Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

    Error

  A government error resulting in the death of a statistically insignificant portion of the population (less than one-fortieth of one per cent) has made people uneasy. A skelp of questions and answers is fused at high temperature (1400° C) and then passed through a series of protracted caresses. Amelioration of the condition results. Paraguay is not old. It is new, a new country. Rough sketches suggest its “look.” Heavy yellow drops like pancake batter fall from its sky. I hold a bouquet of umbrellas in each hand. A phrase of Herko Mueller’s: “Y un 60% son mestizos: gloria, orgullo, presente y futuro del Paraguay” (“. . . the glory, pride, present and future of Paraguay”). The country’s existence is “predictive,” he says, and I myself have noticed a sort of frontier ambience. There are problems. The problem of shedding skin. Thin discarded shells like disposable plastic gloves are found in the street.

    Rationalization

  The problems of art. 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. (It is in this area, they say in Paraguay, that traditional practices were most blameworthy.) 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 art as his system can tolerate. Marketing considerations have not been allowed to dictate product mix; rather, each artist is encouraged to maintain, in his software, highly personal, even idiosyncratic, standards (the so-called “hand of the artist” concept). Rationalization produces simpler circuits and, therefore, a saving in hardware. Each artist’s product is translated into a statement in symbolic logic. The statement is then “minimized” by various clever methods. The simpler statement is translated back into the design of a simpler circuit. Foamed by a number of techniques, the art is then run through heavy steel rollers. Flip-flop switches control its further development. Sheet art is generally dried in smoke and is dark brown in color. Bulk art is air-dried, and changes color in particular historical epochs.

    Skin

  Ignoring a letter from the translator Jean sat on a rubber pad doing exercises designed to loosen the skin. Scores of diamond-shaped lights abraded her arms and legs. The light placed a pattern of false information in those zones most susceptible to tearing. Whistling noises accompanied the lights. The process of removing the leg skin is private. Tenseness is eased by the application of a cream, heavy yellow drops like pancake batter. I held several umbrellas over her legs. A man across the street pretending not to watch us. Then the skin placed in the green official receptacles.

    The Wall

  Our design for the lift tower left us with a vast blind wall of in situ concrete. There was thus the danger of having a dreary expanse of blankness in that immensely important part of the building. A solution had to be found. The great wall space would provide an opportunity for a gesture of thanks to the people of Paraguay; a stone would be placed in front of it, and, instead of standing in the shadows, the Stele of the Measures would be brought there also. The wall would be divided, by means of softly worn paths, into doors. These, varying in size from the very large to the very small, would have different colors and thicknesses. Some would open, some would not, and this would change from week to week, or from hour to hour, or in accord with sounds made by people standing in front of them. Long lines or tracks would run from the doors into the roaring public spaces.2

    Silence

  In the larger stores silence (damping materials) is sold in paper sacks like cement. Similarly, the softening of language usually lamented as a falling off from former practice is in fact a clear response to the proliferation of surfaces and stimuli. Imprecise sentences lessen the strain of close tolerances. Silence is also available in the form of white noise. The extension of white noise to the home by means of leased wire from a central generating point has been useful, Herko says. The analogous establishment of “white space” in a system paralleling the existing park system has also been beneficial. Anechoic chambers placed randomly about the city (on the model of telephone booths) are said to have actually saved lives. Wood is becoming rare. They are now paying for yellow pine what was formerly paid for rosewood. Relational methods govern the layout of cities. Curiously, in some of the most successful projects the design has been swung upon small collections of rare animals spaced (on the lost-horse principle) on a lack of grid. Carefully calculated mixes: mambas, the black wrasse, the giselle. Electrolytic jelly exhibiting a capture ratio far in excess of standard is used to fix the animals in place.

    Terror

  We rushed down to the ends of the waves, apertures through which threatening lines might be seen. Arbiters registered serial numbers of the (complex of threats) with ticks on a great, brown board. Jean meanwhile, unaffected, was casting about on the beach for driftwood, brown washed pieces of wood laced with hundreds of tiny hairline cracks. Such is the smoothness of surfaces in Paraguay that anything not smooth is valuable. She explains to me that in demanding (and receiving) explanations you are once more brought to a stop. You have got, really, no farther than you were before. “Therefore we try to keep everything open, go forward avoiding the final explanation. If we inadvertently receive it, we are instructed to 1) pretend that it is just another error, or 2) misunderstand it. Creative misunderstanding is crucial.” Creation of new categories of anxiety which must be bandaged or “patched.” The expression “put a patch on it.” There are “hot” and “cold” patches and specialists in the application of each. Rhathymia is the preferred mode of presentation of the self.

    The Temple

  Turning sharply to the left I came upon, in a grove of trees, a temple of some sort, abandoned, littered with empty boxes, the floor coated with a thin layer of lime. I prayed. Then drawing out my flask I refreshed myself with apple juice. Everyone in Paraguay has the same fingerprints. There are crimes but people chosen at random are punished for them. Everyone is liable for everything. An extension of the principle, there but for the grace of God go I. Sexual life is very free. There are rules but these are like the rules of chess, intended to complicate and enrich the game. I made love to Jean Mueller while her husband watched. There have been certain technical refinements. The procedures we use (called here “impalement”) are used in Paraguay but also new techniques I had never before encountered, “dimidiation” and “quartering.” These I found very refreshing.

    Microminiaturization

  Microminiaturization leaves enormous spaces to be filled. Disposability of the physical surround has psychological consequences. The example of the child’s anxiety occasioned by the family’s move to a new home may be cited. Everything physical in Paraguay is getting smaller and smaller. Walls thin as a thought, locomotive-substitutes no bigger than ball-point pens. Paraguay, then, has big empty spaces in which men wander, trying to touch something. Preoccupation with skin (on and off, wrinkling, the new skin, pink fresh, taut) possibly a response to this. Stories about skin, histories of particular skins. But no jokes! Some 700,000 photographs of nuclear events were lost when the great library of Paraguay burned. Particle identification was set back many years. Rather than recreate the former physics, a new physics based on the golden section (proliferation of golden sections) was constructed. As a system of explanation almost certain to be incorrect it enjoys enormous prestige here.

    Behind the Wall

  Behind the wall there is a field of red snow. I had expected that to enter it would be forbidden, but Jean said no, walk about in it, as much as you like. I had expected that walking in it one would leave no footprints, or that there would be some other anomaly of that kind, but there were no anomalies; I left footprints and felt the cold of red snow underfoot. I said to Jean Mueller, �
�What is the point of this red snow?” “The intention of the red snow, the reason it is isolated behind the wall, yet not forbidden, is its soft glow—as if it were lighted from beneath. You must have noticed it; you’ve been standing here for twenty minutes.” “But what does it do?” “Like any other snow, it invites contemplation and walking about in.” The snow rearranged itself into a smooth, red surface without footprints. It had a red glow, as if lighted from beneath. It seemed to proclaim itself a mystery, but one there was no point in solving—an ongoing low-grade mystery.

    Departure

  Then I was shown the plan, which is kept in a box. Herko Mueller opened the box with a key (everyone has a key). “Here is the plan,” he said. “It governs more or less everything. It is a way of allowing a very wide range of tendencies to interact.” The plan was a number of analyses of Brownian motion equipped, at each end, with alligator clips. Then the bell rang and the space became crowded, hundreds of men and women standing there waiting for the marshals to establish some sort of order. I had been chosen, Herko said, to head the column (on the principle of the least-likely-leader). We robed; I folded my arms around the mace. We began the descent (into? out of?) Paraguay.

  1. Quoted from A Summer Ride Through Western Tibet, by Jane E. Duncan, Collins, London, 1906. Slightly altered.

  2. Quoted from The Modular, by Le Corbusier, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1954. Slightly altered.

  The Falling Dog

  YES, A dog jumped on me out of a high window. I think it was the third floor, or the fourth floor. Or the third floor. Well, it knocked me down. I had my chin on the concrete. Well, he didn’t bark before he jumped. It was a silent dog. I was stretched out on the concrete with the dog on my back. The dog was looking at me, his muzzle curled round my ear, his breath was bad, I said “Get off.”

  He did. He walked away looking back over his shoulder. “Christ,” I said. Crumbs of concrete had been driven into my chin. “For God’s sake,” I said. The dog was four or five metres down the sidewalk, standing still. Looking back at me over his shoulder.

  gay dogs falling

  sense in which you would say of a thing,

  it’s a dog, as you would say, it’s a lemon

  rain of dogs like rain of frogs

  or shower of objects dropped to confuse enemy radar

  Well, it was a standoff. I was on the concrete. He was standing there. Neither of us spoke. I wondered what he was like (the dog’s life). I was curious about the dog. Then I understood why I was curious.

  wrapped or bandaged, vulnerability but also

  aluminum

  plexiglas

  anti-hairy materials

  vaudeville (the slide for life)

  (Of course I instantly made up a scenario to explain everything. Involving a mysterious ((very beautiful)) woman. Her name is Sophie. I follow the dog to her house. “The dog brought me.” There is a ringing sound. “What is that ringing?” “That is the electric eye.” “Did I break a beam?” “You and the dog together. The dog is only admitted if he brings someone.” “What is that window he jumped out of?” “That is his place.” “But he comes here because . . .” “His food is here.” Sophie smiles and puts a hand on my arm. “Now you must go.” “Take the dog back to his place and then come back here?” “No, just take the dog back to his place. That will be enough. When he has finished eating.” “Is that all there is to it?” “I needed the beam broken,” Sophie says with a piteous look ((Sax Rohmer)). “When the beam is broken, the bell rings. The bell summons a man.” “Another man.” “Yes. A Swiss.” “I could do whatever it is he does.” “No. You are for breaking the beam and taking the dog back to his place.” I hear him then, the Swiss. I hear his motorcycle. The door opens, he enters, a real brute, muscled, lots of fur ((Olympia Press)). “Why is the dog still here?” “This man refuses to take him back.” The Swiss grabs the dog under the muzzle mock playfully. “He wants to stay!” the Swiss says, to the dog. “He wants to stay!” Then the Swiss turns to me. “You’re not going to take the dog back?” Threatening look, gestures, etc., etc. “No,” I say. “The dog jumped on my back, out of a window. A very high window, the third floor or the fourth floor. My chin was driven into the concrete.” “What do I care about your flaming chin? I don’t think you understand your function. Your function is to get knocked down by the dog, follow the dog here and break the beam, then take the dog back to his place. There’s no reason in the world why we should stand here and listen to a lot of flaming nonsense about your flaming etc. etc. . . .”)

  I looked at the dog. He looked at me.

  who else has done dogs?

  Baskin, Bacon, Landseer, Hogarth, Hals

  with leashes trailing as they fall

  with dog impedimenta following:

  bowl, bone, collar, license, Gro-pup

  I noticed that he was an Irish setter, rust-colored. He noticed that I was a Welsh sculptor, buff-colored (no, really, what did he notice? how does he think?). I reflected that he was probably a nice dog from a good home (bourgeois dog) but with certain unfortunate habits like jumping on people from high windows (rationalization: he is a member of the television generation and thus—)

  Well, I read a letter, then. A letter that had come to me from Germany, that had been in my pocket. I hadn’t wanted to read it before but now I read it. It seemed a good time.

  Mr. XXXX XXXXXXXX

  c/o Blue Gallery

  Madison and Eighty-first St.

  New York, N.Y.

  Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX:

  For the above-mentioned publishers I am preparing a book of recent American sculptors. This work shall not become a collection of gee-gaws and so, it tries to be an aimed presentation of the qualitative best recent American sculptors. I personally am fascinated from your collected YAWNING MAN series of sculptors as well as the YAWNING lithographs. For this reason I absolutely want to include a new figure or figures from you if there are new ones. The critiques of your first show in Basel had been very bad. The German reviewers are coming from such immemorial conceptions of art that they did not know what to do with your sculptors. And I wish a better welcome to your contribution to this book when it is published here. Please send recent photographs of the work plus explanatory text on the YAWNING MAN.

  Many thanks! and kindest regards!

  Yours,

  R. Rondorfer

  Well, I was right in not wanting to read that letter. It was kind of this man to be interested in something I was no longer interested in. How was he to know that I was in that unhappiest of states, between images?

  But now something new had happened to me.

  dogs as a luxury (what do we need them for?)

  hounds of heaven

  fallen in the sense of fallen angels

  flayed dogs falling? musculature

  sans skeleton?

  But it is well to be suspicious. Sometimes an image is not an image at all but merely an idea. People have wasted years.

  I wanted the dog’s face. Whereas my old image, the Yawning Man, had been faceless (except for a gap where the mouth was, the yawn itself), I wanted the dog’s face. I wanted his expression, falling. I thought of the alternatives: screaming, smiling. And things in between.

  dirty and clean dogs

  ultra-clean dogs, laboratory animals

  thrown or flung dogs

  in series, Indian file

  an exploded view of the Falling Dog:

  head, heart, liver, lights

  to the dogs

  putting on the dog:

  I am telling him something which isn’t true

  and we are both falling

  dog
tags!

  but forget puns. Cloth falling dogs, the

  gingham dog and the etc., etc. Pieces

  of cloth dogs falling. Or quarter-inch

  plywood in layers, the layers separated

  by an inch or two of airspace. Like old

  triple-wing aircraft

  dog-ear (pages falling with corners bent back)

  Tray: cafeteria trays of some obnoxious brown plastic

  But enough puns

  Group of tiny hummingbird-sized falling dogs

  Massed in upper corners of a room with high ceilings,

  14–17 foot

  in rows, in ranks, on their backs

  Well, I understood then that this was my new image, The Falling Dog. My old image, the Yawning Man, was played out. I had done upward of two thousand Yawning Men in every known material, and I was tired of it. Images fray, tatter, empty themselves. I had seven good years with that image, the Yawning Man, but—

  But now I had the Falling Dog, what happiness.

  (flights? sheets?)

  of falling dogs, flat falling dogs like sails

  Day-Glo dogs falling

  am I being sufficiently skeptical?

  try it out

  die like a

  dog-eat-dog

  proud as a dog in shoes

  dogfight