DONALD BARTHELME
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"active" protagonists - the mode requires it, in order to make the
book or story work.
In
a mixed mode, some reportage and some
play (which also makes its own observations), you might be
relieved of this restriction. Contemporary life engenders, even
enforces, passivity, as does television . Have you ever tried to
reason with a Convenience Card money machine? Asked for
napkin rings in an Amtrak snack-bar car? Of course you don't.
Still, the horizon of memory enters in, you attempt to register
change, the color of this moment as opposed to the past or what
you know of it.
McCaffery:
In
The Dead Father,
you deal with the notion that we're all
dragging around behind us the corpses of our fathers, as well as
the past in general.
Barthelme:
Worse: dragging these
ahead
of us. I have several younger
brothers, among them my brother Frederick, who is also a writer.
After
The Dead Father
came out, he telephoned and said, "I'm
working on a new novel." I said, "What's it called?" and he said,
"The Dead Brother. "
McCaffery:
Was "A Manual for Sons" originally conceived as being a
part of the novel? It seems like a marvellous set piece.
Barthelme:
Originally it was distributed throughout the book as a kind
of seasoning, but in time it became clear that it should be one long
section. My German publisher, Siegfried Unseld, said rather
sternly to me one evening, "Isn't this a digression?" I said, "Yes, it
is." He was absolutely right, in technical terms.
McCaffery:
In
The Dead Father,
and more recently in
Great Days,
you
strip the narrative almost completely of the old-fashioned means
of story development.
In
fact, by the time we get to the stories in
Great Days,
what we find are simply voices interacting with one
another.
Barthelme:
In
The Dead Father,
there are four or five passages in which
the two principal women talk to each other, or talk
against
each
other, or over each other's heads, or between each other's legs–
passages which were possible because there is a fairly strong
narrative line surrounding them. It's questionable whether such
things can be made to fly without the support of a controlling
narrative.
McCaffery :
Was Beckett an influence in this recent form of experi–
mentation?
Barthelme:
Beckett has been a great influence, which I think is clear.
But the effort is not to write like Beckett. You can't do Beckett all
