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6f98a86
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The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.
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Donald Barthelme |
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20f0a67
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Why are we fighting them? --They're mad. We're sane. --How do we know? --That we're sane? --Yes. --Am I sane? --To all appearances. --And you, do you consider yourself sane? --I do. --Well, there you have it. --But don't they also consider themselves sane? --I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane.
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Donald Barthelme |
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44799e9
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What do the children say? --There's a thing the children say. --What do the children say? --They say: Will you always love me? --Always. --Will you always remember me? --Always. --Will you remember me a year from now? --Yes, I will. --Will you remember me two years from now? --Yes, I will. --Will you remember me five years from now? --Yes, I will. --Knock knock. --Who's there? --You see?
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Donald Barthelme |
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02ebbe8
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And I sat there getting drunker and drunker and more in love and more in love.
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Donald Barthelme |
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74d0445
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Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.
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Donald Barthelme |
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c5b2988
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How can you be alienated without first having been connected?
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Donald Barthelme |
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688167f
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But have you noticed the slight curl at the end of Sam II's mouth, when he looks at you? It means that he didn't want you to name him Sam II, for one thing, and for two other things it means that he has a sawed-off in his left pants leg, and a baling hook in his right pants leg, and is ready to kill you with either of them, given the opportunity. The father is taken aback. What he usually says, in such a confrontation, is "I changed your di..
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relationships
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Donald Barthelme |
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50acdd6
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I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.
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humor
me-and-miss-mandible
wives
short-story
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Donald Barthelme |
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dfeb033
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the thing about books is, there are quite a number you don't have to read.
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happy-camping
sir-roger
happy-playgrounds
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Donald Barthelme |
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e979962
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The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
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Donald Barthelme |
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aa4daaf
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The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.
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Donald Barthelme |
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879ec37
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There is no moment that exceeds in beauty that moment when one looks at a woman and finds that she is looking at you in the same way that you are looking at her. The moment in which she bestows that look that says, "Proceed with your evil plan, sumbitch." The initial smash on glance. The, the drawing near. This takes a long time, it seems like months, although only minutes pass, in fact. Languor is the word that describes this part of the p..
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love
eye-contact
glances
mating-rituals
love-at-first-sight
lust
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Donald Barthelme |
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d508b93
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Mother, have you noticed that this society we're in tends to be a little...repressive?" "What does that mean, Eugenie? What does that mean, that strange new word, 'repressive,' that I have never heard before?" "It means...it's like when you decide to do something, and you get up out of your chair to do it, and you take a step, and then become aware of frosty glances being directed at you from every side." "Frosty glances?" "Your des..
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Donald Barthelme |
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fbf888a
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Fragments are the only forms I trust.
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writing
trust
truth
form
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Donald Barthelme |
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8fa4bf7
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Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.
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writing
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Donald Barthelme |
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5ca5cfa
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The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart."
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Donald Barthelme |
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f28db89
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I have to admit we are locked in the most exquisite mysterious muck. This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor. To describe it takes many hundreds of thousands of words. Our muck is only a part of a much greater muck -- the nation-state -- which is itself the creation of that muck of mucks, human consciousness. Of course all these things also have a touch of sublimity -- as when Moonbelly sings, for example, o..
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humor
life
human-society
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Donald Barthelme |
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7923379
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The Dead Father was slaying, in a grove of music and musicians. First he slew a harpist and then a performer upon the serpent and also a banger upon the rattle and also a blower of the Persian trumpet and one upon the Indian trumpet and one upon the Hebrew trumpet and one upon the Roman trumpet and one upon the Chinese trumpet of copper-covered wood. Also a blower upon the marrow trumpet and one upon the slide trumpet and one who wearing up..
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Donald Barthelme |
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a191e7e
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The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal, gives you verisimilitude, as when you attend a funeral and notice that it's being poorly done.
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Donald Barthelme |
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3747f65
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You are killing me." " -We? Not we. Not in any sense, we. Processes are killing you, not we. Inexorable processes."
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process
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Donald Barthelme |
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bfa7475
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How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?
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Donald Barthelme |
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0de5b96
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You came and fell upon me, I was sitting in the wicker chair. The wicker exclaimed as your weight fell upon me. You were light, I thought, and I thought how good it was of you to do this. We'd never touched before.
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Donald Barthelme |
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a7351be
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Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.
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humanity
insatiable
self
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Donald Barthelme |
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e66b3f5
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the hinder portion scalding-house good eating Curve B in addition to the usual baths and ablutions military police sumptuousness of the washhouse risking misstatements kept distances iris to iris queen of holes damp, hairy legs note of anger chanting and shouting konk sense of "mold" on the "muff" sense of "talk" on the "surface" konk2 all sorts of chemical girl who delivered the letter give it a bone plummy bare legs saturated in every bel..
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chaos
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Donald Barthelme |
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2f3f8ec
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The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human love, which remains as grisly and golden as ever, no matter what is tattooed upon the warm tympanic page.
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Donald Barthelme |
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835a77b
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But the lie had to be a good one, because if your lie is badly done it makes everyone feel wretched, liar and lied-to alike plunged into the deepest lackadaisy, and everyone just feels like going into the other room and drinking a glass of water, or whatever is available there, whereas if you can lie really well then get dynamite results, 35 percent report increased intellectual understanding, awareness, insight, 40 percent report more tole..
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lies
untruths
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Donald Barthelme |
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f365cb4
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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. ..
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Donald Barthelme |
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77c65d7
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The horsewife! The very basebone of the American plethora! The horsewife! Without whom the entire structure of civilian life would crumble! Without the horsewife, the whole raison d'etre of our existences would be reduced, in a twinkling, to that brute level of brutality for which we so rightly reproach the filthy animals. Were it not for her enormous purchasing power and the heedless gaiety with which it is exercised, we would still be goi..
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Donald Barthelme |
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8951235
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The world in the evening seems fraught with the absence of promise, if you are a married man. There is nothing to do but go home and drink your nine drinks and forget about it.
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Donald Barthelme |
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3173682
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Fathers are teachers of the true and not-true, and no father ever knowingly teaches what is not true. In a cloud of unknowing, then, the father proceeds with his instruction.
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Donald Barthelme |
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7762253
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You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you."
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Donald Barthelme |
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37ea140
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There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena."
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humor
transgressive-fiction
short-story
satire
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Donald Barthelme |
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2350ced
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the writer is [...] the work's way of getting itself written
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Donald Barthelme |
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94c7dc4
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art is a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality
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Donald Barthelme |
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46fdb04
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We regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats."
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Donald Barthelme |
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7333609
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I met you under the balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, and with sexual deprivation, but now that your visit to Bergen has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appropriate. Removal of the balloon was easy; trailer trucks carried away the depleted fabric, wh..
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Donald Barthelme |
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afec48b
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The father is taken aback. What he usually says, in such a confrontation, is 'I changed your diapers for you, little snot.' This is not the right thing to say. First, it is not true (mothers change nine diapers out of ten), and second, it instantly reminds Sam II of what he is mad about. He is mad about being small when you were big, but not, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he i..
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Donald Barthelme |
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37dfe0b
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Let us suppose that someone is writing a story. From the world of conventional signs he takes an azalea bush, plants it in a pleasant park. He takes a gold pocket watch from the world of conventional signs and places it under the azalea bush. He takes from the same rich source a handsome thief and a chastity belt, places the thief in the chastity belt and lays him tenderly under the azalea, not neglecting to wind the gold pocket watch so th..
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Donald Barthelme |
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bcf79ac
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This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor.
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muck
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Donald Barthelme |
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277ea7d
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The President looked out of his window. He was not very happy. "I worry about Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and their lover, Snow White. I sense that all is not well with them. Now, looking out over this green lawn, and these fine rosebushes, and into the night and the yellow buildings, and the falling Dow Jones Index and the screams of the poor, I am concerned. I have many important things to worry about, but I worry about ..
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Donald Barthelme |
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1929378
|
Three rebellions ago, the air was fresher. The soft pasting noises of the rebel billposters remind us of Oklahoma, where everything is still the same.
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Donald Barthelme |
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c8cc5e8
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Little is known about her. We are assured, however, that the same damnable involvements that obsess us obsess her too. Copulation. Strangeness. Applause.
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Donald Barthelme |
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9b5ee42
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I wanted to say a certain thing to a certain man, a certain true thing that had crept into my head. I opened my head, at the place provided, and proceeded to pronounce the true thing that lay languishing there--that is, proceeded to propel that trueness, that felicitous trularity, from its place inside my head out into world life. The certain man stood waiting to receive it. His face reflected an eager accepting-ness. Everything was right. ..
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truth
language
speech
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Donald Barthelme |
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e42bb99
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Dan keeps telling Snow White that "Christmas is coming!" How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains?"
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Donald Barthelme |