Hiding Man_ A Biography Of Donald Barthelme Part 19

As a result, every social category-cla.s.s, gender, neighborhood-fell under increasingly centralized national control. But the process was messy. According to T. J. Clark, Manet saw the new city as a "greasy press of people," with "ladies in crinolines having to come into contact with legless beggarboys on trolleys."

Le Ballon shows a mixed-cla.s.s crowd gazing in awe at a hot-air balloon, the kind of public spectacle that could not have occurred in Paris until Haussmann's reordering of the city, when the old social categories broke down. These are people whose routines have dissolved, who have encountered a strange new presence-modernity-in their midst. Manet's balloon vividly embodies that moment. shows a mixed-cla.s.s crowd gazing in awe at a hot-air balloon, the kind of public spectacle that could not have occurred in Paris until Haussmann's reordering of the city, when the old social categories broke down. These are people whose routines have dissolved, who have encountered a strange new presence-modernity-in their midst. Manet's balloon vividly embodies that moment.

His model was a hot-air balloon that belonged to the photographer Nadar (Gaspard-Felix Tournachon). Nadar used the balloon to photograph Paris from unique new angles, the city as never before seen.

As a publicity stunt, and to make room for his camera equipment, Nadar built his balloon six times the normal size. As he floated in it, he felt like a "traveler who [had] arrived yesterday in a strange city," a city in which "they have destroyed everything, down to the last souvenir souvenir." Nadar's photographs flatten s.p.a.ce and collapse the horizon. They reduce the landscape to a sea of signs-cathedrals become merely steeples; homes, chimneys; factories, smokestacks.

The invention of photography was a turning point in modern art, not only by supplying supplying new images but by forcing artists to paint images beyond the camera's reach. Similarly, movies would later challenge novelists' authority (Balzac complained that cameras stole his thunder, conjuring more vivid pictures than he could muster in prose). new images but by forcing artists to paint images beyond the camera's reach. Similarly, movies would later challenge novelists' authority (Balzac complained that cameras stole his thunder, conjuring more vivid pictures than he could muster in prose).

Manet's paintings mark the historical moment when these revolutionary changes first occurred. But this was just the beginning beginning of modernity. Three years after of modernity. Three years after Le Ballon Le Ballon (when (when Le Ballon Le Ballon was still very much in the public eye), Manet showed was still very much in the public eye), Manet showed Olympia Olympia at the Paris Salon, inciting a violent scandal and signaling another turning point in art. T. J. Clark wrote, "The crush of spectators was variously described as terrified, shocked, disgusted, moved to a kind of pity" by the painter's portrait of a nude prost.i.tute, the onlookers "subject to epidemics of mad laughter, 'pressing up to the picture as if to a hanged man.' " at the Paris Salon, inciting a violent scandal and signaling another turning point in art. T. J. Clark wrote, "The crush of spectators was variously described as terrified, shocked, disgusted, moved to a kind of pity" by the painter's portrait of a nude prost.i.tute, the onlookers "subject to epidemics of mad laughter, 'pressing up to the picture as if to a hanged man.' "

Olympia presented Paris with another image of the modern, the commodification of s.e.x and cla.s.s, the unadorned power of desire-once more forcing spectators to move beyond their accustomed paths of perception. The 1865 Salon scandal, coming as it did in the midst of the city's physical and social upheaval, is one of the seminal moments of modernism. presented Paris with another image of the modern, the commodification of s.e.x and cla.s.s, the unadorned power of desire-once more forcing spectators to move beyond their accustomed paths of perception. The 1865 Salon scandal, coming as it did in the midst of the city's physical and social upheaval, is one of the seminal moments of modernism.

"Observations" about the painting "are made out loud," reported the paper La France La France. "Some people are delighted...others observe the thing seriously and show their neighbor [how it is] improper."

"There were reactions" to the balloon, says the narrator of Don's story. "Critical opinion was divided." Some engaged in "remarkably detailed fantasies" of delight; others were perturbed, thinking words like "sullied."

Manet's detractors noted the "irregularities" of his work, and its "unfinished" qualities.

Don's narrator speaks of the balloon's "deliberate lack of finish" and of "irregular" areas on its surface.

Le Grand Journal reported that reported that Olympia Olympia's body seemed made of "rubber," and Les Tablettes de Pierrot Les Tablettes de Pierrot described her as shapeless, shape-s.h.i.+fting, "some form or other, blown up like a grotesque in...rubber." described her as shapeless, shape-s.h.i.+fting, "some form or other, blown up like a grotesque in...rubber."

Don's balloon is a "vari-shaped" rubberlike ma.s.s with a surface "pneumaticity," in contrast to the "city's flat, hard skin."

As many readers have observed, Don's story considers public responses to art. But besides this general theme, he had in mind a specific set of reactions, in a crucial time.

In invoking Manet's balloon and the Olympia Olympia scandal, Don encoded in his story an early chapter of the art that nourished him throughout his career; an art inseparable from social change, resistant to strict ordering, and opposed to the narrowing of perceptions required by commodification. scandal, Don encoded in his story an early chapter of the art that nourished him throughout his career; an art inseparable from social change, resistant to strict ordering, and opposed to the narrowing of perceptions required by commodification.

"The Balloon" resonates with one more modernist touchstone, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway Mrs. Dalloway. As the novel opens, Mrs. Dalloway is walking the streets of an increasingly "new" London, a city torn by the conflicts of social cla.s.s, when she sees a crowd gaping up at an object "coming over the trees"-an "aeroplane...making letters in the sky!" The shapes move and melt; the crowd disagrees as to the plane's purpose. What are the letters trying to say? The message turns out to be a toffee ad, but its true meaning, people feel, "would never be revealed," for the spectacle continues to s.h.i.+ft, the figures now beautiful, now terrible. One observer is moved to consider how "solitary" everyone is.

A common thread ties Baron Haussmann's Paris in the 1860s, Virginia Woolf's London of the 1920s, and Don's mid-1960s Manhattan: ma.s.sive social transition, just before capitalism tightened its grip another notch. In these chaotic intervals, while the signs were still elusive, people remained free to interpret, create, and act in unpredictable (unspeakable, unnatural) ways. Far from ignoring history, tras.h.i.+ng literary tradition, or practicing randomness-as some critics later claimed of him-Don chose a particular battle, and helped to man the barricades.

With the publication of three stories three months in a row, Don erased his debt to The New Yorker The New Yorker-"which is good news for all hands," Angell wrote him. Belatedly, the magazine sent Don an extra $82.90 for the "battles.h.i.+p" addition to "See the Moon?"

The flush period didn't last long. With a restless wife and a hungry baby, Don requested, and was granted, a one-thousand-dollar advance against future work. In June, he renewed his agreement with the magazine, allowing it the right of first refusal. Birgit was homesick. She pressed Don for a trip to Denmark. He figured the only way they could travel was if he received a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. He had been denied one the previous year-Lynn Nesbit and Herman Gollob had written him letters of support. This time, he asked Angell for a recommendation.

Angell told the Foundation: I believe that Mr. Barthelme is far and away the most intelligent and the most original young writer of fiction in the United States today. As his editor at the New Yorker, New Yorker, I am in close contact with his work and his writing methods, and I can say with a.s.surance that he is an entirely dedicated artist, capable of the most severe and admirable selfdiscipline...[he is] "courageous" because financial hards.h.i.+p has not tempted him to take a job and thus become a part-time writer, nor has it forced him to alter his style in the interest of popularity and a.s.sured sales I am in close contact with his work and his writing methods, and I can say with a.s.surance that he is an entirely dedicated artist, capable of the most severe and admirable selfdiscipline...[he is] "courageous" because financial hards.h.i.+p has not tempted him to take a job and thus become a part-time writer, nor has it forced him to alter his style in the interest of popularity and a.s.sured sales....[his stories'] meanings are both poetic and cerebral [and] cannot be escaped or forgotten...what most distinguishes his apparently avantgarde style is its lack of self-consciousness, its absolute inevitability.Barthelme writes as he does because no other method could begin to convey his echoey multiple meanings....He must be given a chance to complete a longer, more significant work of fiction. He has no other means of support than his writing, and his need for money-money that will buy him time to write-is greater than ever, for he now has a wife and a young baby.

Angell's support at this time was crucial. Letters kept coming to the magazine, complaining about Don's work. More crus.h.i.+ngly, S. J. Perelman said he didn't care for Don's fiction (though, more happily, John Updike admitted he felt challenged by pieces like "The Balloon" to try more daring formal experiments).

As Don waited for news of the Guggenheim, he shopped for Anne-and decided that the seven little men who lived with Snow White in his novel would manufacture baby food (with a comical Chinese twist): "BABY BOW YEE (chopped pork and Chinese vegetables)...BABY DOW SHEW (bean curd stuffed with ground pike)...BABY JAR HAR (shrimp in batter)...BABY JING SHAR SHEW BOW (sweet roast pork and apples)..."

Because of Anne, he could no longer hang around jazz clubs till the early morning hours. Some evenings, while Anne slept, he slipped away to the Eighth Street Bookshop, which was open late. It was owned by Eli Wilentz, whose son Sean would become a well-known historian. The elder Wilentz looked like "an older Bob Dylan" and could be seen with a "cigarillo stuck between his lips or burning between his fingertips," wrote M. G. Stephens, a former clerk in the store. The place offered four floors of books, and customers often stood in the aisles discussing poetry or European novels. Don opened a charge account at the store. Other regular customers included Edward Albee, Anais Nin, Albert Murray, Djuna Barnes, and a Mafia don-one of the Gallos-who one night told Stephens, "I read a lot of Albert Camus."

Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation Against Interpretation was the most exciting book Don discovered that year. In her celebration and blurring of high and low culture, Don found a kindred spirit. "Perhaps there are certain ages"-like the present-"which do not need truth so much as they need a deepening of the sense of reality," Sontag wrote. "An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth." In a section of was the most exciting book Don discovered that year. In her celebration and blurring of high and low culture, Don found a kindred spirit. "Perhaps there are certain ages"-like the present-"which do not need truth so much as they need a deepening of the sense of reality," Sontag wrote. "An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth." In a section of Snow White Snow White, in typically playful, aphoristic fas.h.i.+on, Don echoed Sontag: "In the midst of so much that is true, it is refres.h.i.+ng to shamble across something that is not true."

At times, Don felt as if he were living in Haussmann's Paris: The cost of living in the United States rose more dramatically in the winter of 1966 than it had at any time since 1958, people were protesting in the streets against the federal government, and a construction boom was changing the face of the city. The grand old Beaux-Arts Pennsylvania Station had been demolished the previous year to make way for a twenty-nine-story building. In August 1966, groundbreaking would begin for the World Trade Center.

In the latter part of the year, Don retreated indoors. He hunkered down with his family, his friends, his novel. He composed a scene in which Snow White writes a four-page poem: "The thought of this immense work..."-a joke on him, to keep him on task.

Angell was curious to see this immense new work. Don put him off. He'd write, walk, shop, write some more, sit with Grace Paley on a neighborhood stoop, then go home to soothe the baby and listen to music.

He urged Grace to write more stories. She said she was too busy trying to stop the war. She apologized to Don for her inactivity during the Korean conflict. "We were so unconscious, so unaware of that war," she said. "The whole country was unconscious....[We] just didn't want to pay attention."

Finally, in early October, Don showed Angell the nearly completed ma.n.u.script. Angell snapped it up, and convinced his fellow editors that the magazine should publish all of it in a single issue. On October 26, he sent Don a "first" payment for Snow White Snow White. "This was an exciting day around here," he said. "I am delighted." Earlier, Don had gotten word that he had received a Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p. He was happy. His editor was happy. Birgit was happy. Even the baby seemed happy.

"Here's that check....Sending this out makes me feel like G.o.d. Or maybe Joseph E. Levine," Angell wrote Don on December 8, 1966. The check raised Don's total payment for Snow White Snow White to $25,000. to $25,000.

He was busy writing last-minute additions and making cuts, rearranging sections of the novel to "correct poornesses in the storyline." In his version of the tale, Snow White is a modern young woman living in New York with seven little men. The men have communal s.e.x with her in the shower, though she has grown tired of the arrangement (as has Bill, the men's "leader"). The men, born of different mothers but the same father ("a man about whom nothing is known") were reared in national parks. They clean buildings, make baby food, and manufacture plastic buffalo humps ("Heigh-ho"). Snow White is torn: She wants to hear "some words in the world that [are] not the words" she always hears; she is dissatisfied with her education, and with the domestic duties she's forced to perform. She understands that the world is too complex to be contained in romantic myths. Yet the myths' power draws her still. She waits, however skeptically, for a prince. She lowers her hair from an upper window, an erotic invitation, but there is not a man in sight with the gumption to grab it. Modern consumer culture has emasculated them all. "It has made me terribly nervous, that hair," thinks Paul, the book's Hamlet-like prince figure. He knows he is supposed supposed to respond to the hair; what stops him is the realization that beyond the hair's s.e.xual symbolism lies daily life, the eventual dullness of habit, practical considerations ("Teeth...piano lessons..."). Stripped of their ideals, but still yearning for them, men and women circle one another in a wary, frustrating dance. America's "daughters are burning with torpor and a sense of immense wasted potential," Snow White thinks, "like one of those pipes you see in the oil fields, burning off the natural gas that it isn't economically rational to s.h.i.+p somewhere!" to respond to the hair; what stops him is the realization that beyond the hair's s.e.xual symbolism lies daily life, the eventual dullness of habit, practical considerations ("Teeth...piano lessons..."). Stripped of their ideals, but still yearning for them, men and women circle one another in a wary, frustrating dance. America's "daughters are burning with torpor and a sense of immense wasted potential," Snow White thinks, "like one of those pipes you see in the oil fields, burning off the natural gas that it isn't economically rational to s.h.i.+p somewhere!"

Helen Moore Barthelme has said Don explored "his own love life" in Snow White Snow White-not that he ever shared one woman, except his mother, with several other men. What she meant was that Don took parts of himself-his romantic expectations and his experiences-and gave them to each of the characters: the little men, the prince figure, the "vile" Hogo de Bergerac, who defiles women, even Snow White herself. This way, Don "could both examine his own feelings and imagine the reactions of the girl," Helen explained.

Helen and others recognized Don's personal history in the book. "During our courts.h.i.+p, Don [had] told me of a group of male graduate students who were part of his first wife's circle of friends at Rice University," Helen wrote. "Years later, one of these friends wrote a note to me in which he said it was possible to identify which 'dwarf' portrayed each of them." Certainly, shards of Don's trajectory-from the Alamo Chile House to New York to Denmark-are traceable in the novel's fragments.

Atheneum published Snow White Snow White a month after it had appeared, in its entirety, in a month after it had appeared, in its entirety, in The New Yorker The New Yorker, and it became one of the most talked-about novels of the year-a year in which Susan Sontag said "the beauty of...a painting by Jasper Johns, of a film by Jean-Luc G.o.dard, and of the personalities and music of the Beatles is equally accessible" and equally valuable. The "feeling (or sensation) given off by a Rauschenberg painting might be like that of a song by the Supremes." In 1967, the high and the low, the sublime and the ridiculous, danced cheek to jowl.

That year, at the beginning of what Time Time and other newsweeklies called the "Summer of Love," the Beatles released and other newsweeklies called the "Summer of Love," the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The group was hailed as more than just rock stars: they were artists. The New Yorker The New Yorker quoted a cla.s.sical music enthusiast, who said of this newest release, "This alb.u.m is a whole world. It's a musical comedy. It's a film. Only, it's a record." quoted a cla.s.sical music enthusiast, who said of this newest release, "This alb.u.m is a whole world. It's a musical comedy. It's a film. Only, it's a record."

Here was art as "sensation," a "feeling" not limited to its format.

In Against Interpretation Against Interpretation, Sontag argued that the blurring of "high" and "low," "popular" and "serious" did not signal the demise of art, but a "transformation of [its] function": Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility...artists have had to become self-conscious aestheticians, continually challenging their means, their materials and methods....Painters no longer feel themselves confined to canvas and paint, but employ hair, photographs, wax, sand, bicycle tires, their own toothbrushes and socks. Musicians have reached beyond the sounds of the traditional instruments to use tampered instruments and (usually on tape) synthetic sounds and industrial noises.

In such an atmosphere, a "literary" novel based on a Walt Disney cartoon (and an old fairy tale), containing numerous typefaces and page layouts, wasn't out of place. It was the extremity of Don's imagination, and his metaphysical grounding, that made an old fairy tale), containing numerous typefaces and page layouts, wasn't out of place. It was the extremity of Don's imagination, and his metaphysical grounding, that made Snow White Snow White seem so radical. seem so radical.

"It's not my favorite book," Don later told an interviewer. In another interview, he said, "The thing is loaded with cultural baggage, probably too much so."

Here, Don touched on one of the riskiest aspects of his writing: his use of time-sensitive materials. If a sculptor places a metal pipe in the center of his piece and then it tarnishes over time, darkening, flaking, the new hue and texture will alter the entire structure, and will change the viewer's response. The trick is to choose materials that will change in interesting ways, but this is difficult to predict. (Remember Don's dad wrapping his home in copper sheeting, hoping it would taint attractively, only to be disappointed in its rough discoloration.) "Cultural baggage"-and language-has similar organic properties, which is susceptible to the seasons.

In trying to extend his literary methods to novel length, Don faced other dilemmas. "Writing a novel consists of failing, for me, for a long time..." he said. "The problem...is that I'm interested in pus.h.i.+ng the form, if not forward then at least in some direction."

More than short stories, novels tend toward formula...or, at the very least, toward habitual habitual structures, steady rhythm, and foreshadowing to keep the reader engaged till the end. The trouble is, habit lacks magic. It cheapens the values of images and words. It's the sudden eruption, the improvised melody or phrase, that tickles our imaginations, and adds wonder to the world. structures, steady rhythm, and foreshadowing to keep the reader engaged till the end. The trouble is, habit lacks magic. It cheapens the values of images and words. It's the sudden eruption, the improvised melody or phrase, that tickles our imaginations, and adds wonder to the world.

Up to now, Don's fiction had proceeded by verbal collage. By its very nature, collage depends on brevity, fragility-a kind of once-only quality. Brevity Brevity because the joy and humor of an unexpected connection wear thin with repet.i.tion; because the joy and humor of an unexpected connection wear thin with repet.i.tion; fragility fragility because the delicacy of an oddly made piece can be strangely moving, even when the piece is silly, gawky, or somehow frightening. because the delicacy of an oddly made piece can be strangely moving, even when the piece is silly, gawky, or somehow frightening.

Imagine a spiderweb, an ingenious trap that is, nevertheless, barely there barely there, at the mercy of the slightest touch or breath or gust of wind, and all the more beautiful for being both calculated and vulnerable. This is the sort of fragility that characterized Don's gift.

How does one sustain an elegant synthesis beyond a single moment? How long can a balloon sigh in the air before the reader's gaze, weary of the concept, pops it?

Ideally, brevity at length brevity at length is what Don hoped to achieve in the novel-an impossibility on the face of it. is what Don hoped to achieve in the novel-an impossibility on the face of it.

In Snow White Snow White, he tried to solve the problem by using the fairy tale/movie/bedtime story as a ghost structure, touching on it ever so lightly. He was free, then, to spin a series of vignettes that captured or lampooned America's cultural chaos. "[T]he story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is known to all...you can play against expectations," Don said.

Additionally, since readers did not expect Snow White to be "realistic," Don was free to use her as an excuse for playing with words. "[A]ll of [the] people in this book are pretexts for being able to encounter certain kinds of language," Don said-metaphysical language, psychological categories (The Many Faces of Love), textbook jargon, newspaper headlines, hip phrases: all the grammars that enforce the (often false) expectations by which society tells us to live. "Oh I wish there were some words in the world that were not the words I always hear!"

By playing one idiom off another, in a raucous, Rabelaisian romp, Don created literary noise, a polyphony, a multidirectional conversation that challenged conventional wisdoms and undercut notions of love, heroism, beauty, and literature. Stripped of her fairy tale, Snow White begins to disintegrate, her inner "discourse" a broken mirror: Those men hulking hulk in closets and outside...I only wanted one plain hero...parts thought dissembling...not enough ever...mirror custody of the blow scale model I concede that it is to a degree instruments...

At the end, when her "a.r.s.e" fails to seduce a prince into action, she "RISES INTO THE SKY," undergoes an "APOTHEOSIS," and becomes a virgin again.

Bill, the men's leader, is hanged for his failures. Paul, the "prince," is dead, a disappointment to all. The little men, manufacturing buffalo humps so they can get in "on the leading edge" of the nation's "trash phenomenon," are left contemplating "Theodicy and Rime." At this point, a bold headline is inserted into the book:

ANATHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD.

IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO.

THE WORLD.

Better to accept the contradictions of evil and good (the contemplation of Theodicy) and the paradoxes of language (Rime). Ambiguity is the air we breathe.

Ultimately, like lost children-without a leader or a knowable father, without a romantic ideal-the little men "DEPART IN SEARCH OF A NEW PRINCIPLE HEIGH-HO."

33.

DROWNING.

Don dedicated Snow White Snow White to Birgit. The first printing of five thousand copies vanished from bookstores right away; within four months Atheneum readied a second printing of three thousand copies. Not long after this, Bantam's paperback edition appeared with a cover photo of a woman wrapped in a towel. She stands next to a shower stall filled with men. The book took off. In August 1968, 154,000 copies were s.h.i.+pped. A month later, the publisher ordered ten thousand extra copies, and more than thirty thousand more in the following months. Unlike most of Don's books, it has never gone out of print. to Birgit. The first printing of five thousand copies vanished from bookstores right away; within four months Atheneum readied a second printing of three thousand copies. Not long after this, Bantam's paperback edition appeared with a cover photo of a woman wrapped in a towel. She stands next to a shower stall filled with men. The book took off. In August 1968, 154,000 copies were s.h.i.+pped. A month later, the publisher ordered ten thousand extra copies, and more than thirty thousand more in the following months. Unlike most of Don's books, it has never gone out of print.

Reviews, some puzzled but most of them laudatory, appeared in all the mainstream venues. Don's old pal Jack Kroll, writing in Newsweek Newsweek, called Don a "splendid writer who knows how to turn spiritual dilemmas into logic, and how to turn that logic into comedy which is the true wised-up story of our time." In Life Life, Webster Schott said that Don was probably "the most perversely gifted writer in the United States....Snow White has everything, including William Burroughs cutups, words posing as paintings, ribald social commentary, crazy esthetic experiments, and comedy that smashes." has everything, including William Burroughs cutups, words posing as paintings, ribald social commentary, crazy esthetic experiments, and comedy that smashes." Time Time gushed, "Donald Barthelme's work creates the impression that something miraculous happened to him overnight-as if, blind from birth, he could suddenly see." And in gushed, "Donald Barthelme's work creates the impression that something miraculous happened to him overnight-as if, blind from birth, he could suddenly see." And in The New Republic The New Republic, Richard Gilman noted the seriousness beneath Don's humor. He described Don as one of a "handful of American writers who are working to replenish and extend the art of fiction instead of trying to add to the stock of entertainments." Gilman said, "[Barthelme] keeps the very possibility of fiction alive, and by doing that shows us more of the nature of our age and ourselves than all those novels which never recognize the crisis of literature and therefore do nothing but repeat its dead forms."

Despite the book's success, Don and Lynn Nesbit argued with Herman Gollob about Atheneum's "n.i.g.g.ardly advertising campaign." Gollob said Nesbit "demanded an extravagant advance, or so I saw it, for Don's next book." She threatened to shop Don to other publishers. "In a phone conversation with Lynn, I exploded," Gollob wrote. "Very unprofessional of me, that little tantrum. I had taken the matter personally, looking upon it not in the spirit of honest compet.i.tion but as the betrayal of a friends.h.i.+p....I refused to take [Don's] calls and returned his letters unopened."

Throughout 1967 and 1968, Don, Birgit, and Anne split their time between New York and Denmark. They traveled in Europe, in part on the money from Don's Guggenheim Fellows.h.i.+p (though he had spent most of it on a build-it-yourself harpsichord kit, hoping Birgit would play music and become happier, more grounded). Don took some satisfaction in finding his work in translation. Come Back, Dr. Caligari Come Back, Dr. Caligari had appeared in Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Spain. Suhrkamp Verlag was planning a German edition of had appeared in Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Spain. Suhrkamp Verlag was planning a German edition of Snow White Snow White. On the move, Don didn't wholly register the shock waves that Snow White Snow White sent through the world of sent through the world of New Yorker New Yorker subscribers. Hundreds of faithful readers canceled their subscriptions to protest Don's "gibberish." The response of one subscriber, an executive of the Hertz Corporation, was typical: subscribers. Hundreds of faithful readers canceled their subscriptions to protest Don's "gibberish." The response of one subscriber, an executive of the Hertz Corporation, was typical: [I]t seems to me a frightful waste that bilge of this sort be included in your magazine. I am an English major; my wife is an English major; my son is an English major and I like to think we have some fragmentary knowledge of the English language...to sponsor and nurture such pure drivel without any merit must eventually depreciate the value of your otherwise excellent magazine.

Angell replied, "I told Mr. Barthelme about your letter...and he (displaying a certain libidinous interest in reality) asked me to inform you that it recently took him one month and numerous telephone calls to recover a $500 deposit he had made after renting an automobile from your company."

Howard Cushman, an old cla.s.smate of E. B. White, grumbled to White and his wife, Katharine, that Snow White Snow White was "garbage." In a lengthy letter, Katharine (now seventy-four and no longer actively editing for was "garbage." In a lengthy letter, Katharine (now seventy-four and no longer actively editing for The New Yorker The New Yorker) replied: The New Nonsense or Hysteria School of fiction and satire is not my special cup of tea and I sometimes love Barthelme's writing and sometimes don't, but I do think he has great gifts. He is an experimentalist and a modern with a sense of satire and humor. This is what the New Yorker, New Yorker, if it is to keep up its tradition of innovation, needs and must seek out if it is to keep up its tradition of innovation, needs and must seek out.

Don relished stirring up trouble. But on the whole his attention was focused on his travels and on problems more pressing than New Yorker New Yorker readers-Helen's anger, Gollob's disaffection, and, most dreadfully, the fact that, almost from the start, his marriage to Birgit was broken and sad. readers-Helen's anger, Gollob's disaffection, and, most dreadfully, the fact that, almost from the start, his marriage to Birgit was broken and sad.

Early traces of Huntington's were now unmistakable in Birgit's behavior, and they were getting worse: a block against planning, unpredictable onslaughts of melancholy or anger. These unstable patterns undermined Birgit's attempts to be a good mother. Don's patience with her was wearing thin, and he drank more and more.

"It was tempestuous between them," Anne says. "I don't know if she was bipolar, but mentally...she was just off off. Emotionally, there was a disconnect. You never knew how she was going to react to any given situation. My father was the more emotionally stable of the two."

Constant movement played h.e.l.l with Don's concentration, but new places offered welcome distractions from the family's sadness. He relished Paris's seasonal beauty and he embraced the California-like weather he encountered almost everywhere. At other times, he couldn't hide his weariness and exasperation: "I'll write a real letter [later] when Anne is not throwing the hotel keys out of a seventh floor window onto a rus.h.i.+ng boulevard," he told Angell. In another letter to Angell, he said, "I'm thinking of writing a long long story in the manner of Kleist or somebody, full of bodies discovered in bogs with nooses across their necks. I don't know why I want to do this, particularly, but it's a strong urge."

For his part, Angell urged Don to be "fat and happy" and encouraged him with cash advances. "[Here's a] check that ought to keep you and Brigit [sic] in aquavit for some time to come," he wrote.

Don was far from fat and happy, but he enjoyed Birgit's sister and father. Birgit's dad had seen Birgit's mother through her her battle with Huntington's, and Don admired the man's fort.i.tude. He didn't know if he could provide the same care for Birgit. Birgit's father understood what Don faced-including the self-doubt-and he didn't press Don or judge him. "I wish he had been my father," Don said to friends. Whenever he and Birgit ended a visit, Birgit's dad sent them away with sprays of flowers. battle with Huntington's, and Don admired the man's fort.i.tude. He didn't know if he could provide the same care for Birgit. Birgit's father understood what Don faced-including the self-doubt-and he didn't press Don or judge him. "I wish he had been my father," Don said to friends. Whenever he and Birgit ended a visit, Birgit's dad sent them away with sprays of flowers.

"I feel that I'm writing...piecemeal which is a lot of trouble for you," Don told Angell at one point. "Please bear with me." In fact, Angell was delighted with Don's output. In the spring of 1967, Don completed a piece called "Report," an outraged satire on military technology. Angell thought the story "wonderful" and "infinitely more effective" than antiwar editorials because it "makes [its] powerful point entirely in terms of fiction and fantasy...striking] at the heart of things without arousing all the predictable built-in reactions and responses that we all have on this subject." He cautioned Don against didacticism in a couple of paragraphs but otherwise left the story alone. It ran in the June 10, 1967, issue of The New Yorker. The New Yorker. Its opening lines-"Our group is against the war. But the war goes on"-captured the country's growing weariness and uncertainty. Its opening lines-"Our group is against the war. But the war goes on"-captured the country's growing weariness and uncertainty.

Don addressed his literary anxieties in a story called "Certificate," later t.i.tled "The Dolt": "Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin." When a character in the story walks into a room wearing a "serape woven out of two hundred transistor radios" and looms over his parents "like a large blaring building," Don seemed to have found, once again, a succinct image for the noisy mood of the moment, and for the cultural dynamics pulling America in many directions at once.

Angell rewarded him with cost-of-living adjustments. "Buy yourself a Trova toe," he said, a reference to the vaguely human-shaped sculptures of Ernest Trova which were popular in New York art circles. He enticed Don to work faster: "Incidentally, you are three legs up on a fiction bonus, and if we buy another story from you [within two months] it will mean some extra dough."

Don struggled to keep pace, sometimes unsuccessfully. He never compromised his standards for money. In February 1968, he would withdraw a story ent.i.tled "Some Trouble Friends Are Having," even though the magazine had accepted it and would have paid him a bonus for it. "While this may not be one of your very best stories, we really did want to publish it, and I'm sorry you no longer like it," Angell wrote to him. "[I]t is certainly a writer's privilege to make the final judgment in these matters, and we will now take the story off our books."

Don seemed rueful, at best, about his achievements. "I a.s.sume the Arab-Israeli war (to which I see Renata [Adler] went [as a reporter]) pretty well killed my story," he wrote Angell, referring to the outbreak of the Six-Day War between Israelis and Palestinians in June 1967. Don's story, "Report," had gotten lost amid the urgent news. "I seem to remember another [story of mine]"-"The Indian Uprising"-"that ran the week of Selma when everybody was watching TV. Oh well."

Nor was his confidence improved when Angell rejected a story, particularly one that Don knew was solid. In the summer of 1967, he submitted an enigmatic piece that he had begun two years earlier. Ent.i.tled "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning," it presented an object of contemplation, as in "The Balloon," only this time the object was an American celebrity, a U.S. senator. A series of verbal portraits akin to Andy Warhol's silk screens of Jackie Kennedy, the story did not attempt to delve beneath the figure's surface, yet its overall effect was remarkably revealing. This was precisely the opposite of what readers expected of characters in fiction, but for that reason it captured the ghostliness of America's celebrity culture.

"He is neither abrupt with nor excessively kind to a.s.sociates. Or he is both abrupt and kind," the narrator says of Kennedy. These contradictions never sort out-as they never did in life: Kennedy was an extraordinarily wealthy man worried about poverty; an empathetic man with a reputation for ruthlessness; a family man who liked to fool around; a straight arrow who enjoyed naughty parties.

What prevents "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning" from being an exercise in futility is the narrator's empathy for K.-a simpatico that extends to the reader-and the real Kennedy's habit, at the time the story was written, of absorbing America's turmoil. In 1965, when Don had begun the story, Kennedy was "impotent and frustrated...kind of floundering," wrote Kennedy's friend and biographer Evan Thomas. Alienation, youthful angst, the civil rights movement, and war protests marked this era, and at various moments, Kennedy seemed to embody the nation's pain.

From 1965 to 1967, Don had set his story aside; it's possible he went back to it after learning that Life Life magazine had commissioned Saul Bellow to write a profile of RFK. Bellow always stirred Don's compet.i.tive juices. Their old argument about feelings versus meaning was revived in their mutual attempts to pin down Bobby. Bellow never finished his piece-according to Evan Thomas, Bellow viewed Kennedy as a blank screen "upon which others projected their hopes and fears. The true believers wanted him to star in an epic for which he was not yet prepared." This slipperiness, which defeated Bellow, became the core of Don's story, and accounts for its success at limning the meaning of celebrity. magazine had commissioned Saul Bellow to write a profile of RFK. Bellow always stirred Don's compet.i.tive juices. Their old argument about feelings versus meaning was revived in their mutual attempts to pin down Bobby. Bellow never finished his piece-according to Evan Thomas, Bellow viewed Kennedy as a blank screen "upon which others projected their hopes and fears. The true believers wanted him to star in an epic for which he was not yet prepared." This slipperiness, which defeated Bellow, became the core of Don's story, and accounts for its success at limning the meaning of celebrity.

"I never met Robert Kennedy nor did I talk to people who had," Don told Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in 1977. "[A]ny precision in the piece comes from watching television and reading the New York Times New York Times.... The story was begun while I was living in Denmark in 1965.... The only 'true' thing in it was Kennedy's remark about the painter." In the story, K. goes to a gallery where the works of a well-known geometricist are on display. "Well, at least we know he has a ruler," K. says. "I happened to be in the [Pace] gallery when [Kennedy] came in with a group," Don told Schlesinger. "I think the artist was Kenneth Noland. Kennedy made the remark about the ruler-not the newest joke in the world." The rest of the story was whole cloth, woven from Don's sense of the nation's direction-and from his existentialist readings. Near the end of the piece, K. reads the French author Poulet on another writer, Marivaux: "The Marivaudian being is...a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant.... The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is constantly surprised. He cannot predict his own reaction to events." Saul Bellow's conception of character could not accommodate such randomness, but Don's embrace of the instant got him as close to the truth as anything that has ever been written about Kennedy.

So far as we know, RFK never read Poulet-the narrator projects himself himself onto K.'s blank screen. His talent for projection, and K.'s ability to absorb, enables the narrator to "save" K. They have established a bond. K. is drowning in the sea of contradictory images about him: "His flat black hat, his black cape, his sword are on the sh.o.r.e. He retains his mask." onto K.'s blank screen. His talent for projection, and K.'s ability to absorb, enables the narrator to "save" K. They have established a bond. K. is drowning in the sea of contradictory images about him: "His flat black hat, his black cape, his sword are on the sh.o.r.e. He retains his mask."

The narrator throws a line, K. grasps it, and he is pulled from the water. The story's t.i.tle is a nod to Jean Renoir's 1931 film, Boudu Saved from Drowning Boudu Saved from Drowning ( (Boudu Sauve des Eaux). In the movie, a Parisian tramp insinuates himself into a bourgeois household and, over the course of a few weeks, tears it apart. In the end, having exposed the contradictory nature of "civilized" life, the tramp returns to the water. "It's his destiny-the currents have taken him again," a character says. The film's most remarkable achievement is its refusal to prettify cla.s.s distinctions and to pa.s.s judgment on people. Whatever ultimate meaning the movie may have, the viewer has to project it-a quality Don's story shares with the film.

Roger Angell was on vacation when "Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning" arrived at The New Yorker. The New Yorker. William Maxwell read it and discussed it with William Shawn. On August 8, 1967, Maxwell wrote to Angell: "What bothers [Shawn] is attributing immaginary [ William Maxwell read it and discussed it with William Shawn. On August 8, 1967, Maxwell wrote to Angell: "What bothers [Shawn] is attributing immaginary [sic] statements to an actual person, and...he suggests removing it from Robert Kennedy, to a fict.i.tious person"-a strategy that shows how completely Shawn and Maxwell missed the story's point. No "fict.i.tious person" could be America's blank screen the way RFK was. Don refused to consider the change.