
Questo giornale qui ✖✖✖
Robert Kennedy salvato dalle acque ✖✖
Relazione ✖✖✖
Il testone ✖✖✖
La banda della polizia ✖✖✖✖
Edward e Pia ✖✖
Qualche momento di sonno e di veglia ✖✖
Parliamo pure ✖
Partita ✖✖✖✖
Alice ✖
Storia fotografica della guerra ✖
Il presidente ✖✖
La vedi la luna? ✖
February 22, 2015
Donald Barthelme Saved From Drowning
Blargle McGargle & the Infinite Whininess
As Frank Black tells us at the start of "Monkey Gone to Heaven" (everyone sing along now: "THIS MONKEY'S GAAAAHN TO HEAV-UN!") "there was a guy." This guy accused Rick Moody of being the worst writer of his generation. I don't remember his name, and even though I'll have to look the guy's article up to get the quote I'll need in a second, I'm still calling him Blargle McGargle and nothing you can do will change that. Now, it's hard to argue that Moody is a great writer, but the worst of his generation? Hardly. Anyway, Mssr. McGargle accused Barthelme's characters of being "reductive cardboard constructions," which I'll concede is a phrase with a nice flow to it, but only if McGargle concedes that what he's written buys hook, line, sinker and even the floppin' fish freshly caught into the Propagandic Cult of Realism in Literature. Barthelme might not portray realistic characters, but he doesn't try to portray realistic characters, and holding him to realism is just as goofy as tearing Huckleberry Finn or the Grapes of Wrath critical new ones because they aren't metafictional enough. From what I've gathered, Barthelme basically wrote for kicks, and ah what kicks they are.
The Opening Salvo
"The Indian Uprising" is a hell of a story. It juxtaposes a war against the Comanche, complete with bizarre lists of the various everyday implements conscripted into defending against the war, with descriptions of a narrator's love life. It really doesn't do anything more than intercut between those. No climax or anything, but what the hell is this, a Hollywood movie? We don't need the big shootout at the end as long as the results keep us wanting to know what'll come next, as is definitely the case in "the Indian Uprising" - you ask yourself how much more absurd it can get, and then it gets more absurd, and the jenga-tower of ridiculousness becomes rewarding and, dang-blast it, funny. Not the best story to read on public transportation if you want to look sane. Then "The Balloon" is either about the ways people interpret fiction or a balloon. Either way, it's fun and fascinating; Barthelme gets a lot of mileage out of describing a bizarre situation in clinical terms. As should you.
What Barthelme Means to Do, As I Understand It
You shouldn't go into these stories looking for plot and/or character development, so much as various riffs. Tone is important to Barthelme, as is humor, as is form and free movement between ideas (not even big ideas, just ideas), as is creating a certain state of mind; c.f. "Game," which this week is my favorite Barthelme story because of how it uses escalating paranoia as escalating stakes. Because there are stakes in Barthelme stories, and they do escalate, and that's really all you need for a story.
When Barthelme Doesn't Work Out
What you're left with is a disjointed mess. There are a couple of disjointed messes here - I didn't particularly care for "This Newspaper Here," for example - but when he works out, and he works out more often than he doesn't, he loves to hit the gym that Don B, you get brilliantly disjointed stories like "A Picture History of the War," where a man carries his naked father under his arm and asks questions about sex and sexual repression. Not much of "Picture History" hangs together, but it's entertaining as hell. I unfortunately can't tell you what the magic formula is for a good vs. bad Barthelme story; ultimately, I think it's that I find some more interesting, conceptually or whatever, than others. That's the thing about Barthelme: there's a relationship between "good concept" and "good execution" in his work, although whether the relationship is so strong as to be a rule, I don't yet know.
Forms and Functions
You might find yourself asking why Barthelme made some of his decisions over the course of this collection, and I think the answer is "because he felt like it." He seems to me a writer whose whole process is born out of self-indulgence, but really, we must ask ourselves, is this such a bad thing?
Blargle McGargle & the Infinite Whininess
As Frank Black tells us at the start of "Monkey Gone to Heaven" (everyone sing along now: "THIS MONKEY'S GAAAAHN TO HEAV-UN!") "there was a guy." This guy accused Rick Moody of being the worst writer of his generation. I don't remember his name, and even though I'll have to look the guy's article up to get the quote I'll need in a second, I'm still calling him Blargle McGargle and nothing you can do will change that. Now, it's hard to argue that Moody is a great writer, but the worst of his generation? Hardly. Anyway, Mssr. McGargle accused Barthelme's characters of being "reductive cardboard constructions," which I'll concede is a phrase with a nice flow to it, but only if McGargle concedes that what he's written buys hook, line, sinker and even the floppin' fish freshly caught into the Propagandic Cult of Realism in Literature. Barthelme might not portray realistic characters, but he doesn't try to portray realistic characters, and holding him to realism is just as goofy as tearing Huckleberry Finn or the Grapes of Wrath critical new ones because they aren't metafictional enough. From what I've gathered, Barthelme basically wrote for kicks, and ah what kicks they are.
The Opening Salvo
"The Indian Uprising" is a hell of a story. It juxtaposes a war against the Comanche, complete with bizarre lists of the various everyday implements conscripted into defending against the war, with descriptions of a narrator's love life. It really doesn't do anything more than intercut between those. No climax or anything, but what the hell is this, a Hollywood movie? We don't need the big shootout at the end as long as the results keep us wanting to know what'll come next, as is definitely the case in "the Indian Uprising" - you ask yourself how much more absurd it can get, and then it gets more absurd, and the jenga-tower of ridiculousness becomes rewarding and, dang-blast it, funny. Not the best story to read on public transportation if you want to look sane. Then "The Balloon" is either about the ways people interpret fiction or a balloon. Either way, it's fun and fascinating; Barthelme gets a lot of mileage out of describing a bizarre situation in clinical terms. As should you.
What Barthelme Means to Do, As I Understand It
You shouldn't go into these stories looking for plot and/or character development, so much as various riffs. Tone is important to Barthelme, as is humor, as is form and free movement between ideas (not even big ideas, just ideas), as is creating a certain state of mind; c.f. "Game," which this week is my favorite Barthelme story because of how it uses escalating paranoia as escalating stakes. Because there are stakes in Barthelme stories, and they do escalate, and that's really all you need for a story.
When Barthelme Doesn't Work Out
What you're left with is a disjointed mess. There are a couple of disjointed messes here - I didn't particularly care for "This Newspaper Here," for example - but when he works out, and he works out more often than he doesn't, he loves to hit the gym that Don B, you get brilliantly disjointed stories like "A Picture History of the War," where a man carries his naked father under his arm and asks questions about sex and sexual repression. Not much of "Picture History" hangs together, but it's entertaining as hell. I unfortunately can't tell you what the magic formula is for a good vs. bad Barthelme story; ultimately, I think it's that I find some more interesting, conceptually or whatever, than others. That's the thing about Barthelme: there's a relationship between "good concept" and "good execution" in his work, although whether the relationship is so strong as to be a rule, I don't yet know.
Forms and Functions
You might find yourself asking why Barthelme made some of his decisions over the course of this collection, and I think the answer is "because he felt like it." He seems to me a writer whose whole process is born out of self-indulgence, but really, we must ask ourselves, is this such a bad thing?
March 1, 2023
Il salto dal palo alla frasca
Un giorno, durante le scuole superiori, cagai nello zaino di un compagno di classe bullo. Qualche anno dopo, mentre ero a Praga, sono finito in un night club a ricevere del petting da una russa, inebriato dal dolce ottundimento dei sensi per colpa del laudano (recuperato in maniera diversamente lecita). E poi l'alito della mia precedente responsabile puzzava un po' di catacomba scoperchiata.
(Purtroppo tutti gli eventi sopra narrati sono veri.)
La verità è che io non sono portato per comprendere il postmodernismo (e dire che Steven Erikson ha scritto la mia saga fantasy preferita, e tutti i maggiori pregi e difetti di quell'opera probabilmente scaturiscono dal fatto che abbia un approccio postmodernista: che poi perché aprire tutte quelle parentesi e trame e sottotrame e migliaia di personaggi che si rincontrano dopo 8 volumi da 1200 pagine ciascuno e tu non ti ricordi nemmeno perché sei arrivato fino a quel punto ma a quel punto non puoi più fermarti perché ti sei affezionato sia ai personaggi che all'incedere di una storia che senti tragicamente collettiva e intimamente personale e quindi niente, una parentesi di Steven Erikson per dire che probabilmente Steve Lundin - vero nome dell'autore canadese - magari apprezzò tantissimo leggere Donald Barthelme come fece David Foster Wallace che considera Il pallone il racconto che lo convinse a diventare uno scrittore, e come dargli torto perché effettivamente Il pallone, oltre a essere uno dei pochi racconti veramente comprensibili, permette di capire il percorso introspettivo-psicologico sotteso all'elemento surreale (Dio ce ne scampi e ce ne gamberi a capire i significati di singoli passaggi degli altri racconti, anche se Barthelme dice che non bisogna sforzarsi di cercare un significato, e grazie anche al cazzo, visto che scrivere in postmoderno è più divertente che leggere in postmoderno).
La verità - e questo vale anche per alcune raccolte di racconti lette negli ultimi due anni, ma cito come esempio David Hayden nel suo Il buio a luci accese - è che non amo essere tagliato fuori dalla comprensione di un contenuto; o forse sarebbe più corretto dire che il non fornire gli strumenti per essere resi partecipi del processo creativo, e per estensione del contenuto proposto, si riveli conditio sine qua non per far precipitare un'opera nel mio personale oblio delle letture dimenticate. Lasciarsi abbandonare alle maestranze del caos, con qualche spiraglio qui e là di lucidità, non è la letteratura che auspico; anche se tale letteratura possa essere stata depositaria di un'eredità pesantissima, raccolta da autori successivi a Barthelme.
La cifra stilistica di Barthelme, a tratti, è pur ravvisabile in un approccio surreale-grottesco che garantirebbe dei soggetti quantomeno originali, atti a parodiare i costumi, la politica e le dinamiche sociali dell'America anni '60.
“Ma che colpa abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, per sé, sono vuote?...E voi le riempite del senso vostro, nel dirmele, e io nell'accoglierle, inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto d'intenderci, non ci siamo intesi affatto."
La rivolta degli indiani ██
Il pallone ████ (il migliore della raccolta)
Questo giornale qui █
Robert Kennedy salvato dalle acque ██
Relazione ███
Il testone ████
La banda della polizia ███
Edward e Pia █
Qualche momento di sonno e di veglia █
Parliamo pure █
Partita ███1/2
Alice █1/2
Storia fotografica della guerra █
Il presidente █
La vedi la luna? █
Un giorno, durante le scuole superiori, cagai nello zaino di un compagno di classe bullo. Qualche anno dopo, mentre ero a Praga, sono finito in un night club a ricevere del petting da una russa, inebriato dal dolce ottundimento dei sensi per colpa del laudano (recuperato in maniera diversamente lecita). E poi l'alito della mia precedente responsabile puzzava un po' di catacomba scoperchiata.
(Purtroppo tutti gli eventi sopra narrati sono veri.)
La verità è che io non sono portato per comprendere il postmodernismo (e dire che Steven Erikson ha scritto la mia saga fantasy preferita, e tutti i maggiori pregi e difetti di quell'opera probabilmente scaturiscono dal fatto che abbia un approccio postmodernista: che poi perché aprire tutte quelle parentesi e trame e sottotrame e migliaia di personaggi che si rincontrano dopo 8 volumi da 1200 pagine ciascuno e tu non ti ricordi nemmeno perché sei arrivato fino a quel punto ma a quel punto non puoi più fermarti perché ti sei affezionato sia ai personaggi che all'incedere di una storia che senti tragicamente collettiva e intimamente personale e quindi niente, una parentesi di Steven Erikson per dire che probabilmente Steve Lundin - vero nome dell'autore canadese - magari apprezzò tantissimo leggere Donald Barthelme come fece David Foster Wallace che considera Il pallone il racconto che lo convinse a diventare uno scrittore, e come dargli torto perché effettivamente Il pallone, oltre a essere uno dei pochi racconti veramente comprensibili, permette di capire il percorso introspettivo-psicologico sotteso all'elemento surreale (Dio ce ne scampi e ce ne gamberi a capire i significati di singoli passaggi degli altri racconti, anche se Barthelme dice che non bisogna sforzarsi di cercare un significato, e grazie anche al cazzo, visto che scrivere in postmoderno è più divertente che leggere in postmoderno).
La verità - e questo vale anche per alcune raccolte di racconti lette negli ultimi due anni, ma cito come esempio David Hayden nel suo Il buio a luci accese - è che non amo essere tagliato fuori dalla comprensione di un contenuto; o forse sarebbe più corretto dire che il non fornire gli strumenti per essere resi partecipi del processo creativo, e per estensione del contenuto proposto, si riveli conditio sine qua non per far precipitare un'opera nel mio personale oblio delle letture dimenticate. Lasciarsi abbandonare alle maestranze del caos, con qualche spiraglio qui e là di lucidità, non è la letteratura che auspico; anche se tale letteratura possa essere stata depositaria di un'eredità pesantissima, raccolta da autori successivi a Barthelme.
La cifra stilistica di Barthelme, a tratti, è pur ravvisabile in un approccio surreale-grottesco che garantirebbe dei soggetti quantomeno originali, atti a parodiare i costumi, la politica e le dinamiche sociali dell'America anni '60.
“Ma che colpa abbiamo, io e voi, se le parole, per sé, sono vuote?...E voi le riempite del senso vostro, nel dirmele, e io nell'accoglierle, inevitabilmente, le riempio del senso mio. Abbiamo creduto d'intenderci, non ci siamo intesi affatto."
La rivolta degli indiani ██
Il pallone ████ (il migliore della raccolta)
Questo giornale qui █
Robert Kennedy salvato dalle acque ██
Relazione ███
Il testone ████
La banda della polizia ███
Edward e Pia █
Qualche momento di sonno e di veglia █
Parliamo pure █
Partita ███1/2
Alice █1/2
Storia fotografica della guerra █
Il presidente █
La vedi la luna? █
November 25, 2017
...ma soprattutto pagine introvabili, ormai da mesi. Appena risbuca finisco di leggere l'ultimo racconto. Perchè questa è roba buona davvero!
Helpdesk! Dovreste aggiungere l'opzione temporaneamente smarrito.
*********************************************************
e invece no. Si era semplicemente nascosto. Anche se, con un atto di prestigio, nel nascondersi ha fatto svanire un po' della magia che aleggiava nelle sue pagine e ora questi racconti mi lasciano un retrogusto di boh?
Un'analisi letteraria dettagliata di questa raccolta di racconti che a detta di molti scrittori (non unico DFW) è uno dei capisaldi della narrativa USA del XX secolo potrebbe così riassumersi: "c'è o ci fa?"
Nella impossibilità di trovare una risposta a questa domanda tra pagine che oscillano tra lo scintillante preziosismo letterario e la delirante presa per il culo, pagine su cui d'altra parte frotte di scrittori dilettanti si sono esercitati producendo sterco dall'inconfondibile odore di sterco, il mio giudizio resta giudiziosamente sospeso, dubbioso, confuso.
A volte dà proprio l'impressione di saperla lunga.
Anche Silvan dava l'impressione di saperla lunga.
Helpdesk! Dovreste aggiungere l'opzione temporaneamente smarrito.
*********************************************************
e invece no. Si era semplicemente nascosto. Anche se, con un atto di prestigio, nel nascondersi ha fatto svanire un po' della magia che aleggiava nelle sue pagine e ora questi racconti mi lasciano un retrogusto di boh?
Un'analisi letteraria dettagliata di questa raccolta di racconti che a detta di molti scrittori (non unico DFW) è uno dei capisaldi della narrativa USA del XX secolo potrebbe così riassumersi: "c'è o ci fa?"
Nella impossibilità di trovare una risposta a questa domanda tra pagine che oscillano tra lo scintillante preziosismo letterario e la delirante presa per il culo, pagine su cui d'altra parte frotte di scrittori dilettanti si sono esercitati producendo sterco dall'inconfondibile odore di sterco, il mio giudizio resta giudiziosamente sospeso, dubbioso, confuso.
A volte dà proprio l'impressione di saperla lunga.
Anche Silvan dava l'impressione di saperla lunga.
August 31, 2017
Quando ti domandai se avevi un reddito personale, mi rispondesti una cosa intelligente che però non ricordo più. La pelle della schiena che mi si squamava dopo la settimana passata sulla spiaggia. Dove me ne stavo sdraiato senza conoscerti.
Scoppiettante, macabro e grottesco, Barthelme è uno degli scrittori di racconti che più mi affascinano. Tra le pagine si avverte inevitabilmente l'invecchiamento del testo (datato 1968), ma ciò rende quasi più godibile la lettura, tra Bob Kennedy, palloni aerostatici, una denuncia reiterata alla guerra e alla violenza, esperimenti con punteggiatura e lessico e molto altro. Se oggi Barthelme può considerarsi superato, è perché lo ritroviamo in molti scrittori del postmoderno della generazione di Foster Wallace, che forse hanno perso per strada - volutamente o non - il sentimento crudo che alle volte Barthelme imprime ai suoi brevi racconti.
Scoppiettante, macabro e grottesco, Barthelme è uno degli scrittori di racconti che più mi affascinano. Tra le pagine si avverte inevitabilmente l'invecchiamento del testo (datato 1968), ma ciò rende quasi più godibile la lettura, tra Bob Kennedy, palloni aerostatici, una denuncia reiterata alla guerra e alla violenza, esperimenti con punteggiatura e lessico e molto altro. Se oggi Barthelme può considerarsi superato, è perché lo ritroviamo in molti scrittori del postmoderno della generazione di Foster Wallace, che forse hanno perso per strada - volutamente o non - il sentimento crudo che alle volte Barthelme imprime ai suoi brevi racconti.
September 26, 2017
What’s there to say about Barthelme that hasn’t already been said?
I don’t know, lots of stuff. Or maybe no stuff. I’m going to take my amateur thoughts for a walk here.
For moi, DB is the most perfect writer of the last generation and to this day nobody has breathed on the neck of his Srange Syle. I toil in this field myself. For DB being the trailblazer he was, I’ve hiked some of those hikes and let me tell ya, they are tremulous and lead to some desolate places (and I always get lost on the way back.)
But enough about me! (OR, or not. More about me.) No, no it is not only the sideways thought (as perfect as crystal) alone that keeps Barthelme newness so car-smelling. It is, but the sideways thought can only move laterally if the sideways story makes space for it. Sustaining the Srange, not as easy as it feels, or looks, sounds (DB’s hittin’ ya on all senses). In George Saunders’ essays “Don’t Remember Its Name” he says that these stories are mountains yet. That underneath the entail-shaped clouds the actions still resemble mountains. They peaks at about 80% and trail down from there like any other story. I’d disagree on certain story's, “Paraguay” “On Angels” Lots of them. And that’s why he’s so great, he’s a virtuoso in these matters. But George is right for the most part and that’s its what makes his success so startling. So many lines have nothing to do with the story. Story itself as thin as an outline.
Here’s a part of a page:
“In the shower I refrained from speaking about you to anyone.
In the store where I buy news buttoned up tight. Because the owners are in the mountains. Where surely I would be had I decided not to make us miserable.
I said: I seem to have lost all my manuscripts, in which my theory is proved not once but again and again and again, and now when people who don’t believe a vertical monorail to Venus is possible shout at me, I have nothing to say. You peer into my gloom.”
That’s a section of “Can We Talk”. So much of his writing is like this: it’s doesn’t add to character, it doesn’t progress story, it is its own thing. Barthelme writes in sentences, not paragraphs, or pages, sentences. The sentences are shaped like stones that lead, can you believe it, to a mountain. That’s the feat! It's like letting your mind huff oxygen.
Woah, got a little lofty there. But these are my tremendous sensations. This book is 50 years old and it’s still so modern. They’ll be caving these puppies into the walls of some time pharaoh's tomb, take my bet for it.
I don’t know, lots of stuff. Or maybe no stuff. I’m going to take my amateur thoughts for a walk here.
For moi, DB is the most perfect writer of the last generation and to this day nobody has breathed on the neck of his Srange Syle. I toil in this field myself. For DB being the trailblazer he was, I’ve hiked some of those hikes and let me tell ya, they are tremulous and lead to some desolate places (and I always get lost on the way back.)
But enough about me! (OR, or not. More about me.) No, no it is not only the sideways thought (as perfect as crystal) alone that keeps Barthelme newness so car-smelling. It is, but the sideways thought can only move laterally if the sideways story makes space for it. Sustaining the Srange, not as easy as it feels, or looks, sounds (DB’s hittin’ ya on all senses). In George Saunders’ essays “Don’t Remember Its Name” he says that these stories are mountains yet. That underneath the entail-shaped clouds the actions still resemble mountains. They peaks at about 80% and trail down from there like any other story. I’d disagree on certain story's, “Paraguay” “On Angels” Lots of them. And that’s why he’s so great, he’s a virtuoso in these matters. But George is right for the most part and that’s its what makes his success so startling. So many lines have nothing to do with the story. Story itself as thin as an outline.
Here’s a part of a page:
“In the shower I refrained from speaking about you to anyone.
In the store where I buy news buttoned up tight. Because the owners are in the mountains. Where surely I would be had I decided not to make us miserable.
I said: I seem to have lost all my manuscripts, in which my theory is proved not once but again and again and again, and now when people who don’t believe a vertical monorail to Venus is possible shout at me, I have nothing to say. You peer into my gloom.”
That’s a section of “Can We Talk”. So much of his writing is like this: it’s doesn’t add to character, it doesn’t progress story, it is its own thing. Barthelme writes in sentences, not paragraphs, or pages, sentences. The sentences are shaped like stones that lead, can you believe it, to a mountain. That’s the feat! It's like letting your mind huff oxygen.
Woah, got a little lofty there. But these are my tremendous sensations. This book is 50 years old and it’s still so modern. They’ll be caving these puppies into the walls of some time pharaoh's tomb, take my bet for it.
December 30, 2018
Non posso dire di averlo completamente capito. Ma per Barthelme il senso sta proprio lì: andare al di là del significato.
Il senso in questi racconti non va cercato nel modo a cui siamo abituati. Bisogna lasciarsi andare al flusso irregolare di immagini surreali, scollegate (apparentemente), assurde, martellanti.
Per dirla come Merlino:
"Un bel guazzabuglio moderno!"
Beh, post-moderno.
A volte fin troppo (manipolazioni grafiche che destrutturano il testo incluse).
Barthelme è sicuramente originale: non gioca solo con le immagini, ma anche e soprattutto con la lingua, con le costruzioni grammaticali e sintattiche, con le parole (innumerevoli i neologismi), la punteggiatura poi, quando c'è, viene completamente scardinata dalle sue regole.
In questa raccolta mi ha particolarmente impressionato Alice, un testo che ho dovuto leggere scandendomelo in testa come una canzone rap, necessariamente con la voce e lo stile di Caparezza, perché in quel momento era l'unico elemento stilistico a cui aggrapparmi per dargli un senso. E pensa un po'? Aveva senso! Ritmicamente, musicalmente, figurativamente... con tanto di cori e contro canto.
Alla fine ho pensato: "Cavolo, il traduttore deve aver sudato sangue per questo lavoro".
Infatti ci tengo a fare una menzione speciale proprio sulla traduzione: Ranieri Carano ha fatto un lavoro incredibile, non è per niente facile rendere lo stile e la lingua di un autore com Barthelme, ricreandone perfino il gioco ritmico e musicale, un aspetto che spesso è intrinseco nella lingua inglese e difficilmente traducibile con la stessa efficacia in italiano.
Come lettura l'ho trovata intrigante e allo stesso tempo disturbante, la consiglio solo con la premessa di prepararsi a mettere da parte la ricerca del senso in senso stretto, e di accettare l'idea che la bellezza di questo stile sta nella capacità di sorprenderti e gettarti nel caos.
Il senso in questi racconti non va cercato nel modo a cui siamo abituati. Bisogna lasciarsi andare al flusso irregolare di immagini surreali, scollegate (apparentemente), assurde, martellanti.
Per dirla come Merlino:
"Un bel guazzabuglio moderno!"
Beh, post-moderno.
A volte fin troppo (manipolazioni grafiche che destrutturano il testo incluse).
Barthelme è sicuramente originale: non gioca solo con le immagini, ma anche e soprattutto con la lingua, con le costruzioni grammaticali e sintattiche, con le parole (innumerevoli i neologismi), la punteggiatura poi, quando c'è, viene completamente scardinata dalle sue regole.
In questa raccolta mi ha particolarmente impressionato Alice, un testo che ho dovuto leggere scandendomelo in testa come una canzone rap, necessariamente con la voce e lo stile di Caparezza, perché in quel momento era l'unico elemento stilistico a cui aggrapparmi per dargli un senso. E pensa un po'? Aveva senso! Ritmicamente, musicalmente, figurativamente... con tanto di cori e contro canto.
Alla fine ho pensato: "Cavolo, il traduttore deve aver sudato sangue per questo lavoro".
Infatti ci tengo a fare una menzione speciale proprio sulla traduzione: Ranieri Carano ha fatto un lavoro incredibile, non è per niente facile rendere lo stile e la lingua di un autore com Barthelme, ricreandone perfino il gioco ritmico e musicale, un aspetto che spesso è intrinseco nella lingua inglese e difficilmente traducibile con la stessa efficacia in italiano.
Come lettura l'ho trovata intrigante e allo stesso tempo disturbante, la consiglio solo con la premessa di prepararsi a mettere da parte la ricerca del senso in senso stretto, e di accettare l'idea che la bellezza di questo stile sta nella capacità di sorprenderti e gettarti nel caos.
June 1, 2010
I love Donald Barthelme. His writing has a big influence on mine. His story "The Balloon" is remarkable and shows why writing is fun and gorgeous and inspiring.
April 15, 2010
The Balloon is now my very favorite short story of all time.
It's only simple on the surface.
My second favorite story in the book is Can We Talk.
Best narrative use of artichokes ever.
There is so much to love in this collection of stories. The author uses common colors as adjectives so skillfully that they lend substance to the story, making it almost tangible. This use of colors may sound obvious, but I've very rarely read a book where this was done so well.
When asked how i decided to purchase a book, i responded that i always read the first line to see if it "hooked" me. Donald Barthelme must know there are many other folks like me with the same strategy, and he is a master of the first line hook.
For example, the first line from A Picture History of the War:
It's only simple on the surface.
My second favorite story in the book is Can We Talk.
Best narrative use of artichokes ever.
There is so much to love in this collection of stories. The author uses common colors as adjectives so skillfully that they lend substance to the story, making it almost tangible. This use of colors may sound obvious, but I've very rarely read a book where this was done so well.
When asked how i decided to purchase a book, i responded that i always read the first line to see if it "hooked" me. Donald Barthelme must know there are many other folks like me with the same strategy, and he is a master of the first line hook.
For example, the first line from A Picture History of the War:
Kellerman, gigantic with gin, runs through the park at noon with his naked father slung under one arm.I want to rub the phrases off the pages of this book and slather them onto myself, so i can walk around and have people ask me "what is that fantastic scent you are wearing"?
June 27, 2014
In the midst of so much dysfunction, function is interesting.
I am, as I say, not entirely sympathetic. Certain things about the new President are not clear. I can’t make out what he is thinking. When he has finished speaking I can never remember what he has said. There remains only an impression of strangeness, darkness...
A great collection. As seems to be normally the case with Barthelme, some of the stories are too cryptic/over my head for my liking but when they work, they work admiringly. The above two quotes are a pretty good summary of what one could feel upon reading this. And then, there is also this:
Kellerman, gigantic with gin, runs through the park at noon with his naked father slung under one arm.
I dare you to say this is not downright poetic...
I am, as I say, not entirely sympathetic. Certain things about the new President are not clear. I can’t make out what he is thinking. When he has finished speaking I can never remember what he has said. There remains only an impression of strangeness, darkness...
A great collection. As seems to be normally the case with Barthelme, some of the stories are too cryptic/over my head for my liking but when they work, they work admiringly. The above two quotes are a pretty good summary of what one could feel upon reading this. And then, there is also this:
Kellerman, gigantic with gin, runs through the park at noon with his naked father slung under one arm.
I dare you to say this is not downright poetic...
July 25, 2022
Sperimentali e unici, dalla trama quasi assente, i racconti di questa raccolta fanno leva sull'emotivitá, sull'esplosione della parola nell'istante, come in poesia. Non vanno in nessuna direzione ma abbracciano il mondo.
Storie sfuggenti, talmente personali che di certo arrivano diverse ad ogni lettore, ma tutte stordiscono e lasciano pieni di domande.
.. Surrealista è riduttivo. Direi onirico, o psichedelico. Certi scritti ricordano moltissimo lo stile di associazioni fulminanti-intuizioni buona la prima dei poeti Beatnik, Bob Kaufman su tutti.
Non credo di aver capito molto, ma di certo ho capito di "non insistere troppo sulla ricerca dei significati", visto che lo scrive lo stesso Barthelme ne Il Pallone, "il primo racconto che ha fatto venire voglia di diventare uno scrittore" a DFW.
Non nuotare, quindi, forse non devi nemmeno lasciarti trasportare, lasciati invece affogare dalla vastità delle trovate di questo scrittore, dalla sua assurdità, dalla confusione ricercata e piena di dettagli che nasconde mondi in poche parole.
"Di Barthelme ce n’è uno solo, e se un altro scrittore cercasse di appropriarsi della particolare sensibilità di Barthelme o della sua tecnica di mise en scène con la scusa dell’innovazione, quello scrittore si impegolerebbe nel caos, nel disastro e, peggio ancora, nell’auto-inganno." Raymond Carver
Storie sfuggenti, talmente personali che di certo arrivano diverse ad ogni lettore, ma tutte stordiscono e lasciano pieni di domande.
.. Surrealista è riduttivo. Direi onirico, o psichedelico. Certi scritti ricordano moltissimo lo stile di associazioni fulminanti-intuizioni buona la prima dei poeti Beatnik, Bob Kaufman su tutti.
Non credo di aver capito molto, ma di certo ho capito di "non insistere troppo sulla ricerca dei significati", visto che lo scrive lo stesso Barthelme ne Il Pallone, "il primo racconto che ha fatto venire voglia di diventare uno scrittore" a DFW.
Non nuotare, quindi, forse non devi nemmeno lasciarti trasportare, lasciati invece affogare dalla vastità delle trovate di questo scrittore, dalla sua assurdità, dalla confusione ricercata e piena di dettagli che nasconde mondi in poche parole.
"Di Barthelme ce n’è uno solo, e se un altro scrittore cercasse di appropriarsi della particolare sensibilità di Barthelme o della sua tecnica di mise en scène con la scusa dell’innovazione, quello scrittore si impegolerebbe nel caos, nel disastro e, peggio ancora, nell’auto-inganno." Raymond Carver
January 10, 2008
Quintessential Barthelme, this is his second collection of short fictions, which includes the classic "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning". That story appeared in the April 1968 issue (#3) of the New American Review, only a couple of months before Kennedy's assassination. I happened on a used copy of NAR #3 about a year later, and this little "story" of Barthelme's simply blew me away. I hadn't yet become acquainted with other experimentalists of the time, so "Robert Kennedy" was like nothing else I'd ever read. After that I bought "Come Back, Dr. Caligari", "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts" and everything else Barthelme published as soon as it appeared.
Presented as a series of short vignettes, each with its own subtitle, the piece appears to be "about" Robert Kennedy, but is not based on any personal knowledge on the author's part. Written in a dry, unsentimental, pseudo-biographical style, the descriptions and dialog cut back and forth between gossipy sounding tidbits ("'He has surprising facets. I remember once we were out in a small boat. K. of course was the captain.'"), ambivalent or contradictory statements purporting to provide a "balanced" picture ("He is neither abrupt nor excessively kind to associates. Or he is both abrupt and kind."), utter trivia ("'The dandelion salad with bacon, I think'"), and flights of fancy bordering on the absurd or magical ("K. in the water. His flat black hat, his black cape, his sword are on the shore. He retains his mask.")
Barthelme admitted later (to Arthur Schlesinger) that he'd never talked to Kennedy nor to anyone who had, that he'd used only one actual quote from Kennedy in the piece, and that his impressions of Kennedy were drawn second hand from television and newspaper accounts (my interpretation of his statements to Schlesinger, 16 July 1977, from a footnote in "Robert Kennedy And His Times," by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.). The result is something of a multifaceted portrait made up of smaller portraits, adding up to a fictional character who both is and is not Robert Kennedy, that partakes of the Kennedy myth while creating a mythical Kennedy. For me, the portrait takes on an added dimension of unintended poignance in the light of Kennedy's subsequent murder.
The piece is rich with cultural references. Calling Kennedy "K." could be a reference to "Joseph K.", the protagonist of Kafka's "The Trial." The story's title is derived from "Boudu Saved from Drowning" ("Boudu Sauvé Des Eaux"), Jean Renoir's 1932 movie (adapted from an earlier play by René Fauchois). What the story shares with the whole of Barthelme's work is a concern with contemporary culture, particularly our exposure to a seemingly endless barrage of disconnected detritus and media dreck (like this review, for example). Ultimately, Barthelme's Kennedy, like many of the author's other "characters", is a cultural artifact, which might be less than entertaining if the stories were not leavened by imaginative writing, unexpected juxtapositions, magical situations, and considerable wry wit and irony. If that appeals to you, read this book.
Presented as a series of short vignettes, each with its own subtitle, the piece appears to be "about" Robert Kennedy, but is not based on any personal knowledge on the author's part. Written in a dry, unsentimental, pseudo-biographical style, the descriptions and dialog cut back and forth between gossipy sounding tidbits ("'He has surprising facets. I remember once we were out in a small boat. K. of course was the captain.'"), ambivalent or contradictory statements purporting to provide a "balanced" picture ("He is neither abrupt nor excessively kind to associates. Or he is both abrupt and kind."), utter trivia ("'The dandelion salad with bacon, I think'"), and flights of fancy bordering on the absurd or magical ("K. in the water. His flat black hat, his black cape, his sword are on the shore. He retains his mask.")
Barthelme admitted later (to Arthur Schlesinger) that he'd never talked to Kennedy nor to anyone who had, that he'd used only one actual quote from Kennedy in the piece, and that his impressions of Kennedy were drawn second hand from television and newspaper accounts (my interpretation of his statements to Schlesinger, 16 July 1977, from a footnote in "Robert Kennedy And His Times," by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.). The result is something of a multifaceted portrait made up of smaller portraits, adding up to a fictional character who both is and is not Robert Kennedy, that partakes of the Kennedy myth while creating a mythical Kennedy. For me, the portrait takes on an added dimension of unintended poignance in the light of Kennedy's subsequent murder.
The piece is rich with cultural references. Calling Kennedy "K." could be a reference to "Joseph K.", the protagonist of Kafka's "The Trial." The story's title is derived from "Boudu Saved from Drowning" ("Boudu Sauvé Des Eaux"), Jean Renoir's 1932 movie (adapted from an earlier play by René Fauchois). What the story shares with the whole of Barthelme's work is a concern with contemporary culture, particularly our exposure to a seemingly endless barrage of disconnected detritus and media dreck (like this review, for example). Ultimately, Barthelme's Kennedy, like many of the author's other "characters", is a cultural artifact, which might be less than entertaining if the stories were not leavened by imaginative writing, unexpected juxtapositions, magical situations, and considerable wry wit and irony. If that appeals to you, read this book.
May 25, 2020
Certe volte si avrebbe voglia di godersi un'opera d'arte dimenticandosi tutto ciò che è venuto dopo di essa è ne è stato influenzato: vale per certi dischi, certi film, certe opere teatrali e - come nel caso in questione- per certi libri.
Perché è difficile, se non impossibile, leggere questi frammenti di racconti apparentemente senza capo ne coda e non pensare a quanti autori debbano tutto o quasi a queste pagine (dall'avant pop a mark leyner, per dire).
Il problema è che tutto questo ha probabilmente tolto la forza dirompente che il libro ha avuto alla sua uscita: probabilmente è solo un problema mio, e se un certo modo di giocare con le parole e i generi letterari vi piace avrete tra le mani un testo chiave.
Ah, notevole nella mia edizione (bompiani 1996) la postfazione di daniele brolli.
Perché è difficile, se non impossibile, leggere questi frammenti di racconti apparentemente senza capo ne coda e non pensare a quanti autori debbano tutto o quasi a queste pagine (dall'avant pop a mark leyner, per dire).
Il problema è che tutto questo ha probabilmente tolto la forza dirompente che il libro ha avuto alla sua uscita: probabilmente è solo un problema mio, e se un certo modo di giocare con le parole e i generi letterari vi piace avrete tra le mani un testo chiave.
Ah, notevole nella mia edizione (bompiani 1996) la postfazione di daniele brolli.
July 10, 2022
Early short stories by Barthelme about different subjects including the Vietnam War, contemporary art, politics, love and fatherhood. Included is the frequently anthologized “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning,” a great pastiche of the “profile” articles that appear in glossy magazines like Life and Time. In some of the fictions, the narrative techniques are experimental (“A Picture History of the War,” “Edward and Pia,” “Alice); in others, while the narrative techniques are more conventional, the events represented are fantastic (“The Balloon”).
Acquired Jul 9, 1999
Brown Bag Bookshop, Rochester NY
Acquired Jul 9, 1999
Brown Bag Bookshop, Rochester NY
May 18, 2013
I loved this book. It really turned my head around, or, as we said back in the old days, blew my mind.
June 21, 2010
"I wrote poppycock, sometimes cockypap," says the narrator of "See the Moon?" And that explains a lot. But the cockypap is great, though if you don't like it, don't bother.
I loved the story "Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning," which is made up of sections whose subjects are ways of looking at Kennedy. In the section called, "Attitude towards his work," the narrator says, "Sometimes I can't seem to do anything. The work is there, piled up, it seems to me an insurmountable obstacle....Then, in an hour, of even a moment, everything changes suddenly: I realize I only have to do it, hurl myself suddenly in the mist of it, proceed mechanically...I become interested, I become excited, I work very fast, things fall into place, I am exhilarated, amazed that these things could ever have seemed dead to me."
I also loved a story called "The Dolt," which is based on the funny premise of a man named Edgar preparing to take the National Writer's Examination. After a laugh out loud repartee with his wife, he reads her a story. She likes it at first, but then they talk about how it doesn't have a middle. And if his story doesn't have a middle, they'll never get the house they want, won't be able to pass the exam, etc.
It's Barthelme's second story collection he published, a more mature work than Come Back, Dr. Caligari. Entertaining. Funny. Buck wild.
I loved the story "Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning," which is made up of sections whose subjects are ways of looking at Kennedy. In the section called, "Attitude towards his work," the narrator says, "Sometimes I can't seem to do anything. The work is there, piled up, it seems to me an insurmountable obstacle....Then, in an hour, of even a moment, everything changes suddenly: I realize I only have to do it, hurl myself suddenly in the mist of it, proceed mechanically...I become interested, I become excited, I work very fast, things fall into place, I am exhilarated, amazed that these things could ever have seemed dead to me."
I also loved a story called "The Dolt," which is based on the funny premise of a man named Edgar preparing to take the National Writer's Examination. After a laugh out loud repartee with his wife, he reads her a story. She likes it at first, but then they talk about how it doesn't have a middle. And if his story doesn't have a middle, they'll never get the house they want, won't be able to pass the exam, etc.
It's Barthelme's second story collection he published, a more mature work than Come Back, Dr. Caligari. Entertaining. Funny. Buck wild.
June 27, 2008
From "This Newspaper Here": "Again today the little girl come along come along dancing doggedly with her knitting needle steel-blue knitting needle. She knows I can't get up out of this chair theoretically and sticks me, here and there, just to make me yell, nice little girl from down the block somewhere. Once I corrected her sharply saying 'don't for God's sake what pleasure is there hearing me scream like this?' She was wearing a blue Death of Beethoven printed dress and white shoes which mama had whited for her that day before noon so white were they (shoes). I judged her to be eleven. The knitting needle in the long thrust and hold position she said 'torment is the answer old pappy man it's torment that is the game's name that I'm learning about under laboratory conditions. Torment is the proper study of children of my age class and median income and *you* don't matter in any case you're through dirty old man can't even get out of rotten old chair.' Summed me up she did in those words which I would much rather not have heard so prettily put as they were nevertheless."
January 9, 2016
(Not quite a review; more of a diatribe against the modern conception of a great story).
I had read "The Balloon" years before. The story is remarkably deep despite its sparse style and lack of any standard ideas of how to write a "good" story. I find it hard to read these stories and not come to the conclusion that Barthelme, one of the great story writers in American history, would never get published today.
Just think of those gigantic slush piles. A reader would get through a few paragraphs and throw it out. No hook, no plot, no description, no characterization. The stories don't even sound like they have a point.
This is the state of literary America today. We've gotten rid of deep, difficult stories, because they would take too much time to understand. If you haven't caught the lit mag's editor in a few paragraphs, you're doomed to rejection. The hook used to be considered a cliche used by hack genre writers. How did it get to be the hallmark of modern "great" writing.
Thank goodness Barthelme lived in a different time.
I had read "The Balloon" years before. The story is remarkably deep despite its sparse style and lack of any standard ideas of how to write a "good" story. I find it hard to read these stories and not come to the conclusion that Barthelme, one of the great story writers in American history, would never get published today.
Just think of those gigantic slush piles. A reader would get through a few paragraphs and throw it out. No hook, no plot, no description, no characterization. The stories don't even sound like they have a point.
This is the state of literary America today. We've gotten rid of deep, difficult stories, because they would take too much time to understand. If you haven't caught the lit mag's editor in a few paragraphs, you're doomed to rejection. The hook used to be considered a cliche used by hack genre writers. How did it get to be the hallmark of modern "great" writing.
Thank goodness Barthelme lived in a different time.
September 17, 2014
This early Barthelme collection contains the incomparable "Game", the story that first introduced me to Barthelme's wild and wonderful works. The story is just as impressive in print as it is read by David Strathairn, the way I first encountered it via a "Selected Shorts" podcast. "Game" is simultaneously an immaculate character portrait, a wordy delight, a brilliant comedy, and a haunting exploration of not just man's devastating powers but also his true fallibility. In my mind this story blows the rest of the collection, and indeed most of most collections, away. The remainder of the stories are highly experimental and often stylistically impressive but to me often seem too ambitious in their dismissal of classical storytelling. While I might often smile at them, I would rarely laugh aloud and the complex structure made holding my attention difficult. Nevertheless, Barthelme's genius is on full show here and the collection is well worth a read.
May 30, 2021
Raccolta di racconti brevi (in alcuni casi brevissimi) di un autore americano assolutamente da riscoprire, considerato fra i precursori della letteratura post-moderna.
Contiene il racconto "Il pallone", che David Foster Wallace definì "la prima opera letteraria in grado di provocarmi un'erezione del cervello", riprendendo una celebre espressione di Lester Bangs.
I temi sono tutti molto surreali, se non addirittura grotteschi: si passa da una metropoli contemporanea invasa dai pellerossa, ad un pallone aerostatico che si espande fino a coprire tutto il cielo di Manhattan (con tanto di colpo di scena finale), ad un vecchio paralitico e visionario torturato da una bimba con l'uncinetto, ad un Bob Kennedy travestito da Zorro.
Lettura fortemente consigliata agli estimatori di Franzen, Foster Wallace e Delillo, per meglio comprendere le radici di quel tipo di scrittura creativa.
Contiene il racconto "Il pallone", che David Foster Wallace definì "la prima opera letteraria in grado di provocarmi un'erezione del cervello", riprendendo una celebre espressione di Lester Bangs.
I temi sono tutti molto surreali, se non addirittura grotteschi: si passa da una metropoli contemporanea invasa dai pellerossa, ad un pallone aerostatico che si espande fino a coprire tutto il cielo di Manhattan (con tanto di colpo di scena finale), ad un vecchio paralitico e visionario torturato da una bimba con l'uncinetto, ad un Bob Kennedy travestito da Zorro.
Lettura fortemente consigliata agli estimatori di Franzen, Foster Wallace e Delillo, per meglio comprendere le radici di quel tipo di scrittura creativa.
February 26, 2019
The Balloon is fine. Everyone loves to love it and cite how oh so very important it is in the world of Pomo short story writing. I get it to a certain extent. But I also understand why his writing has become less of a lure to the young writer. It feels so intentionally weird and flip and without much concrete emotive reality. I guess that's part of the point. The choppy plotless style lends itself to feeling really precocious but not very powerful to the contemporary reader. I'm glad I read it, but can't really say I recommend it. Halfway through the final story I just put the book down and thought, well he did influence DFW, which is worth something.
November 11, 2008
I dunno, man. Barthelme is one of those writers I should love, in theory. In this collection I did love "The Balloon" and thought a few other stories were interesting or funny—"Report," "The Police Band," and "Game." But the others...I don't know. Too inscrutable for me. I've read a few other scattered Barthelme stories and really liked them, so this won't be the last collection of his that I read. But half of these stories were uphill battles, and kind of not worth the struggle. Everyone should read "The Balloon," though!
February 2, 2008
This book tumbles the words out of it. A strange prose style makes it sometimes a little difficult to follow the image projection. This writer is phenomenal at cutting close; flawed contradictions sung with unflailing emotive power. Another, on the other hand, might view the stories as being almost unnecessary for the telling. Neither mawkish or sentimental, of almost crude powerful construction. It is a little book of unanticipated rewards that follow on and onwards.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews