43b
JEROME KLINKOWITZ
of the world. For this subject
Snow W kite
( 1967) is his thematic
tour de force. The foremost theme of the book is words. "Oh I
wish
there were some words in the world that were not the words I
al–
ways hear!" Snow White laments, but she hears only the same old
ones, because "I have not been able to imagine anything better."
She needs, of course, her prince, but her world is essentially "prince–
less."
It
prizes, instead, "equanimity," for anything else would be
"bad for business." Its language, we learn, is ninety-nine percent
"blanketing," the part of language which "fills in" between the
other parts. "'That part,''' we are told, "'the "filling" you might
say, of which the expression "you might say"
is
a good example,
is
to me the most interesting part.''' Of particular importance are
" 'those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash
phenomenon,' '' aspects which are largely the substance of
Snow
White.
Hers is a world of "dreck," of unimaginative life where no
one responds to her "hair initiative" because "Americans will not or
cannot see themselves as princely."
In a world of one hundred percent trash, its imagination dead
and its language simply "blanketing," how does one break through
all the blanketing, trash, and
dreck
to a happier reality one hopes
would remain beneath? Barthelme's form provides the answer, and
in several self-consciously experimental stories written after
Snow
White
he plans an epistemological strategy to get at the heart of
things. "Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowning," his most famous
story, demonstrates the problem. It is an attempt to understand one
of the most "blanketed" and obscured events in our recent history,
the substance and appeal of the most enigmatic of politicians, and
Barthelme's form expresses the near impossibility of the task. Gath-
ering notes from all available sources, the story tries to tell what the
f:
man was. In individually subtitled paragraphs,
K.,
as he is called,
is observed at
his
Justice Department desk, in public affairs, and at
his home, but his behavior seems totally ambiguous. Reports are taken
from others, as K. is described by secretaries, assistants, a former
teacher, and a friend; but they are just glimpses, hard to pin down,
and often contradictory. When K. himself speaks, we hear only
dreck:
" 'It's an expedient in terms of how not to destroy a situation which
has been a long time gestating, or again how to break it up
if
it
appears that the situation has changed during the gestation period,
