|
98a04cc
|
Dear Francesca, tell me, is this a succesful party, in your view? Is this the best we can do? I know that you have always wanted to meet Kong; now that you have met him and he has said whatever he has said to you (I saw you smiling), can we go home? I mean you to your home, me to my home, all these others to their own homes, cells, cages? I am feeling a little ragged. What made us think that we could escape things like bankruptcy, alcoholis..
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
6322f95
|
A week later she is still with me. She is departing by degrees. If I tore her hair out, no one but me would love her. But she don't want me to tear her hair out. I wear different shirts for her: red, orange, silver. We hold hand through the night.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
180da5a
|
How old are you Hogo." "Thirty-five Jane. A not unpleasant age to be." "You don't mind then. That you are not young." "It has its buggy aspects as what does not?" "You don't mind then that you are sagging in the direction of death." "No, Jane."
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
41024a4
|
Is that true," I asked, "that song?" "It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth." "And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?" "The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical t..
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
297d7d4
|
Miss Mandible wants to make love to me but she hesitates because I am officially a child; I am, according to the records, according to the gradebook on her desk, according to the card index in the principal's office, eleven years old. There is a misconception here, one that I haven't quite managed to get cleared up yet. I am in fact thirty-five, I've been in the Army, I am six feet one, I have hair in the appropriate places, my voice is a b..
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
bb2e33d
|
Then Wanda proposed a health. "Health to abandoned wives!" she said. "Well now," I said. "'Abandoned,' that's a little strong." "Pushed out, jettisoned, abjured, thrown away," she said. "I remember," I said, "a degree of mutuality, in our parting." "And when guests came," she said, "you always made me sit in the kitchen." "I thought you liked it in the kitchen," I said. "You were forever telling me to get out of the bloody kitchen." "And wh..
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
ee160d2
|
We could unleash all this technology at once. You can imagine what would happen then. But that's not the interesting thing." "What is the interesting thing?" "The interesting thing is that we have a moral sense. It is on punched cards, perhaps the most advanced and sensitive moral sense the world has ever known." "Because it is on punched cards?" "It considers all considerations in endless and subtle detail," he said. "It even quibbles...
|
|
war
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
04713e1
|
Be like Sindbad. Venture forth! Embosom the waves, let your shoes be sucked from your feet and your very trousers enticed by the frothing deep. The ambiguous sea awaits, I told them, marry it! There's nothing out there, they said. Wrong, I said, absolutely wrong. There are waltzes, sword canes, and sea wrack dazzling to the eyes.
|
|
carpe-diem
courage
curiosity
cynicism
life
living
teaching
teachings
teenagers
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
f166d5c
|
Irruption of the magical in the life of Snow White: Snow White knows a singing bone. The singing bone has told her various stories which have left her troubled and confused: of a bear transformed into a king's son, of an immense treasure at the bottom of a brook, of a crystal casket in which there is a cap that makes the wearer invisible. This must not continue. The behavior of the bone is unacceptable. The bone must be persuaded to confine..
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
065d322
|
We have decided to stop voting, so pull down the posters. Let's get all those ugly faces off our streets and out of our elective offices. We are not going to vote any more, no matter how often they come around with their sound trucks and statesmanlike gestures. Pull down the sound trucks. Pull down the outstretched arms. To hell with the whole business. Voting has turned out to be a damned impertinence. They never do what we want them to do..
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
859c4b7
|
Tenemos putrefactores, plagas y oxidos capaces de atacar su alfabeto. Estos son la leche. Tenemos un producto quimico para encoger sus cabanas que penetra las fibras del bambu provocando que las chozas asfixien a sus ocupantes. Esto funciona solo despues de las diez de la noche, cuando la gente duerme. Sus matematicas estan a merced de un supurante numero sordo que hemos inventado. Tenemos una familia de peces entrenados para atacar a sus p..
|
|
humor
war
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
1807711
|
The daughters are tired of kissing each other, although some are not.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
e1c2427
|
The combinatory agility of words," he wrote in "Not-Knowing," "the exponential generation of meaning once they're allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven't yet encountered."
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
cabb379
|
Ma non ci riusci, a pensare. Pensare era al di sopra delle sue possibilita. Io lo capisco bene. Anch'io ho i miei problemi. I finali sfuggono. Le parti centrali non si trovano mai, ma peggio di tutto e cominciare, cominciare, cominciare.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
54098b1
|
The best way to live is by not knowing what will happen to you at the end of the day, when the sun goes down and the supper is to be cooked." -from "The Educational Experience"
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
9e34ba2
|
And eloquence, Henry Mackie says, is really all any of us can hope for.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
9b1603e
|
It's only when you stop to think about it. I don't stop. - From "Morning"
|
|
humor
introspection
motion
reflection
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
b934ffb
|
It is possible of course that there are no more real men here, on his ball of half-truths, the earth.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
ab5d0c5
|
Do I want to be loved in spite of?Do you? Does anyone? But aren't we all to some degree? Aren't there important parts of all of us which must be, so to say, gazed past? I turn a blind eye to that aspect of you and turn a blind eye to that aspect of me.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
fcdd835
|
Love, which is a kind of permission to come closer than ordinary norms of good behavior might usually sanction. - Back rubs. - Which enables us to see each other without clothes on, for example, in lust and shame. - Examining perfections, imperfections. - Which allows us to say wounding things to each other which would not be kosher under the ordinary rules of civilized discourse.
|
|
love
relationships
romance
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
ea2e2d9
|
I am never needlessly obscure--I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
e2086a6
|
picket sign] COGITO ERGO NOTHING!....[casual passerby:] "Cogito ergo your ass"....
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
f9605df
|
No man's plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God's will.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
f7ccefa
|
ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD.
|
|
|
Donald Barthelme |
|
13d175d
|
When computers learn how to make jokes, artists will be in serious trouble.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
9dcc613
|
Charm, as Goethe said, is the dead green bug on the golden leaf of occasion.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
8dc4160
|
Any fool can cry wolf; to cry sheep is inspired, the work of a subtle, contradancing mind.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
b202d40
|
MTV has severely compromised surrealism, perhaps ruined it forever...
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
64a7445
|
Originality is the last refuge of a hero...
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
0d24dd2
|
I enjoy doing layout--problems of design. I could very cheerfully be a typographer.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
5cce525
|
I certainly don't write to exclude anyone.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
90d28e3
|
It is well to be simple once in a while.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |
|
6b3fe73
|
Beckett's work is an embarrassment to the Void.
|
|
|
Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme |