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also intertwined "into a rushing, ribald whole." Barthelme's forms arc
typically fragmented - collages, soliloquies that move in spasms from
cerebral interrogations to whimsical fantasies - and within these forms,
with the assiduity of the pop artists, he has consistently posed the pri–
mary products of the "trash phenomenon," a wide array of frozen lan–
guage. Thick slices of technological jargon cut from professional journals
are wedged in his text between literary allusions and the
blague
of post–
Freudian introspection, discourse that masturbates the jaded ego with
promises of significance. The language of the Seven Dwarfs in
Snow
White
is all replication : "It means that the 'not-with' is experienced as
more pressing, more real, than the 'being-with.'
It
means she seeks a
new lover."
Yet the pop artist's consent to the ravishment of modern society,
his avid reproduction of its commodities and creation of para-assembly
lines (Andy Warhol's Factory ), is a measure adamantly refused in
Barthelme's fiction. The propositions are nonetheless made. One of the
dwarfs in
Snow White,
noting the per capita production of trash in the
United States, predicts its ultimate totality: "Now at such a point, you
will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this 'trash'
to a question of appreciating its qualities, because, after all, it's one
hundred percent, right?" And in
City L ife
the question is whether the
blue electrical flowers should be plugged in, whether the ersatz world
we have created should be inhabited wi thout the regrets of the human–
ist. The skillfully drawn dystopia in
City Life,
"Paraguay," sardonically
undercuts these propositions. A carefully programmed totalitarian so–
ciety, Paraguay solves its problems by gently and persuasively killing
the human spirit. Repressively tolerant, maniacally progressive, it is a
paradise not only for the technician but also for the pop artist: "New
artists have been obtained. These do not object to, and indeed argue
enthusiastically for, the rationalization process. Production is up. Quality–
control devices have been installed at those points where the interests
of artists and audience intersect. Shipping and distribution have been
improved out of all recognition.... The rationalized art is dispatched
from central art dumps to regional art dumps, and from there into the
lifestreams of cities. Each citizen is given as much as his system can
tolerate." The artist indeed has become a technician. What Paraguay
seeks, above all, is an efficient homogeneity. Barthelme has the same
good ear for brutalized language that Swift had, who also savaged the
social scientists and pure researchers in their own extravagant terms.
Yet if "Paraguay" belongs to the tradition of the satiric travel narrative,
