Part 22 (1/2)

Q replies, ”That's not true.”

The reader felt a similar push-pull. On the surface the stories were cold and abstract, but with a lingering and mysterious emotional power.

City Life was released to ecstatic reviews-the best of Don's career so far-including coverage on the front page of was released to ecstatic reviews-the best of Don's career so far-including coverage on the front page of The New York Times Book Review. The New York Times Book Review. The publication of The publication of City Life, City Life, Morris d.i.c.kstein said, confirms that ”our best writers are doing radically new things” in the wake of traditional fiction's exhaustion, ”of which Saul Bellow's novel Morris d.i.c.kstein said, confirms that ”our best writers are doing radically new things” in the wake of traditional fiction's exhaustion, ”of which Saul Bellow's novel Mr. Sammler's Planet Mr. Sammler's Planet is a current ill.u.s.tration.” is a current ill.u.s.tration.”

”Barthelme comes out of all his books as a complex and enigmatic person,” d.i.c.kstein said. He ”has discovered how crucially books mediate our access to our deepest experience, and he brings to his 'discussions' of literature his own large reserves of fervor and ambiguity.” With City Life, City Life, he ”undertakes larger, more positive projects” than before, ”which betray him into new risks, new emotional defeats, and the deepest kinds of artistic victories.” he ”undertakes larger, more positive projects” than before, ”which betray him into new risks, new emotional defeats, and the deepest kinds of artistic victories.”

”Barthelme's subject in City Life City Life is the...production of symbols that pretend to clarify more than can be clearly seen,” Peter Berek wrote in is the...production of symbols that pretend to clarify more than can be clearly seen,” Peter Berek wrote in The Nation. The Nation. ”Barthelme's creations help vivify our plight even if they do not clarify its outcome.” ”Barthelme's creations help vivify our plight even if they do not clarify its outcome.”

Writing in Harper's, Harper's, Richard Schickel declared, ”Mr. Barthelme has accepted, with great good cheer, the current cant that art may no longer be possible and has then gone cheerfully about the business of making it anyway, almost, it would seem, for the h.e.l.l of it.” In Richard Schickel declared, ”Mr. Barthelme has accepted, with great good cheer, the current cant that art may no longer be possible and has then gone cheerfully about the business of making it anyway, almost, it would seem, for the h.e.l.l of it.” In Life, Life, Guy Davenport said that ”it will be a while yet before we can tell just what [Barthelme] is up to,” but he is ”reinventing fiction...in a particularly brash and original way.” Guy Davenport said that ”it will be a while yet before we can tell just what [Barthelme] is up to,” but he is ”reinventing fiction...in a particularly brash and original way.” Time Time listed listed City Life City Life as one of the ”Year's Best Books”-”Barthelme is a genius,” the magazine said; he ”knows no peer.” as one of the ”Year's Best Books”-”Barthelme is a genius,” the magazine said; he ”knows no peer.”

Not all readers agreed. Angell had to defend Don vigorously against accusations by a New Yorker New Yorker subscriber from the Bronx that a consortium of publishers had mounted a fifty-thousand-dollar ”campaign” to ”put across Donald Barthelme” to the public. subscriber from the Bronx that a consortium of publishers had mounted a fifty-thousand-dollar ”campaign” to ”put across Donald Barthelme” to the public.

”For all the acclaim [Mr. Barthelme] has received, his books are not the kind that will ever sell in large numbers,” Angell replied, ”and I doubt that the advertising and promotion budgets for all of his books together would total more than a thousand dollars. Publishers, you see, only spend heavily when they can see an almost guaranteed return; they are businessmen, and can't afford the kind of games you see as accounting for favorable reviews.... I'm afraid you'll have to dig a little deeper to explain the diabolical schemes and creeping phoniness that sustains a Barthelme and that keeps you so unhappy.”

After another angry barrage from the subscriber, Angell wrote: I will...tell Mr. Barthelme that I am now on to his sly ways, which have enabled him to take advantage of my deep, underlying streak of phoniness. I will not be tricked again! Mr. Barthelme has been excused, and I will fling him into that corner of oblivion already occupied by such errant fakers as Joyce, Beckett, Pica.s.so, Pollock, and Vivaldi.Thank you...I can honestly say that yours is the most entertaining letter I have seen in months.

City Life opened with the intensely interior ”Views of My Father Weeping” and closed with the communal portrait ”City Life.” In between, Don slipped in meditations on art, friends.h.i.+p, religion, philosophy, social order, and language. The stories were spare and austere. They were funny, obscure, and charming. opened with the intensely interior ”Views of My Father Weeping” and closed with the communal portrait ”City Life.” In between, Don slipped in meditations on art, friends.h.i.+p, religion, philosophy, social order, and language. The stories were spare and austere. They were funny, obscure, and charming.

In Come Back, Dr. Caligari Come Back, Dr. Caligari and and Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts, Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts, the persona behind most of the stories was a negative version of the ”Marivaudian being”: a man who did not know what was happening to him from moment to moment, with no control of his environment, no sense of a foundational past (except for steady shocks of Oedipal guilt). The persona in the persona behind most of the stories was a negative version of the ”Marivaudian being”: a man who did not know what was happening to him from moment to moment, with no control of his environment, no sense of a foundational past (except for steady shocks of Oedipal guilt). The persona in City Life City Life was far more complicated, like the ironist in ”Kierkegaard,” able to examine his irony and admit its limitations, capable of a.n.a.lyzing his repressive mechanisms and facing his personal history. was far more complicated, like the ironist in ”Kierkegaard,” able to examine his irony and admit its limitations, capable of a.n.a.lyzing his repressive mechanisms and facing his personal history.

Even the book's t.i.tle, less showy and smartly knowing than its predecessors, suggested a more mature approach to Don's obsessions. Not that he had abandoned his love of wordplay. Far from it. Of ”Paraguay,” the second story in the collection-a kind of science fiction tale reminiscent of Vonnegut or Borges-Don said: 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.... 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.

The story ”Sentence” ends: ”[T]he sentence is...a man-made object, not the one we wanted of course, but still a construction of man, a structure to be treasured for its weakness, as opposed to the strength of stones[.]”

These are the words of a writer determined to refresh language, but one who knows the limits of his enterprise. This mix of invention and sweet resignation, the humor and fierce intelligence along with a gift for poetic compression, is what distinguished Don's work from the failed literary experiments that littered the streets around him.

”Elsa and Ramona entered the complicated city,” begins the book's final piece. At first, the two young women in ”City Life” appear to face a variety of choices-everything an urban environment can offer. But in fact their options are few: -Where shall we put the telephone books?-Put them over there, by the telephone.-Where shall we hang [the painting}?-How about on the wall?-What shade of white do you want this apartment painted?-How about plain white?

Like Snow White, they discover that they will never get all they've been promised: pa.s.sionate love, self-fulfillment. The law school they want to attend admits them only grudgingly, and refuses to take them seriously as students.

”Ugh!” Ramona groans.

It is only at the story's end, when Ramona absorbs the ”fused glance” of the city's contradictory forces that her future blooms. She is impregnated with creative energy, ”dancing little dances of suggestion and fear.”

The city that emerges in Don's story is not the congested urban center of nineteenth-century industrialism, nor is it the well-ordered city of suburban pockets that began to develop immediately after World War II. It is a new, decentered city, barely held together by fading cultural traditions and highways connecting shopping hubs swarming with motion. It is a city first glimpsed, in literature, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man Invisible Man-a city of wild electrical currents running underground. It is a place, Don wrote, of many ”muddy roads,” and the only way to live in it is to ”accept” its impure muck.

It is city city as as anxious object. anxious object.

Don's story was itself an impure mix of influences, many from the experimental film world that so fascinated him. Around the time Don began ”City Life,” Andy Warhol, recovering from his gunshot wounds, was editing his movie Ramona and Julian, Ramona and Julian, in which a woman named Ramona (played by the actress Viva) is spurned by several potential lovers. Similarly, Don's Ramona is disappointed by love. At the time, Viva was also appearing in an Agnes Varda film called in which a woman named Ramona (played by the actress Viva) is spurned by several potential lovers. Similarly, Don's Ramona is disappointed by love. At the time, Viva was also appearing in an Agnes Varda film called Lions Love, Lions Love, in a menage a trois with two men, a situation touched on in ”City Life.” In 1960, Varda's husband, Jacques Demy, had made a movie called in a menage a trois with two men, a situation touched on in ”City Life.” In 1960, Varda's husband, Jacques Demy, had made a movie called Lola, Lola, in which a woman has to choose between three lovers-as Ramona does in Don's story. (Ramona's friend Elsa marries a man named Jacques.) Varda had once made a film called in which a woman has to choose between three lovers-as Ramona does in Don's story. (Ramona's friend Elsa marries a man named Jacques.) Varda had once made a film called Elsa la Rose, Elsa la Rose, about Elsa Triolet, the wife of the surrealist Louis Aragon. Varda's most famous film, about Elsa Triolet, the wife of the surrealist Louis Aragon. Varda's most famous film, Cleo de 5 a 7, Cleo de 5 a 7, follows a woman through a day on the streets of Paris-a quintessential portrait of city life. follows a woman through a day on the streets of Paris-a quintessential portrait of city life.

This name game would be meaningless were it not for the vision of art implied by Don's use of these cinematic materials. All of these films share the spirit of surrealism, the spirit, as Andre Breton said, of ”systematic refusal” of the ”whole series of intellectual, moral, and social obligations that continually and from all sides weigh down on man and crush him.”

But Don's Ramona does not refuse. does not refuse. ”I accepted,” she says in the story's final paragraph. ”What was the alternative?” ”I accepted,” she says in the story's final paragraph. ”What was the alternative?”

By accepting, she swells with new life.

A refusal of surrealism's refusal. A bold new step beyond beyond the old avantgarde. the old avantgarde.

Significantly, Don uses eye imagery to convey Ramona's acceptance: The city's ”pupil enlarged to admit more light,” Ramona says, ”more me.” Eye imagery was central to many surrealist works, perhaps most notably Georges Bataille's erotic novels and Luis Bunuel's movie, cowritten with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou. Un Chien Andalou.

Finally, readers will recall that the most famous fictional Ramona is Helen Hunt Jackson's heroine. Jackson openly condemned the United States' genocidal policies toward Native Americans, and Ramona Ramona (1884) was written to spotlight the plight of mission Indians in Southern California. In ”City Life,” Don's Ramona watches ”sun dancers” beat the ”ground with sheaves of wheat” in the middle of the city, an echo of Arapaho and Cheyenne ceremonies honoring the sun's life-giving power. In an early draft of ”City Life,” Moonbelly describes himself as ”part Indian,” composing songs of rage against a system that ”cannot withstand close scrutiny.” (1884) was written to spotlight the plight of mission Indians in Southern California. In ”City Life,” Don's Ramona watches ”sun dancers” beat the ”ground with sheaves of wheat” in the middle of the city, an echo of Arapaho and Cheyenne ceremonies honoring the sun's life-giving power. In an early draft of ”City Life,” Moonbelly describes himself as ”part Indian,” composing songs of rage against a system that ”cannot withstand close scrutiny.”

”The Indian Uprising” had touched on this theme: Modern urban life exists at the expense of the past, and because of crimes against Native Americans.

And yet...what are our alternatives now? Art and its devices cannot ”change the government.” Far from bringing justice to California's Indians, Helen Hunt Jackson's novel became just another popular entertainment. Two films were made from it, and a stage version...ultimately, Ramona Ramona turned into sludge: best-seller, polemic, trifle. Like turned into sludge: best-seller, polemic, trifle. Like The Phantom of the Opera, The Phantom of the Opera, like several cla.s.sic fairy tales, it was endlessly transformable, endlessly watereddown, especially in an age dominated by the technology of reproduction. like several cla.s.sic fairy tales, it was endlessly transformable, endlessly watereddown, especially in an age dominated by the technology of reproduction.

Best to accept the world's ”muddy roads.” At least therein lay the possibility of something new.

37.

FREAKED OUT.

”Donald Barthelme will quit writing and in five years he will commit suicide.” This comment was attributed to a ”well-known novelist, possibly envious,” by Richard Schickel in a lengthy profile of Don ent.i.tled ”Freaked Out on Barthelme,” which appeared in the August 16, 1970, issue of The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Magazine. In the article, Herman Gollob confirmed that Don was ”one of the great despairers of all time,” though he added that Don had a ”great sense of camaraderie.” Roger Angell said, ”There's very little difference between Donald Barthelme the person and Donald Barthelme the writer.” Harrison Starr characterized Don as ”an extraordinarily gentle and ethical man” with a ”very naked eye for pain and a very complex Catholic Christian guilt.” In the article, Herman Gollob confirmed that Don was ”one of the great despairers of all time,” though he added that Don had a ”great sense of camaraderie.” Roger Angell said, ”There's very little difference between Donald Barthelme the person and Donald Barthelme the writer.” Harrison Starr characterized Don as ”an extraordinarily gentle and ethical man” with a ”very naked eye for pain and a very complex Catholic Christian guilt.”

Starr's wife, Sally Kempton, told Schickel, ”When he's dissatisfied with his work, he feels it's not good enough because he's not intelligent enough. He thinks of fiction in philosophical terms and I think he thinks that some s.h.i.+ft of vision, if he can manage it, will reveal the true nature of our existence to him.”

After spending time with Don, Schickel composed this portrait: Barthelme is neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. He s.h.i.+elds his blue eyes behind rimless gla.s.ses. He has red hair and a beard and dresses conservatively. He lives quietly in a floor-through walk-up on West 11th Street with his third wife, a Danish girl named Birgit, and his 4-year-old daughter, for whom he has made a most interesting pull-toy out of found objects. He is handy with carpenter's tools. His ma.n.u.scripts arrive at the New Yorker New Yorker very neatly typed. He works in the morning and is often seen walking around the Village of an afternoon. His social life has been described as ”incredibly commonplace.”...He is known to grow quite restless confronted by the quiet of a country weekend. He is likely to become ”aggressively silent” at large gatherings of literary people, but he is also a talkative and loyal intimate. very neatly typed. He works in the morning and is often seen walking around the Village of an afternoon. His social life has been described as ”incredibly commonplace.”...He is known to grow quite restless confronted by the quiet of a country weekend. He is likely to become ”aggressively silent” at large gatherings of literary people, but he is also a talkative and loyal intimate.

The article was accompanied by snippets from ”Brain Damage”-text and ill.u.s.trations-and a photograph of Don standing warily in his apartment, hand on hip, in front of a framed Ingres poster. A music stand occupies a corner of the room, and an acoustic guitar sits on a tall dresser (sometimes Birgit tried to play).

”Freaked Out on Barthelme” appeared as City Life City Life was earning great praise, and it brought Don as much fame as a literary writer could expect in America. This pleased him and made him nervous. The Book-of-the-Month Club made was earning great praise, and it brought Don as much fame as a literary writer could expect in America. This pleased him and made him nervous. The Book-of-the-Month Club made City Life City Life an ”alternate” choice one month. In his profile, Schickel said that Henry Robbins phoned to tell him the good news, insisting it would boost book sales. It's not much money, Robbins said, but it's a ”chance to speak to a new audience,” a more mainstream crowd. A few days later, Don called Robbins back. ”Henry, is there some way we can politely turn down the Book-of-the-Month?” Absolutely not, Robbins replied. When Angell called to congratulate Don on the honor, Don was silent, Schickel related. Angell said, ”Don, I don't think you want to be discovered.” Don agreed. an ”alternate” choice one month. In his profile, Schickel said that Henry Robbins phoned to tell him the good news, insisting it would boost book sales. It's not much money, Robbins said, but it's a ”chance to speak to a new audience,” a more mainstream crowd. A few days later, Don called Robbins back. ”Henry, is there some way we can politely turn down the Book-of-the-Month?” Absolutely not, Robbins replied. When Angell called to congratulate Don on the honor, Don was silent, Schickel related. Angell said, ”Don, I don't think you want to be discovered.” Don agreed.

Of course, matters weren't so simple. It was one thing to refresh the possibilities of art, and to be recognized by one's peers; it was another to become a celebrity, even a minor one.

For ”Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel,” Don had composed a rueful paragraph (laterexcised) about the artist in a culture that values spectacle over substance: It is not true that Kafka wanted Brod to burn his ma.n.u.scripts after his death. Rather it is the case that Kafka was on fire to be published...rushed to the postbox day after day...ate with editors...intrigued for favorable notices...read the Writer's Digest Writer's Digest...consorted with critics...autographed napkins...made himself available to librarians...spoke on the radio...

Later, in a speech at the University of Houston, Don returned to these themes: I often think not enough attention is paid to dead writers. It was formerly the case that we had a lot of long winter nights with nothing much to do and on these nights dead writers-from d.i.c.kens to Conrad to Heinrich von Kleist-received their merited attention. We still have long winter nights but they are filled, for most people, with old movies. I have nothing against old movies, but the trouble with them is that they don't have first sentences, those amazing and wonderful first sentences that grip you, drive you inexorably into the work....

Hip readers ”freaked out on Barthelme” would have been surprised to hear their latest cultural hero speaking so conservatively, but that was just the point for Don: He wanted to join the centuries-long literary conversation, not t.i.tillate thrill seekers looking for a Book-of-the-Month selection. By now, Don had seen enough of journalists and advertising to know fame's double edge. Schickel's article gave him tremendous visibility, but for most readers it would also freeze him in time. Forevermore, the phrase ”freaked out” would link Don with what the media now called the ”counterculture.” From this point on, virtually everything written about Don, from dashed-off book reviews to more substantial critical examinations, saw him as representative of the anti-Establishment ethos of a particular moment. His aesthetic, psychological, philosophical, and theological investigations were largely ignored. Casual readers came to think of him as a ”1960s writer.” Academics came to see him as a ”postmodernist”-a fancy way of saying a ”1960s writer.”