Part 21 (2/2)

With its deliberately flat prose, the story is at once a parody and a tribute, a denial of the literary past and a longing to return to it. It is another examination by a son of his ambivalent feelings toward the world of his father.

The story's appearance prompted a family in Holly Hill, Florida, to write to the magazine to learn the location of the Tolstoy Museum. Roger Angell replied that while ”there is a Tolstoy Museum somewhere in Russia,” the one that Mr. Barthelme wrote about ”exists only in Mr. Barthelme's marvelous imagination. I hope this does not come as too much of a shock to you.”

A more sobering letter arrived on June 9. Countess Alexandra L. Tolstoy, the writer's daughter, wrote to protest ”Donald Barthelme's absurd article.” She asked, ”What is the aim of such an article? To make people laugh?...How funny! Ha, ha, ha!”

She concluded: ”I wish the so-called writers of now-a-days would have more respect to the memory of my father, Leo Tolstoy, and leave him in peace, and would have a little consideration to me as his daughter while I am still alive.” To set the magazine straight, she enclosed a hagiographic brochure she had composed called ”The Real Tolstoy.”

On June 25, Angell responded: ”I can a.s.sure you that neither [the author] nor we wished to show the slightest disrespect for [your father] or his immense works.... I have shown your letter to Mr. Barthelme and he asks me to apologize deeply for any distress he may have inadvertently caused you.”

A difficult, elliptical writer appearing regularly in a popular magazine; a rebellious son with a strong sense of citizens.h.i.+p; a modern father constructing an ”old Victrola” for his daughter and a harpsichord for his wife; an avant-gardist in the ”hip” sixties reading musty old Freud: Don's paradoxes and uniqueness among his literary contemporaries couldn't be more p.r.o.nounced.

In an article in the second issue of Location, Location, Willem de Kooning said he ”reinvent[ed] the harpsichord” in his work. Of this comment, Thomas Hess noted, ”One of the most remarkable accomplishments of New York painting has been its simultaneous renewal and defiance of the past. With its radical a.s.sumption that anything can become art and that the artist can do anything, the painters proceeded to drag past art up into the present.” For de Kooning, the Willem de Kooning said he ”reinvent[ed] the harpsichord” in his work. Of this comment, Thomas Hess noted, ”One of the most remarkable accomplishments of New York painting has been its simultaneous renewal and defiance of the past. With its radical a.s.sumption that anything can become art and that the artist can do anything, the painters proceeded to drag past art up into the present.” For de Kooning, the new new had been achieved by the ”daring step of canceling out the whole idea of an avant-garde....” had been achieved by the ”daring step of canceling out the whole idea of an avant-garde....”

Don's Oedipal battles-and his increasingly conscious use of them in his fiction-put him in sync with de Kooning, the king, the aristocrat. It was not just a matter of being attracted to the old and and the new, to the world of our fathers the new, to the world of our fathers and and the plains of possibility, but of being unable to escape either one of them. the plains of possibility, but of being unable to escape either one of them.

36.

CITY LIFE (II).

Day to day, Birgit drifted in an unreachable world, leaving Don with most of the child care. She wanted to return to Denmark, and hinted that suicide was a possibility if she didn't get her way. Don's picture of perfect romance had paled considerably, along with much of his optimism about art's revolutionary capacities.

”At the Tolstoy Museum we sat and wept,” he had written, longing for the grandeur of the past. ”The entire building, viewed from the street, suggests that it is about to fall on you. This the architects refer to as Tolstoy's moral authority.”

His irony notwithstanding, Don believed with more conviction now that he had not been born into a moral world. Such a world was lost to him; he inhabited a fallen sphere. In Houston stood the mirror opposite of the Tolstoy Museum, in a sleepy residential neighborhood near Don's old living quarters. The Hyde Park Miniature Museum displayed car parts, arrowheads, shoe b.u.t.tons, and toiletpaper statues. On his visits back home, whenever Don stumbled upon this this collection, he saw it as the measure of his world-the only world available to him. collection, he saw it as the measure of his world-the only world available to him.

A sign in the window of the Hyde Park Miniature Museum said PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THIS IS A PRIVATE MUSEUM AND WE CANNOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE EXHIBITS.

Don published City Life City Life in 1970. At the book's center is a pair of complementary stories, ”The Explanation” and ”Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel,” featuring dialogues between ”Q” and ”A.” in 1970. At the book's center is a pair of complementary stories, ”The Explanation” and ”Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel,” featuring dialogues between ”Q” and ”A.”

Q's qualities peg him as Apollonian, a voice of authority invested in order and machinery. A is Dionysian, drawn to dreaming and the arts. Occasionally, Q and A appear to be projections of the same consciousness. At intervals, they switch personalities. Each has a daughter.

”The Explanation” begins with an image of a big black square. The image is repeated three times in the story, and shows up again in ”Kierkegaard.” Initially, Q refers to the square as a machine. He asks A, ”Do you believe that this machine could be helpful in changing the government?” Later, a similar square represents a ”picture” of Q's daughter.

According to the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, a ”box” inserted into a text is ”a common journalistic device used at the stage of laying out a page when the story is already typeset but the accompanying photographs are not yet available.” The black square is a place holder for any number of ill.u.s.trations.

Additionally, the Bauhaus painter Josef Albers did a well-known Homage to the Square Homage to the Square series, which helped pioneer geometric painting. Mark Rothko's final ”spiritual” paintings, designed for a Houston museum, were hard-edged and dark. The artist Tony Smith engaged in a series of black box sculptures. series, which helped pioneer geometric painting. Mark Rothko's final ”spiritual” paintings, designed for a Houston museum, were hard-edged and dark. The artist Tony Smith engaged in a series of black box sculptures.

Perhaps most famously, Kasemir Malevich did a series of all-black paintings in 1913; their notoriety raised the twentieth century's central aesthetic questions: What is is a work of art? What do we think of a world in which something like this is a work of art? What do we think of a world in which something like this is seen seen as a work of art? These questions are germane to ”The Explanation” and to ”Kierkegaard.” Malevich said his black squares were ”pure feeling,” and that ”pure feeling” was as a work of art? These questions are germane to ”The Explanation” and to ”Kierkegaard.” Malevich said his black squares were ”pure feeling,” and that ”pure feeling” was the the central artistic reality. central artistic reality.

In ”The Explanation,” Q and A discuss whether ”purity” is ”quantifiable.” They agree it is not. It can only be represented abstractly. Each character reads into the black squares whatever most engages him at the moment.

Moreover, the ”machinery” of ”pure feeling” is bound up with the mechanisms of projection and repression. In Freudian fas.h.i.+on, Q and A project att.i.tudes and desires onto each other to see how an ”other” judges them. Between them, Q and A's dialogue unearths several buried fantasies. As they test each other, they debate art and machinery's effects on the soul. (In his now-famous essay, ”The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”-which Don referenced more than once in his fiction-Walter Benjamin argued that technology's ability to ma.s.s-produce words and images had compromised art. It is indistinguishable, now, from mechanics. It is soulless and impure.) Throughout the stories, the repeating square simultaneously ill.u.s.trates and mocks Q and A's debate.

In sum, the stories' dialectics reflect the aesthetic, philosophical, and psychological issues that dominated mid-twentieth-century city life-or Don's experience of it. In 1963, the year he moved to New York, the Jewish Museum held an important show, ”Black and White,” featuring paintings in the ”pure” spirit of Malevich by Pollock, de Kooning, Newman, Hofmann, Kline, Rauschenberg, Johns, and others. Alfred Barr, of the Museum of Modern Art, said that abstract paintings were question-producing machines. He quoted John Graham, whom Don mentioned in ”Eugenie Grandet”: The question-and-answer format, Graham said, lay behind every true artwork.

In 1967, Michael Fried published an important essay ent.i.tled ”Art and Objecthood”; in it, he attacked Harold Rosenberg without naming him. He disparaged the idea of the ”anxious” object that so excited Rosenberg, Thomas Hess, and Don. In part, Fried's essay focused on Tony Smith's black boxes, featured a Q & A with Smith, and spoke of museumgoers' unavoidable tendency to anthropomorphize abstract art.

Together, Don's stories formed a witty reply to Fried. ”I don't like to use anthropomorphic language in talking about these machines,” Q remarks in ”The Explanation” (machines, here, meaning technology and and art). Still, he insists that these mysterious objects are ”brave.” art). Still, he insists that these mysterious objects are ”brave.”

Q and A do not resolve their differences...yet, to quote Wallace Stevens, a ”relation appears” between them. At one point, A, whose love of chaos has resisted Q's ordering, a.s.sumes Q's view. Q asks him, ”Now that you've studied [the machine] for a bit, can you explain how it works?”

A answers, ”Of course. (Explanation)”

”Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel” focuses more explicitly on verbal art. Q and A continue to spar, but here A's mind is more divided. He discusses Kierkegaard's attack on Friedrich Schlegel in The Concept of Irony. The Concept of Irony. In 1799, Schlegel published a novel called In 1799, Schlegel published a novel called Lucinde. Lucinde. He was a prominent literary theorist, and critics received He was a prominent literary theorist, and critics received Lucinde Lucinde as more than just a novel: It was a polemic against conservative thought. The novel was fragmented in form, a gleeful dialectic between nature and man, men and women, spirituality and s.e.xuality. as more than just a novel: It was a polemic against conservative thought. The novel was fragmented in form, a gleeful dialectic between nature and man, men and women, spirituality and s.e.xuality.

The Concept of Irony was Kierkegaard's university dissertation in 1841. In it, he went after Schlegel's ”very obscene book.” He objected to what he perceived to be Schlegel's nihilism and his ”artistic voluptuousness,” which ignored ”chronology,” narrative ”development,” and other literary conventions. was Kierkegaard's university dissertation in 1841. In it, he went after Schlegel's ”very obscene book.” He objected to what he perceived to be Schlegel's nihilism and his ”artistic voluptuousness,” which ignored ”chronology,” narrative ”development,” and other literary conventions.

A is torn between Kierkegaard and and Schlegel, order and disorder. He admits that his ironic frame of mind does nothing to ”change” the world. ”I love my irony,” he says, but he concedes that it gives him only a ”poor...rather unsatisfactory” pleasure. Schlegel, order and disorder. He admits that his ironic frame of mind does nothing to ”change” the world. ”I love my irony,” he says, but he concedes that it gives him only a ”poor...rather unsatisfactory” pleasure.

Eventually, Q's ”imbecile questions leading nowhere” crack A's emotional control. Momentarily, he drops his wry armor. ”He has given away his gaiety, and now has nothing,” Q says as an aside to the reader.

Bitterly, A recognizes the validity of Q's world. Yet ironies abound. As Don knew, neither Schlegel nor Kierkegaard was quite who he appeared to be. Lucinde Lucinde presented a chaotic surface; in truth, Schlegel longed for a world in which all contradictions were resolved. presented a chaotic surface; in truth, Schlegel longed for a world in which all contradictions were resolved. The Concept of Irony The Concept of Irony seemed to disparage humor, disorganization, and fragmentation; in fact, it was a model of these qualities, as Kierkegaard intended it to be a parody of academic thought. Through fierce sarcasm, seemed to disparage humor, disorganization, and fragmentation; in fact, it was a model of these qualities, as Kierkegaard intended it to be a parody of academic thought. Through fierce sarcasm, The Concept of Irony The Concept of Irony dismantles its own arguments and utterly self-destructs. dismantles its own arguments and utterly self-destructs.

Ultimately, ”The Explanation” and ”Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel” solve none of the vexations of city life, but in their demonstration that, in Wallace Stevens's words, ”These / Two things are one”-whatever the extremes of the dialectic-they urge acceptance of life's stunning abundance. the extremes of the dialectic-they urge acceptance of life's stunning abundance.

Don's black square must be considered from one more perspective. His exwife Helen had phoned to tell him she was now dating a linguist, a professor at the University of Houston named Sam Southwell. Though Don no longer desired Helen, he experienced an irrational jealousy of her new lover. Don had always dabbled in philosophy, including linguistic theory, but he feared that his failure to earn a college degree exposed him to the charge of dilettantism. Now his ex was seeing a true philosopher.

In light of all this, it seems likely that one one of the square's referents is the cognitive language theory advanced by Noam Chomsky, a concept with which Don was familiar through Walker Percy's essays on language. At the time, cognitive scientists regularly spoke of the human mind as a black box, and Chomsky used the box as an ill.u.s.tration of what he called a ”language acquisition device”-a machinelike part of the mind busy processing words. of the square's referents is the cognitive language theory advanced by Noam Chomsky, a concept with which Don was familiar through Walker Percy's essays on language. At the time, cognitive scientists regularly spoke of the human mind as a black box, and Chomsky used the box as an ill.u.s.tration of what he called a ”language acquisition device”-a machinelike part of the mind busy processing words.

Among the subjects Q and A examine are theories and uses of language. At several points, their dialogue falls into repet.i.tive near-nonsense that sounds like examples of syntax formation from linguistics textbooks.

Q runs a series of ”error messages” past A: ”improper sequence of operators,” ”improper use of hierarchy,” ”mixed mode, that one's particularly grave.” These could be computer errors, but they could also be the listings of a language acquisition device, sorting through usage. (They also define salient qualities in Don's fiction.) As he speaks with Q, A entertains fantasies of a woman-apparently a former lover. He imagines her removing her blouse. Combined with these fantasies, the ”error messages” sound a Freudian note. Errors in speech, Freud said, are openings in which repressed thoughts break through to the conscious mind.

Late in ”The Explanation,” A, frustrated by Q's chilly demeanor, raises a formerly suppressed concern of his: I called her...and told her that I had dreamed about her, that she was naked in the dream, that we were making love. She didn't wish to be dreamed about, she said-not now, not later, not ever, when would I stop. I suggested that it was something over which I had no control. She said that it had all been a long time ago and that she was married to Howard now, as I knew, and that she didn't want...irruptions of this kind. Think of Howard, she said.

In both stories, as A's frustration grows, A thinks of striking Q. At one point, he imagines being struck by his father. At the end of ”The Explanation,” the object of his fantasies, the woman removing her blouse, acquires-in A's mind-a ”bruise on her thigh.” The repressed thought has finally emerged, through thickets of theorizing, arguing, displacing, fantasizing: A's anger at his former lover.

As in ”Views of My Father Weeping,” Don explored, in these Q & A pieces, his deepest fears and motivations, his conscious defenses. He did not spare himself. Without being overtly autobiographical or self-indulgent, the stories were highly revealing.

”You seem emotionless,” A tells Q.

<script>