"INTERVIEWER Why don't you write tragedy? BARTHELME I'm fated to deal in mixtures, slumgullions, which preclude tragedy, which require a pure line. It's a habit of mind, a perversity. Tom Hess used to tell a story, maybe from Lewis Carroll, I don't remember, about an enraged mob storming the palace shouting "More taxes! Less bread!" As soon as I hear a proposition I immediately consider its opposite. A double-minded man--makes for mixtures. INTERVIEWER Apparently the Yiddish theater, to which Kafka was very addicted, includes as a typical bit of comedy two clowns, more or less identical, who appear even in sad scenes--the parting of two lovers, for instance--and behave comically as the audience is weeping. This shows up especially in The Castle. BARTHELME The assistants. INTERVIEWER And the audience doesn't know what to do.