The Teachings of Don B.

[jbor]

    Robert E. Lee regarded a porcupine. "The fox knows many things, but
    the porcupine knows one big thing," he reflected. Lee quickly ordered
    porcupine quills distributed to all of the men in his army. But the
    notoriously inept Confederate quartermaster department neglected to
    provide instructions for their use. The soldiers used the quills to
    write letters and clean their fingernails. The South lost the war.
        (from 'Natural History' 1971, in _The Teachings of Don B._ p. 35)

I think Barthelme's pieces first started appearing in _The New Yorker_ in
the early 60s, quickly gained notoriety (positive and negative), and that
his influence on American postmoderns like Pynchon dates from then. My
problem reading him is not so much that the work has dated but that,
ironically, so much of it seems both product and symptom of an exclusively
or parochially "American" cultural context. (I have a similar problem with
both Roth and Coover.) Some of the collected stuff in _The Teachings of Don
B._ I found more accessible, and the multi-modal stuff in particular is
quite striking. It's pretty clear that the gently ironic absurdities and
ambivalent tone of Barthelme's "fictions" affected the young Pynchon and
found their way into his own literary repertoire.

    Barthelme was one of our first postmodernists; and it was partly his
    influence, amplified by foreigners like Borges and Calvino, that made so
    much of the fiction of the late sixties and seventies so self-conscious
    and tricky until writing about writing briefly came to seem the norm ‹
    Flann O'Brien-like fictions about writers attacked by their own
    characters became the staple ..., though the very idea of characters was
    suspect. (Jay McInerny 'Introduction' to _Cowboys, Indians and
    Commuters: The Penguin Book of New American Voices_ 1994, pp. xi-xii)

best


on 23/11/02 4:33 AM, MalignD at aol.com at MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> 
> In a message dated 11/22/02 12:08:48 PM, tyronemullet at hotmail.com writes:
> 
> << _The Teachings of Don B._ (1992) does not include the interview in
> question. 
> It is a collection of short, mostly humorous, writings, most originally
> written for The New Yorker, and three very strange short plays.  I think one
> would have to be up on the New York artiste scene of the 60s, 70s, and 80s,
> which I most definitely am not, to fully appreciate Barthelme's gentle
> satire in many of these pieces.  Nonetheless, on the whole I found the book
> entertaining and would recommend it.  I have not read any of Barthelme's
> other work.
> 
> Steve Maas >>
> 
> I read a slew of Barthelme back in the eighties.
> 
> It's very particular and unusual, often funny.  But I've had trouble
> rereading him and I'm not sure why.  As singular a talent as he is, he has,
> for me, not aged well.  Seems very much an eighties character.
> 
> In a way that's a compliment, in that he seemed at the time very "of the
> moment," very "has his finger on the pulse of the times," etc.
> 
> But he's certainly worth a look if he's unfamiliar.  I suggest:
> 
> Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
> Amateurs
> Come Back, Dr. Caligari
> Guilty Pleasures
> City Life