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Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews
Donald Barthelme's premature death at the age of fifty-eight brought to an end one of the most provocative careers in the history of American literature. Groundbreaking works such as Come Back, Dr. Caligari; The Dead Father; Snow White; Great Days; Overnight to Many Distant Cities; Guilty Pleasures; and his two short-fiction collections, Forty Stories and Sixty Stories, have earned him a place among the most influential and imitated authors of the last half-century. With his marvelously strange and darkly ironic vision of the world, his wizard satire and deadpan humor, Barthelme spoke of and for our time like no one else. He spoke of our national obsessions and weirdnesses, our unspeakable practices and unnatural acts, in what is for many the distinctive voice of postmodern America.
Not-Knowing is the second posthumous collection of Donald Barthelme's work. Like The Teachings of Don B. (1992), it brings together shorter works now almost impossible to come by. While the first volume featured the author's tantalizing experiments in satire, parable, fable, and playwriting, this new volume focuses on his diverse nonfiction pieces, collectively referred to here as essays, although, as always with Barthelme's work, they are feistily resistant to any label. Categorizable or not, Not-Knowing contains Barthelme's pungent comments on writing, art, literature, film, and city life, which are, as John Barth says in his Introduction, among the permanent literary treasures of American postmodernist writing. Also here are several interviews with the author--invaluable for understanding this very private man--including two never before available. The interviews range over the last eighteen years of Barthelme's life, and they give readers the opportunity to watch his ideas as they expand, change, and settle.
Kim Herzinger has gathered here an eclectic selection of pieces for Barthelme's many admirers, creating a work that will confirm his rightful standing as, in the words of Robert Coover, "one of the great citizens of contemporary world letters."
Not-Knowing is the second posthumous collection of Donald Barthelme's work. Like The Teachings of Don B. (1992), it brings together shorter works now almost impossible to come by. While the first volume featured the author's tantalizing experiments in satire, parable, fable, and playwriting, this new volume focuses on his diverse nonfiction pieces, collectively referred to here as essays, although, as always with Barthelme's work, they are feistily resistant to any label. Categorizable or not, Not-Knowing contains Barthelme's pungent comments on writing, art, literature, film, and city life, which are, as John Barth says in his Introduction, among the permanent literary treasures of American postmodernist writing. Also here are several interviews with the author--invaluable for understanding this very private man--including two never before available. The interviews range over the last eighteen years of Barthelme's life, and they give readers the opportunity to watch his ideas as they expand, change, and settle.
Kim Herzinger has gathered here an eclectic selection of pieces for Barthelme's many admirers, creating a work that will confirm his rightful standing as, in the words of Robert Coover, "one of the great citizens of contemporary world letters."
332 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Donald Barthelme
158 books765 followers
Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
(1968) apparently collects sometimes surrealistic stories of modern life of American writer Donald Barthelme.
A student at the University of Pennsylvania bore Donald Barthelme. Two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Texas, where father of Barthelme served as a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme later majored in journalism.
In 1951, this still student composed his first articles for the Houston Post. The Army drafted Barthelme, who arrived in Korea on 27 July 1953, the very day, when parties signed the ceasefire, ending the war. He served briefly as the editor of a newspaper of Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies of philosophy at the University of Houston. He continued to take classes until 1957 but never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in “black” jazz clubs of Houston and listened to musical innovators, such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly; this experience influenced him later.
Barthelme, a rebellious son, struggled in his relationship with his demanding father. In later years, they tremendously argued about the kinds of literature that interested Barthelme. His avant-garde father in art and aesthetics in many ways approved not the postmodern and deconstruction schools. The Dead Father and The King , the novels, delineate attitude of Barthelme toward his father as King Arthur and Lancelot, the characters, picture him. From the Roman Catholicism of his especially devout mother, Barthelme independently moved away, but this separation as the distance with his father troubled Barthelme. He ably agreed to strictures of his seemingly much closer mother.
Barthelme went to teach for brief periods at Boston University and at University at Buffalo, and he at the college of the City of New York served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974-1975. He married four times. Helen Barthelme, his second wife, later entitled a biography Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound , published in 2001. With Birgit Barthelme, his third wife and a Dane, he fathered Anne Barthelme, his first child, a daughter. He married Marion Barthelme near the end and fathered Kate Barthelme, his second daughter. Marion and Donald wed until his death from throat cancer. People respect fiction of Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme, brothers of Donald Barthelme and also teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
A student at the University of Pennsylvania bore Donald Barthelme. Two years later, in 1933, the family moved to Texas, where father of Barthelme served as a professor of architecture at the University of Houston, where Barthelme later majored in journalism.
In 1951, this still student composed his first articles for the Houston Post. The Army drafted Barthelme, who arrived in Korea on 27 July 1953, the very day, when parties signed the ceasefire, ending the war. He served briefly as the editor of a newspaper of Army before returning to the United States and his job at the Houston Post. Once back, he continued his studies of philosophy at the University of Houston. He continued to take classes until 1957 but never received a degree. He spent much of his free time in “black” jazz clubs of Houston and listened to musical innovators, such as Lionel Hampton and Peck Kelly; this experience influenced him later.
Barthelme, a rebellious son, struggled in his relationship with his demanding father. In later years, they tremendously argued about the kinds of literature that interested Barthelme. His avant-garde father in art and aesthetics in many ways approved not the postmodern and deconstruction schools. The Dead Father and The King , the novels, delineate attitude of Barthelme toward his father as King Arthur and Lancelot, the characters, picture him. From the Roman Catholicism of his especially devout mother, Barthelme independently moved away, but this separation as the distance with his father troubled Barthelme. He ably agreed to strictures of his seemingly much closer mother.
Barthelme went to teach for brief periods at Boston University and at University at Buffalo, and he at the college of the City of New York served as distinguished visiting professor from 1974-1975. He married four times. Helen Barthelme, his second wife, later entitled a biography Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound , published in 2001. With Birgit Barthelme, his third wife and a Dane, he fathered Anne Barthelme, his first child, a daughter. He married Marion Barthelme near the end and fathered Kate Barthelme, his second daughter. Marion and Donald wed until his death from throat cancer. People respect fiction of Frederick Barthelme and Steven Barthelme, brothers of Donald Barthelme and also teachers at The University of Southern Mississippi.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 19, 2015
I always got Donald Barthelme confused with his brother, Frederick Barthelme, and Donald Antrim (no relation). It didn't help that they all wrote for the New Yorker, which also has about five hundred writers named Ian writing for them (none of them any relation to Donald, Frederick, or Donald, that I know of).
So when I picked up this book of nonfiction work, I had no idea whether I had read any of Donald's fiction (no). Regardless, it's almost always irresistible when writers discuss the nuts and bolts of writing. For example, "Rhythm is important, and it's one of the things you notice about student work. Very often students don't, in the beginning, understand that their sentences are supposed to have certain rhythms and that the rhythms are part of the texture of the story. It's hard to teach, something that's more a knack than directly teachable. But it's central, it's a factor in every sentence, and you have to insist on it, remember to insist on it."
That's from an interview, of which there are several printed here.
Roe: Is the new generation of writers more concerned than their predecessors with politics, economics, and social class? [The question is being asked in 1988.]
Barthelme: I think there are lowered expectations, not aesthetic expectations for the work, but lowered expectations in terms of life. My generation, perhaps foolishly, expected, even demanded, that life be wonderful and magical and then tried to make it so by writing in a rather complex way. It seems now quite an eccentric demand.
There are also many short pieces from the New Yorker and a few other publications: book reviews, film reviews, thoughts. In spite of directing the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston for two years, Barthelme's art criticism isn't all that interesting or insightful. (I found this to be the case with Susan Sontag's writing about painting, too.) I liked his film criticism (he filled in at the New Yorker for six weeks for a portion of Pauline Kael's sabbatical) and his book reviews. There's a witty takedown of a John Kenneth Galbraith novel. His summary of Love and Bullets sent me rushing to the Youtube, where I was not disappointed in this Charles Bronson, Rod Steiger, and Jill Ireland thriller, though Ireland's series of platinum wigs, and then her real hair, if that's what it was, affronted.
July 15, 2009
The two-essay opening salvo alone is worth the price of admission, a kind of career-bookending manifesto that encapsulates as much of the Barthelme aesthetic -- if there was such a thing -- in its gentle shifts and contradictions as it does in its consistencies.
But something tells me the interviews'll be what I go back to again and again. The loosely chronological sequencing provides a type of time-capsule evidence that above all else Barthelme was an enthusiast: his zest for art, philosophy, literature, life seems only to grow as the decades pass.
But something tells me the interviews'll be what I go back to again and again. The loosely chronological sequencing provides a type of time-capsule evidence that above all else Barthelme was an enthusiast: his zest for art, philosophy, literature, life seems only to grow as the decades pass.
August 13, 2024
They broke the mold when they made Barthelme.
I consider the title essay (Not Knowing) to be maybe my favorite essay about the craft of writing that I've ever encountered. It can be found online, but reading it in context with the rest of the collection, particularly the many interviews where he gets to elaborate on certain points in a more informal, less structured manner, is worth the time.
Barthelme was a fascinating man. His father was a prominent architect and that informal education in architecture, art movements, and visual arts made for an atypical platform which he then built an iconic postmodern voice and approach to fiction on top of. It's genuinely fascinating to read him talk specifically about architecture and art in a vacuum, but it's where these topics blend into fiction writing and he makes analogies between the mediums that frames the man.
There's a somber realization to reading this collection and listening to some people talk about Barthelme that I'll never truly *get* all of him. So much of his work is referential-- often pulling from obscure art and pop culture that has been lost in the sands of time; French films that aren't streaming anywhere, visual artists who stump search engines, variety shows that weren't relevant even when they were on. And of course, nothing Barthelme does is overtly stated in the first place. There are layers upon layers of obfuscation that I'll never be able to parse. Yet I'm charmed by his stories anyway and sometimes I think even more charmed by his essays.
When he speaks, he strikes me as a man deeply engrained in the art world, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, who is completely unphased by discourse and squabbling. One gets the sense that they're listening to a man wholly unbothered who arrives at his opinions through study and observation and not butting heads with those who disagree or throwing lightning bolts down on the opinions he finds disagreeable. He's an incredibly generous, even-keeled man even when prodded by interviews who don't hide the fact that they don't see eye-to-eye with Don on everything. It's never combative, and each interviewer brings a fascination and expertise to their sit down that really illustrates how frankly worthless so many interviews are now.
Even when I hadn't seen the art or movies Barthelme talks about in the review portion, I still walk away enriched by his critical lens.
I would read Snow White and Sixty Stories before reading this, as he talks about both at length and in great detail.
Can't think of an essay collection I learned more from. An irreplaceable, irresistible voice. A man who wrote about fathers and literary fathers-- he will forever be one of my many dads.
I consider the title essay (Not Knowing) to be maybe my favorite essay about the craft of writing that I've ever encountered. It can be found online, but reading it in context with the rest of the collection, particularly the many interviews where he gets to elaborate on certain points in a more informal, less structured manner, is worth the time.
Barthelme was a fascinating man. His father was a prominent architect and that informal education in architecture, art movements, and visual arts made for an atypical platform which he then built an iconic postmodern voice and approach to fiction on top of. It's genuinely fascinating to read him talk specifically about architecture and art in a vacuum, but it's where these topics blend into fiction writing and he makes analogies between the mediums that frames the man.
There's a somber realization to reading this collection and listening to some people talk about Barthelme that I'll never truly *get* all of him. So much of his work is referential-- often pulling from obscure art and pop culture that has been lost in the sands of time; French films that aren't streaming anywhere, visual artists who stump search engines, variety shows that weren't relevant even when they were on. And of course, nothing Barthelme does is overtly stated in the first place. There are layers upon layers of obfuscation that I'll never be able to parse. Yet I'm charmed by his stories anyway and sometimes I think even more charmed by his essays.
When he speaks, he strikes me as a man deeply engrained in the art world, a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, who is completely unphased by discourse and squabbling. One gets the sense that they're listening to a man wholly unbothered who arrives at his opinions through study and observation and not butting heads with those who disagree or throwing lightning bolts down on the opinions he finds disagreeable. He's an incredibly generous, even-keeled man even when prodded by interviews who don't hide the fact that they don't see eye-to-eye with Don on everything. It's never combative, and each interviewer brings a fascination and expertise to their sit down that really illustrates how frankly worthless so many interviews are now.
Even when I hadn't seen the art or movies Barthelme talks about in the review portion, I still walk away enriched by his critical lens.
I would read Snow White and Sixty Stories before reading this, as he talks about both at length and in great detail.
Can't think of an essay collection I learned more from. An irreplaceable, irresistible voice. A man who wrote about fathers and literary fathers-- he will forever be one of my many dads.
July 2, 2007
Not the most amazing book of essays and interviews or anything, but it gets four stars from me on the strength of the titular essay alone. Something that continually gets me charged up about the seemingly ossified possibilities of fiction every time I read it.
July 1, 2017
There's an amazing 30+ page transcription of a conversation between Barthelme, William H. Gass, Grace Paley, and Walker Percy. 'Nuff said.
July 2, 2018
His interviews - amazing;
After Joyce and Not-Knowing - great;
Here in the Village - funny;
Reviews, comments, and observations - dreck;
On art - same dreck but shorter :)
After Joyce and Not-Knowing - great;
Here in the Village - funny;
Reviews, comments, and observations - dreck;
On art - same dreck but shorter :)
November 7, 2021
Indispensable text for those writing short stories or fiction in general.
March 9, 2021
While the art essays and many of the comment pieces are too esoteric and disconnected from Barthelme’s writing, the interviews and the “Not Knowing” essay are pure gold. It is interesting reading the interview transcripts that Barthelme talked much like how he wrote, with a wit and dry humor that never gets old. If you’re looking examples of his fiction here you won’t find it, but if you want a glimpse into his mind, that is on full display.
July 30, 2022
I've only read the first two essays since I still have to find the actual book, but I'd like to go ahead and log it because of how great they are. The first essay, "After Joyce," almost makes me feel like a genius. They almost exactly coincide with my own thoughts on art that I've cooked up over the years. I probably didn't "actually" come up with them on my own, since I've always known about Barthelme's quote that "The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do," which I got from George Saunders. But there are some new insights here in these essays which are profound to me.
AFTER JOYCE
Here there are two notions which struck me as amazing. (1) First is the idea that fictions ought to be objects in the world, like mental structures. When thinking about creating my own fictions, I've always thought that the only way that this venture of my mine would be worthy is if it could be analogous in form and pleasure as like someone dancing or a piece of music. That's the benchmark, or the worthiness for it even existing; otherwise, I see it as a gross artificiality, and act of hubris that should be committed immediately to the trashnbin. And so I've always thought that the best fictions would be as undeniable as a tree in the wind, as a natural and REAL part of the world, not an artificial construction. Barthelme captures this ideas perfectly. (2) Second is the Valéry quote, which talks about fiction as if they ought to be a sport. Ever since reading Barthelme's fictions did I come to see ideal fiction in this way. It's almost a corollary of the first notion, that they are mental structures. The only station of a fiction writer is to develop fictions, and it is to be thought almost analogously as engaging in sport, where one must follow one's own (often unstate.d, just poetic) rules rigorously, with regards to motif, structure, patterning, to develop poetic meaning, and then to know when to stop writing and move on to the next fiction. This isn't cynical or anything. I just think it's a good model for thinking about the process. The second you start thinking about things like "intention" and "purpose" you start losing at the game, and you're no longer really engaging in fiction writing. This brings me to the next essay.
NOT-KNOWING
Ever since reading Beckett especially, I've had the thought that the best fiction is written by writing "on the surface of the brain." That is, writing from an ecstatic place of heightened intensity, understanding, and emotion. Writing in a place beyond your normal, boring, quotidian, waking self. Writing as close to the hardware and the 1s and 0s of yourself as possible, so that you can write fiction that is not artificial and that is honest and sincere. This, I feel, is pretty equivalent to Barthelme's dictum that art can only be made authentically from a place of not-knowing. The idea from a lot of popular books out there on writing, with all the planning and outlining they tell you to do, is complete garbage. It's false. It's terrible advice. No, I don't have to write out character biographies before I embark on my story. As Barthelme says, "I discover this [or that fact] by writing the sentence that announces it." But despite this state of not-knowing, there, miraculously, are still "rules," and those who can understand these two things will have the best chance of writing good fiction. These "rules" aren't really rules, more like intuitions, as Barthelme says: "The more serious the artist, the more problems he takes into account and the more considerations limit his possible initiatives." In this essay, Barthelme claims that is was with Stéphane Mallarmé that that ontological status of the poem changed from being a representation of the world to being an object of the world. People have called Mallarmé's work, "a whisper that is so close to silence," and this makes a lot of sense to me. I've always thought that art, especially written art, can be thought of as bright excitations out of the Void. The Void is pure. Endurable. Already perfect. So any excitation ought to really--and I mean really--justify its own existence. To me, a justified excitation of the Void would be something like a whisper that is close to silence, something that is natural, fresh, and without hubris. Hard to do. To me, when I'm writing, I'm always very suspicious, to begin with, of the justification of writing anything at all, and not just being silent, like a Zen monk. But when the art is good, I know it's worth it. Good art is that which inspires but also resists interpretation. It is magic! Hard to do. Good art is where no single interpretation can exhaust or empty it. Good are is genuinely searching, yearning. Art is a true account of the activity of the mind.
---------------------------------------------------------------
And so, I have yet to read the rest of the essays and interviews in this work, as I need to get my hands on it. But so far, even with just these two pieces, I am very happy with how my own conceptions of art have developed very closely with what Barthelme outlines here.
AFTER JOYCE
Here there are two notions which struck me as amazing. (1) First is the idea that fictions ought to be objects in the world, like mental structures. When thinking about creating my own fictions, I've always thought that the only way that this venture of my mine would be worthy is if it could be analogous in form and pleasure as like someone dancing or a piece of music. That's the benchmark, or the worthiness for it even existing; otherwise, I see it as a gross artificiality, and act of hubris that should be committed immediately to the trashnbin. And so I've always thought that the best fictions would be as undeniable as a tree in the wind, as a natural and REAL part of the world, not an artificial construction. Barthelme captures this ideas perfectly. (2) Second is the Valéry quote, which talks about fiction as if they ought to be a sport. Ever since reading Barthelme's fictions did I come to see ideal fiction in this way. It's almost a corollary of the first notion, that they are mental structures. The only station of a fiction writer is to develop fictions, and it is to be thought almost analogously as engaging in sport, where one must follow one's own (often unstate.d, just poetic) rules rigorously, with regards to motif, structure, patterning, to develop poetic meaning, and then to know when to stop writing and move on to the next fiction. This isn't cynical or anything. I just think it's a good model for thinking about the process. The second you start thinking about things like "intention" and "purpose" you start losing at the game, and you're no longer really engaging in fiction writing. This brings me to the next essay.
NOT-KNOWING
Ever since reading Beckett especially, I've had the thought that the best fiction is written by writing "on the surface of the brain." That is, writing from an ecstatic place of heightened intensity, understanding, and emotion. Writing in a place beyond your normal, boring, quotidian, waking self. Writing as close to the hardware and the 1s and 0s of yourself as possible, so that you can write fiction that is not artificial and that is honest and sincere. This, I feel, is pretty equivalent to Barthelme's dictum that art can only be made authentically from a place of not-knowing. The idea from a lot of popular books out there on writing, with all the planning and outlining they tell you to do, is complete garbage. It's false. It's terrible advice. No, I don't have to write out character biographies before I embark on my story. As Barthelme says, "I discover this [or that fact] by writing the sentence that announces it." But despite this state of not-knowing, there, miraculously, are still "rules," and those who can understand these two things will have the best chance of writing good fiction. These "rules" aren't really rules, more like intuitions, as Barthelme says: "The more serious the artist, the more problems he takes into account and the more considerations limit his possible initiatives." In this essay, Barthelme claims that is was with Stéphane Mallarmé that that ontological status of the poem changed from being a representation of the world to being an object of the world. People have called Mallarmé's work, "a whisper that is so close to silence," and this makes a lot of sense to me. I've always thought that art, especially written art, can be thought of as bright excitations out of the Void. The Void is pure. Endurable. Already perfect. So any excitation ought to really--and I mean really--justify its own existence. To me, a justified excitation of the Void would be something like a whisper that is close to silence, something that is natural, fresh, and without hubris. Hard to do. To me, when I'm writing, I'm always very suspicious, to begin with, of the justification of writing anything at all, and not just being silent, like a Zen monk. But when the art is good, I know it's worth it. Good art is that which inspires but also resists interpretation. It is magic! Hard to do. Good art is where no single interpretation can exhaust or empty it. Good are is genuinely searching, yearning. Art is a true account of the activity of the mind.
---------------------------------------------------------------
And so, I have yet to read the rest of the essays and interviews in this work, as I need to get my hands on it. But so far, even with just these two pieces, I am very happy with how my own conceptions of art have developed very closely with what Barthelme outlines here.
April 19, 2020
He is much better with fiction...
July 16, 2020
I wish I could read the entire book, I just engaged in the essay. Have a soft spot about things which are self reflective, which breaks the fourth wall. And this one does that.
January 3, 2021
Barthelme was just as fascinating outside of his fiction as he was within it. I loved this glimpse at the man pulling the strings on some of the most inventive fiction ever written.
Read
February 3, 2025I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing as a writer. Glad to know it’s a universal experience :,)
August 23, 2013
David Lynch, my favorite film director, has this irritating (to me) habit--especially these days--of refusing to discuss his creative process. As a man whose films have crept farther and farther into the left field of cinema, it's certainly not necessary, but would certainly be appreciated (again, by me), if Lynch would be more forthcoming about what it means to him to make a movie. I'm not saying I want him to tell us what his films "mean," and I agree with his reluctance to ascribe meaning of any sort to even one scene in, say, Inland Empire, because to do so could easily damage the fragile, magical atmosphere in which his films exist. But an earnest discussion of the filmmaking process itself would not be unappreciated, dammit.
Which brings me to Donald Barthelme and, more specifically, this book. Barthelme's fiction is among the strangest I've read, and although I wouldn't necessarily put his work in the same storytelling category as Lynch's, there are similarities (the apparent non sequitur, the incident that could be interpreted as either funny or horrifying [or both], the wicked satire of "normal" American life, the startlingly original use of language, the influence of jazz, etc.). Yet, unlike Lynch, Barthelme was entirely willing to discuss his work, often in detail.
No doubt this willingness is linked to Barthelme's work as a professor of creative writing. The process of creation interested him, and his serious engagement with the work of his students provided him with a rich vocabulary for discussing the nuts and bolts of storytelling.
The two most important pieces in this collection are "After Joyce" (1963), written near the beginning of Barthelme's writing career, and "Not-Knowing" (1982), written five years before he died. Together they frame Barthelme's aesthetic approach to fiction. And the interviews, which take up the last third of the book, provide fascinating insights into Barthelme's process of writing as well as his literary intentions. They also present a man deeply informed in literature, politics, and culture to an almost intimidating degree. He was not unlike Nabokov in this way (whose own interviews were often as much informal discourses on a wide range of subjects as they were a discussion of his work).
The reason I give this book three stars, however, is for the other two-thirds of the book, which contains many of Barthelme's "Notes and Comment" articles for the New Yorker, a few of his movie reviews, his essays on art, and other miscellaneous nonfiction pieces. None of them are bad, of course (this is Barthelme, after all), but few of them really grabbed me. Perhaps some of this has to do with the venue, and with timing. Had I encountered them in their original form in magazines, at the time in which they were published, I am certain I would have considered them to be the best things I read in those magazines. Now, however, they are chiefly interesting as archival pieces.
Which brings me to Donald Barthelme and, more specifically, this book. Barthelme's fiction is among the strangest I've read, and although I wouldn't necessarily put his work in the same storytelling category as Lynch's, there are similarities (the apparent non sequitur, the incident that could be interpreted as either funny or horrifying [or both], the wicked satire of "normal" American life, the startlingly original use of language, the influence of jazz, etc.). Yet, unlike Lynch, Barthelme was entirely willing to discuss his work, often in detail.
No doubt this willingness is linked to Barthelme's work as a professor of creative writing. The process of creation interested him, and his serious engagement with the work of his students provided him with a rich vocabulary for discussing the nuts and bolts of storytelling.
The two most important pieces in this collection are "After Joyce" (1963), written near the beginning of Barthelme's writing career, and "Not-Knowing" (1982), written five years before he died. Together they frame Barthelme's aesthetic approach to fiction. And the interviews, which take up the last third of the book, provide fascinating insights into Barthelme's process of writing as well as his literary intentions. They also present a man deeply informed in literature, politics, and culture to an almost intimidating degree. He was not unlike Nabokov in this way (whose own interviews were often as much informal discourses on a wide range of subjects as they were a discussion of his work).
The reason I give this book three stars, however, is for the other two-thirds of the book, which contains many of Barthelme's "Notes and Comment" articles for the New Yorker, a few of his movie reviews, his essays on art, and other miscellaneous nonfiction pieces. None of them are bad, of course (this is Barthelme, after all), but few of them really grabbed me. Perhaps some of this has to do with the venue, and with timing. Had I encountered them in their original form in magazines, at the time in which they were published, I am certain I would have considered them to be the best things I read in those magazines. Now, however, they are chiefly interesting as archival pieces.
October 5, 2015
The essays "After Joyce" and "Not-Knowing" that kick-off this collection are a delight. Also delightful are the collection of Barthelme New Yorker excerpts from what I assume was the era's equivalent of the "Shouts and Murmurs" section. I particularly enjoyed the interviews at the end, some of which were a bit inartfully conducted, but most provided great insight into Barthelme's conversational style and thoughts on writing and his own work. I'm a huge fan of Barthelme's short stories, and I found him pretty charming and brilliant. Most of the reviews in this collection were not of interest--I did not know their source material. There's a pretty funny review of Superman III ("Earth Angel") written as a Barthelme dialogue. It's odd to read reviews from a man who's been dead for most of life, who I sometimes think about as having died in the 60s or 70s instead of 1989, talking about young actors who are still working today (a fault of the reader, to be sure). There is one unfortunate incidence of jive-talk in a New Yorker piece, but otherwise I didn't find anything repellent.
The essays and interviews really are precious for any fan and anyone who thinks about the world of literature. Barthelme laments the trend in publishing houses (more alive today than it was then) of trying to make bank rather than art. He also celebrates throughout the notion of human artistic achievement, claiming that if a computer were to ever crack the code and create art palatable to humans, humans would move the goalposts and make art more challenging or inaccessible. One of Barthelme's central arguments is that there's great pleasure to be had in not knowing, and there's a precision in art's ability to evade being known and yet still be compelling. There's no way I could do him justice. If you are a fan, you'll love this. The reviews are a novelty, but perhaps too dated to really enjoy.
The essays and interviews really are precious for any fan and anyone who thinks about the world of literature. Barthelme laments the trend in publishing houses (more alive today than it was then) of trying to make bank rather than art. He also celebrates throughout the notion of human artistic achievement, claiming that if a computer were to ever crack the code and create art palatable to humans, humans would move the goalposts and make art more challenging or inaccessible. One of Barthelme's central arguments is that there's great pleasure to be had in not knowing, and there's a precision in art's ability to evade being known and yet still be compelling. There's no way I could do him justice. If you are a fan, you'll love this. The reviews are a novelty, but perhaps too dated to really enjoy.
July 4, 2022
Brings much of Barthelme’s non-fiction work together in one book. Includes short essays written for the New Yorker about living in New York City, film reviews, commentaries on contemporary politics, discussions of architecture and art (including Barthelme’s contributions to catalogs produced for exhibitions of work by visual artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Sherrie Levine). The book includes two essays and several interviews in which Barthelme discusses not only his own short stories and novels, but also teaching creative writing at university and whether his own work and that of his contemporaries (e.g. William Gass, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon) should be termed “postmodernism” or “metafiction.”
Acquired Jun 2, 2009
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR
Acquired Jun 2, 2009
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR
June 24, 2014
"He had seen people smile and thought he knew how it was done."
"The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made."
"We cannot dwell in the done-for."
"What is Nondiscernible today may be Painfully Obvious tomorrow."
"Charm, as Goethe said, is the dead green bug on the golden leaf of occasion."
"The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made."
"We cannot dwell in the done-for."
"What is Nondiscernible today may be Painfully Obvious tomorrow."
"Charm, as Goethe said, is the dead green bug on the golden leaf of occasion."
October 7, 2008
The interviews are almost maddeningly unedited. The reviews of then-current movies are frustrating in their lack of topicality. But the early and uncollected nonfiction and fiction in this make the whole thing worthwhile.
Read
December 29, 2014Title essay is worth price of admission.
February 24, 2015
Excellent for anyone interested in the creative process. What it is and what it isn't.
Want to read
November 23, 2015to-read
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