March 9th, 2009 / 8:53 pm
Excerpts
Matthew Simmons
Excerpts
Power Quote
“Both writers were inimitable even as they were widely imitated. Carver, younger, less productive, a practitioner of a spare gritty realism often called minimalism, was the junior executive. Donald Barthelme—sparkling fabulist and idiosyncratic reinventor of the genre, practitioner of swift verbal collages, also sometimes dubbed minimalism—was commander in chief. Barthelme’s particular brilliance was so original, so sui generis, despite its tutelage at the feet of pages by Joyce, Beckett, and Stein, that even his own brothers Frederick and Steven, also fiction writers of intelligence and style, wrote more like Carver.”
—Lorrie Moore, “How He Wrote His Songs“
Tags: donald barthelme, Lorrie Moore, Power Quote
is it saying brothers couldn’t do it or didn’t want to? seems like the first (‘don was so original, look at even this fact’). but frederick barthelme always said it was a conscious effort not to copy don, because it would be so easy for others to say he was in the door because of big bro. f. bartheleme actually wrote a lot of strange, crazy stuff in his early career, more like donald (but weirder, with like gazelle hooves nailed to pages and stuff) then reconsidered. more here, sort of, actual title “On Being Wrong: Convicted Minimalist Spills Bean”: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DE173BF930A35757C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.
Oh, hello, I like html giant.
is it saying brothers couldn’t do it or didn’t want to? seems like the first (‘don was so original, look at even this fact’). but frederick barthelme always said it was a conscious effort not to copy don, because it would be so easy for others to say he was in the door because of big bro. f. bartheleme actually wrote a lot of strange, crazy stuff in his early career, more like donald (but weirder, with like gazelle hooves nailed to pages and stuff) then reconsidered. more here, sort of, actual title “On Being Wrong: Convicted Minimalist Spills Bean”: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DE173BF930A35757C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.
Oh, hello, I like html giant.
Nice quote and link. I am too brain-damaged to read through the link Mr. Rossi provided. Maybe tomorrow. I am ashamed to say that I wanted to be more annoyed with Moore’s piece. I was not annoyed. I have some bad memories of other of her NYRB articles. I think she has written some BRILLIANT short stories, but I find her non-fiction voice smug sometimes. And -well. I don’t understand her place in “american letters”. As I’ve mentioned in other places here, I think that my irritation is born out of envy. So, yeah. I envy her. But this one was just good.
My favorite part of the NYRB is the “personals”. I keep meaning to post one for mean monday. But I worry that it would be ilegal? Which Philip Roth novel has a huge mocking the NYRB personals part in it? To try and find it! It was hilarious.
Here are some titles to the personals, that give you an idea:
French Woman
British/European Beauty
Stunning, European
Sparkling Eyes
Eurpoean Sophistication
Passionate Artist
I don’t think Lorrie is saying they “couldn’t.” I think just that Barthelme was such a singular figure that even two other Barthelme’s really weren’t Barthelme.
Point taken, though. She simplifies the more complicated history of Frederick Barthelme’s writing history.
I don’t think Lorrie is saying they “couldn’t.” I think just that Barthelme was such a singular figure that even two other Barthelme’s really weren’t Barthelme.
Point taken, though. She simplifies the more complicated history of Frederick Barthelme’s writing history.
I used history twice. Remove the second one.
I used history twice. Remove the second one.
Don’t forget the mention of the NYRB’s personals in this scene from Annie Hall:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY
(1:20)
Don’t forget the mention of the NYRB’s personals in this scene from Annie Hall:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY
(1:20)
That was great! Although it also explains why after 20 years in NY, I can barely leave my house anymore. Unbearable! But I have to find that Roth thing…
Good quote… although I must confess I’ve never heard Barthelme dubbed minimalism.
Good quote… although I must confess I’ve never heard Barthelme dubbed minimalism.
such a great scene
such a great scene
i could see some of the minimalism, but on a very base and mostly reactionary level: as in, sometimes when i’m reading carver i’m like “what?” and sometimes when i’m reading barthelme i’m like “what?” it has to do with omission and non-linear movement, i think. or maybe it’s just length. barthelme’s stories are almost all fairly short. a lot of them have an abbreviated feel (i am thinking of “robert kennedy saved by drowning”, the story about the phantom of the opera, and one about the father that’s sort of similar tp [though predating] ben marcus’ writing about fathers) in certain ways, i could see them being compared to the lish-carved (unintentional pun) version “a small, good thing”.
i could see some of the minimalism, but on a very base and mostly reactionary level: as in, sometimes when i’m reading carver i’m like “what?” and sometimes when i’m reading barthelme i’m like “what?” it has to do with omission and non-linear movement, i think. or maybe it’s just length. barthelme’s stories are almost all fairly short. a lot of them have an abbreviated feel (i am thinking of “robert kennedy saved by drowning”, the story about the phantom of the opera, and one about the father that’s sort of similar tp [though predating] ben marcus’ writing about fathers) in certain ways, i could see them being compared to the lish-carved (unintentional pun) version “a small, good thing”.
One thing I notice about Donald Barthelme is that he actually has a fondness for disorderliness, whereas other sometimes-minimalist writers who also have a ken for literary disruption (i.e., Gary Lutz, Christine Schutt, etc.) seem to really thrive on a strange sort of orderliness. If you started to divide up writers in this way, on an orderliness v. disorderliness scale of inclination, you might find some strange bedfellows. On the disorderliness side of things, per ejemple, you’d have Barthelme, Ann Beattie, and Raymond Carver (who famously wouldn’t close his damn frames.) On the orderliness side of things, you’d have Lutz, Schutt, and, say, Richard Ford.
There are probably more holes in this theory than Swiss cheese. What can I say? I’m just a college football player. But we are some goddamn orderly motherfuckers, and I have the X’s and O’s and a hundred thousand hours of game film analysis and playbook workshops to prove it.
One thing I notice about Donald Barthelme is that he actually has a fondness for disorderliness, whereas other sometimes-minimalist writers who also have a ken for literary disruption (i.e., Gary Lutz, Christine Schutt, etc.) seem to really thrive on a strange sort of orderliness. If you started to divide up writers in this way, on an orderliness v. disorderliness scale of inclination, you might find some strange bedfellows. On the disorderliness side of things, per ejemple, you’d have Barthelme, Ann Beattie, and Raymond Carver (who famously wouldn’t close his damn frames.) On the orderliness side of things, you’d have Lutz, Schutt, and, say, Richard Ford.
There are probably more holes in this theory than Swiss cheese. What can I say? I’m just a college football player. But we are some goddamn orderly motherfuckers, and I have the X’s and O’s and a hundred thousand hours of game film analysis and playbook workshops to prove it.
nice – i like this orderly or not idea.
yes, i found this interesting as well
yes, i found this interesting as well