The Teachings of Don B.

by Donald Barthelme

  “Next, who knows what effect these laser beams and whatnot will have on the ozone layer, just for starters? They’ll tell you the ozone layer can’t possibly be affected, but you’ll remember that just a few short years ago Agent Orange was said to be harmless to people, so we dumped God knows how much of it all over Vietnam and Cambodia. That’s recent science we’re talking about, science not twenty years old. You get an if-we-can-we-will situation. Scientists make their careers out of working on these things, and the question of whether or not it should be done flies out of the window. I know people tend to grow more conservative as they grow older, but frankly, this stuff scares the hell out of me. I may be merciless, but I’m not a damned fool.”

  DONALD BARTHELME’S FINE HOMEMADE SOUPS

  My fine homemade soups are interesting, economical, and tasty. To make them, one proceeds in the following way:

  FINE HOMEMADE LEEK SOUP

  Take one package Knorr Leek Soupmix. Prepare as directed. Take two live leeks. Chop leeks into quarter-inch rounds. Throw into Soupmix. Throw in 1/2 cup Tribuno Dry Vermouth. Throw in chopped parsley. Throw in some amount of salt and a heavy bit of freshly ground pepper. Eat with good-quality French bread, dipped repeatedly in soup.

  FINE HOMEMADE MUSHROOM SOUP

  Take one package Knorr Mushroom Soupmix. Prepare as directed. Take four large mushrooms. Slice. Throw into Soupmix. Throw in 1/2 cup Tribuno Dry Vermouth, parsley, salt, pepper. Stick bread as above into soup at intervals. Buttering bread enhances taste of the whole.

  FINE HOMEMADE CHICKEN SOUP

  Take Knorr Chicken Soupmix, prepare as directed, throw in leftover chicken, duck, or goose as available. Add enhancements as above.

  FINE HOMEMADE OXTAIL SOUP

  Take Knorr Oxtail Soupmix, decant into same any leftover meat (sliced or diced) from the old refrigerator. Follow above strategies to the letter. The result will make you happy. Knorr’s Oxtail is also good as a basic gravy maker and constituent of a fine fake cassoulet about which we can talk at another time. Knorr is a very good Swiss outfit whose products can be found in both major and minor cities. The point here is not to be afraid of the potential soup but to approach it with the attitude that you know what’s best for it. And you do. The rawness of the vegetables refreshes the civilization of the Soupmixes. And there are opportunities for mercy—if your ox does not wish to part with his tail, for example, to dress up your fine Oxtail Soup, you can use commercial products from our great American supermarkets, which will be almost as good. These fine homemade recipes work! Use them with furious enthusiasm.

  ADVENTURE

  Christine’s had been a typical Metz childhood. But now she was ready for something . . . larger. Entering the great city, the city of her dreams, she was ready for anything. She was ready for evil itself, if that was what came her way, and she had heard that it often did, in great cities. What new demands would the city make on her? What dark unknown strands in her nature would be unwound? With whom would these strands entangle?

  “So this is grandeur!” Christine exclaimed. She drank in the great city with all of her senses.

  The gorgeousness of the architecture struck her dreaming eye with the force of a hundred blows. Even the telephone booths were—“They make our old Metz telephone booths look like—like shoe boxes! What would Yves say, if he could see me now?”

  Back in Metz, Yves continued to devote himself to the billiard table.

  Lounging in the Public Gardens, Christine became aware of a stern and expressive gaze that seemed to penetrate to the inmost recesses of her perturbed heart.

  The gaze was that of Henri Mohrt, the well-known dealer. Without hesitation she took his arm. Soon they were viewing his combined sculpture and furniture store on the Rue du Bac.

  Henri offered to “put her up” on the couch in the spare room. Christine slept dreamlessly as he watched through the night.

  Life with Henri was not simple. Christine had to learn to eat many new foods: (1) Enameled Eggplant Climbing a Mound of Diced Buffalo, (2) Mother Crayfish Surrounded by Her Young, Electric Sauce, (3) Brained Chocolate-covered Turtle with Pineapple Shell, and (4) Shocked Pork Chops in Individual Strega-soaked Muslin Bags.

  If she did not like one of these dishes, Henri would fly into a terrible rage. But this was his only major fault. Her nights vibrated with the strange music of his urgent whispers.

  Meanwhile, in Metz, what must be described in all candour as a stroke of ill fortune had befallen Yves.

  To finance his billiard losses. Yves had rustled a flock of ducks—12,000 head. His sentence was two years. One day in the gallery, Christine told Henri that she was returning to Metz. She would marry Yves, she said, as soon as his time was served. But she would never forget Henri and the life they had lived together in the radiant city.

  The very sculptures seemed to express loss, resignation, and dubiousness.

  “I hope you are making the right decision,” Henri said, “because if you are not, you will not be happy.”

  Henri’s farewell gift was a handsome rug.

  “Is there never again to be . . . adventure?”

  HELIOTROPE

  It is April, and Heliotrope, the Open University of San Francisco, is once again turning toward the sun of felt needs and marigold-yellow fulfillments. Heliotrope is a real university, and lives at 21 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, California, 94111. Marigold yellow is one of the colors of Heliotrope’s April bulletin, on the cover of which three competition bicyclists, crash-helmeted, are bent low over their handlebars, pedaling madly toward Awareness. Come, let us join them. For too long have we tarried in the dismal sunless cities of the East. Come. Let us go, then, love, and enlist ourselves in Course D-16, Awareness and Weight Loss Workshop, designed for the unsuccessful dieter: “Each participant will have an opportunity to tailor-make a weight-loss program incorporating their food cravings, life-style needs, and principles of sound nutrition. Transactional Analysis will be used as a framework for understanding the personal motivations that contribute to overeating problems.” Come. Your food cravings have long been a puzzlement (that time you ordered Blue Whale Stuffed with Ford Pinto), and as for your life-style—But I am not being critical; it is the East, the East, the Unreal City, to which I attach the blame. That, and the stuffy rigid hierarchical closed universities which infest it and us. Let us leave all that behind, shoulder our backpacks, and return to basics at Heliotrope, the Open University of San Francisco. We can take Basic Astrology, D-20: “Instructress is student of the vast harmonious order of the universe.” And so can we be, if only we can shed our narrow paranoid pale untogether judgmental Valium-popping Eastern ways. Required for the course: a birth certificate or correct knowledge of time (hour, minute), month, day, year of birth. Or we can take Basic Bridge (D-21), Basic Macramé (D-22), Basic Silk-screening (D-24), Basic Herb Gardening (D-111), or Basic Turkish (D-29): “Mellow low-key course.” We are sour and high-key; that is part of what ails us—how could we not have known? We have been frittering. Let us fritter no more. Or we have been seeking answers. That is a mistake. “When an answer is found, it is not the end but only a beginning.” Why didn’t we think of that? The Open University offers us beginnings and beginnings and beginnings, and what do we want more than beginnings? Come. We can begin Alpha & Theta Brain Wave Training (D-8), Belly Dance (D-30), Bicycle Repair and Maintenance (D-31), Common Medical Problems (D-38), or Divorce Before & After (D-47). “If you are thinking about divorce, if you have recently been divorced, or if you are thinking of remarriage, this is an opportunity to clarify your feelings and to share your experience with assistance from a trained professional.” Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don’t count? Come, love, and we will think about it together at the Open University, with assistance from a trained professional. Heliotrope, you will notice, does not offer us any untrained professionals—Heaven forfend! And if we can’t clarify our feelings, perhaps we can clarify our butt
er, by taking Vegetarian & Natural Foods Cooking, D-102. And if these resplendent opportunities are not enough we can dip a toe into D-60, Happiness and Freedom; D-65, Hypnosis with Color; D-81, Outdoor Meditation, Intensive; D-100, Tide Pool Life; D-135, Two-Stroke Motorcycle Maintenance; D-136, Introduction to Gambling; or D-91, Stained Glass. Come, dearly beloved, hung-up, rarefied, Con Ed–haunted mandarin that you are, let us pick up our water beds and gimp off into the sunrise, to Heliotrope, the Open University of San Francisco. There is even a course in Love (D-71): “We cover self love, romantic love, humanitarian love, and spiritual love.” Perhaps they know something that we do not. Ah, happy Heliotrope, with its Kung Fu, Tai Chi Chuan, Tap Dancing, Group Bioenergetic Reeducation, and Gestalt for Women Over 35! Come. You, dear friend, can teach a course in Paying the Telephone Bill, and I will teach one in Napping, and we will both, at long last, be avenged upon that fancy-Dan Lionel Trilling.

  THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

  THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG’S BACK

  Four thousand pieces of second-class mail! Four thousand pieces of second-class mail enriched with certain letters of historical importance and literary forgeries of great cunning! These cover the goatskin rug. The goatskin rug covers the lazy dog. The angry young man, using the new fiberglass pole, makes his run, jumps! He is aloft, he is up in the air, he has cleared the lazy dog, the goatskin rug, the four thousand pieces of second-class mail! A new earth record for the lazy dog’s back jump!

  What a wonderful thing it is to be angry! To be young.

  WHAT THE DICTIONARY SAYS

  an’gry young’ man, 1. (often cap.) one of a group of British writers since the late 1950’s whose works reflect strong dissatisfaction with, frustration by, and rebellion against tradition and society. 2. any author writing in this manner. 3. any frustrated, rebellious person. Also, referring to a woman, an’gry young/ wom’an.

  —Random House Dictionary of the English Language

  HIS OPINION OF THE QUEEN

  “She’s as comely as a cow in a cage.”

  HIS CLOTHING

  Brown corduroy pants, black turtleneck sweater, work shoes, coonskin cap, glass of porter in right hand. Or, dark-blue suit, black shoes, white shirt, maroon tie—this worn when receiving the OBE or other honors.

  OPINION OF THE PRESENT SITUATION

  “What is your opinion of the present situation?”

  “Well, it’s better than sleeping with a dead policeman.”

  BEFORE THE MIRROR

  The dark muscle of the angry young man, surrounded as it is by the light muscle, flexes.

  “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most baddest angry young man of all?”

  ATTITUDE TOWARD THE REVOLUTION

  “Well, it can’t happen here, can it? I mean, Daddy won’t allow it, will he? Daddy and his pals, and the posh papers, the whole rotten lot of them? I mean, it’s just a lot of cock, now, isn’t it?”

  TAXES PAID INLAND REVENUE FOR THE YEAR 1959

  £2,850.

  THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN MEETS THE ANGRY YOUNG WOMAN

  “Tom!”

  “Helen!”

  “How’ve you been? Angry?”

  “Rabid.”

  “Good girl. Tea?”

  “Yes thanks I’d love some.”

  MOMENT OF SELF-DOUBT IN THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

  “Is there any point in being an angry old man?”

  THE ALBERT HALL LECTURE

  “Yes. Well. My subject tonight is cooking before marriage. It has been my observation, and I’m not alone in this, other people have made the same observation, a blind man could see it, that the young people today are doing a bloody great lot of cooking together before marriage. Cooking together, shamelessly, night after night, and God knows I’m no prude but the sight of these young . . . lovebirds . . . without so much as a by-your-leave, without so much as the shred of a marriage contract between them, well it’s a bit much now isn’t it . . . wallowing in . . . spices . . . rosemary . . . saffron . . .”

  PASSING OF TIME IN THE LIFE OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

  L(%¢, L(%&, L(%*, L(%(, L(¢), L(¢L, L(¢@, L(¢#, L(¢$, L(¢%, L(¢¢, L(¢&, L(¢*, L(¢(, L(&), L(&L, L(&@, L(&#, L(&$

  CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ANGRY YOUNG BOOK

  The angry young book should be a good true book of a familiar and reliable pattern. It should concern itself with human emotions of standard issue plus at least one (1) nonstandard emotion for seasoning and piquancy. It should extend to a good number of pages and said pages should hold a full body of printing both recto and verso, the lines so arranged as to come out even at the right-hand margin, save at the termination of paragraphs and the like. It should have a good true spine to which the pages are attached by sewing and a strong glue, and no page should fly out of the whole save by prior arrangement, as when the author is especially angry. The same should reflect strong dissatisfaction with, frustration by, and rebellion against tradition and society. The book should, ideally, burn the hands—a third-degree burn.

  CURRENT MANIFESTATIONS OF THE “KITCHEN SINK” SCHOOL OF BRITISH PAINTING, THOUGHT AT ONE TIME TO BE ANALOGOUS TO THE WORK OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN

  There are none.

  THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN ATTENDS THE ANNUAL MEETING

  At the Annual Meeting, voices are raised in anger. The hall is crawling with coonskin caps, which are waved, or dropped, or flung. Large wheyfaced angry young men grapple with small wiry angry young men—the faces of the latter are made of string. The chairman calls for order but in vain; order is not wanted here. Skiffle bands engage in cutting contests. The floor is black with spilled porter and bile. Individual angry young men stand at various points with their backs to the crowd playing trumpets or cornets—each is playing a different tune. Other angry young men are refusing to speak to other angry young men. The flag is trampled, spat upon, urinated upon, used as a bar rag. Harrod’s is burned in effigy as it is every year (but some angry young men are seen snatching candied yummies from the flames).

  Nevertheless, important theoretical questions are raised:

  1. Is fresh ever-renewed soaring searing good-quality anger possible?

  2. How long, expressed in decades, can true anger be maintained without modulating into, say, pique?

  3. Was it originally pique, made to seem anger by skilled dramaturgy?

  4. What can be learned by studies of the shelf life of the average volcano?

  5. Can anger be institutionalized, can it avoid being institutionalized, and what is the place in all this of the cup of tea?

  6. Does the boiling point of the cup of tea vary from corrupt society to corrupt society?

  WHEREABOUTS OF THE WIVES OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

  The wives of the angry young man are now married to other people—doctors, mostly.

  THE MOVEMENT OF HISTORY

  The movement of history is heavy, and slow. The movement of history always takes place behind one’s back. As your gaze is fixed upon something immediately in front of you—the object of your anger, for example—history makes a slight, almost imperceptible slither, or shudder, in a direction of its own choice. The distinguishing mark of this direction is that it is not the one that you had anticipated. How history manages this is not known. Because history is made of the will of all individuals taken together, because these oceans of individuals are mostly, or always, in conflict, the movement of history is at one and the same time tightly bound, and outrageous. The problem may be diagrammed in the following way:

  Study of the previous behavior of history does not prepare one for these shifts, which are discomfiting in the extreme. Nothing prepares you.

  ULTIMATE MEANING OF THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

  The ultimate meaning of the angry young man is not known. What is known is the shape of his greatest fear—that all of his efforts, from learning to speak to learning to write, to write well, to write badly, to write angrily, from learning to despise to learning to abominate, to abominate well, to abominate
badly, to abominate abominably, to rant, to fulminate, to shout down the sea, to age, to age gracefully, to age awkwardly, to age at all, to think, to regret, to list himself in the newspapers under “Lost and Found,” might culminate precisely in this: a roaring, raging, crazy mad passionate bibliography.

  CORNELL

  I put a name in an envelope, and sealed the envelope; and put that envelope in another envelope with a spittlebug and some quantity of boric acid; and put that envelope in a still larger envelope which contained also a woman tearing her gloves to tatters; and put that envelope in the mail to Fichtelgebirge. At the Fichtelgebirge Post Office I asked if there was mail for me, with a mysterious smile the clerk said, “Yes,” I hurried with the envelope to London, arriving with snow, and put the envelope in the Victoria and Albert Museum, bowing to the curators in the Envelope Room, the wallpaper hanging down in thick strips. I put the Victoria and Albert Museum in a still larger envelope which I placed in the program of the Royal Danish Ballet, in the form of an advertisement for museums, boric acid, wallpaper. I put the program of the Royal Danish Ballet into the North Sea for two weeks. Then, I retrieved it, it was hanging down in thick strips, I sent it to a machine-vask on H. C. Andersens Boulevard, everything came out square and neat, I was overjoyed. I put the square, neat package in a safe place, and put the safe place in a vault designed by Caspar David Friedrich, German romantic landscape painter of the last century. I slipped the vault into a history of art (Insel Verlag, Frankfurt, 1975). But, in a convent library on the side of a hill near a principal city of Montana, it fell out of the history of art into a wastebasket, a thing I could not have predicted. I bound the wastebasket in stone, with a matchwood shroud covering the stone, and placed it in the care of Charles the Good, Charles the Bold, and Charles the Fair. They stand juggling cork balls before the many-times-encased envelope, whispering names which are not the right one. I put the three kings into a new blue suit; it walked away from me very confidently.