'In Snow White, Donald Barthelme subjects the traditional fairy tale to postmodern aesthetics by moving the story to the present, giving the characters modern psychologies, and deliberately frustrating any expectations about the resolution of the plot. In the novel, the seven dwarves are men who earn a living by washing buildings and making Chinese baby food. They live with Snow White in a kind of 1960s communal situation, which includes being sexually serviced by her in the shower. Though they often refer to themselves as a collective “we,” most of the dwarves are alienated from each other because of individual weaknesses and obsessions. For example, their moody leader, Bill, has decided he no longer wants to be touched by anyone, not even Snow White, and has generally failed to lead the group.
'Loving Snow White is the dwarves’ “great enterprise,” but they quietly harbor fears about their ability to continue carrying out this task. Part of the problem is that Snow White is a modern woman who has been highly educated in psychology, literature, and literary criticism, and therefore accepts the dwarves with a fair amount of critical distance. Snow White’s dissatisfaction is evident early on when she quotes Mao (“Let a hundred flowers bloom”), wears the clothes of a Chinese socialist, and starts writing “tiny Chairman Mao poems.” Having adopted “waiting as a mode of existence,” Snow White reassures herself that “’Someday my prince will come.’ By this Snow White means that she lives her own being as incomplete, pending the arrival of one who will ‘complete’ her. That is, she lives her own being as ‘not-with’ (even though she is in some sense ‘with’ the seven men, Bill, Kevin, Clem, Hubert, Henry, Edward and Dan). But the ‘not-with’ is experienced as stronger, more real, at this particular instant in time, than the ‘being-with.’” Barthelme of course never lets Snow White’s imaginary complement, her masculine other, properly materialize. Snow White eventually reaches the conclusion, “I am in the wrong time,” when she realizes that something must be wrong with the world, “For not being able to at least be civilized enough to supply the correct ending to the story.”
'Although the dwarves continue to attend to her while she waits, they start to perceive how their different desires no longer form a productive geometry: “She still loves us, in a way, but it isn’t enough.” The book ends when “THE HEROES DEPART IN SEARCH OF A NEW PRINCIPLE HEIGH-HO.” As usual, Barthelme packs the novel full of fragments, digressions, and metafictional conceits, such as a questionnaire that asks readers about their enjoyment of the text and tests their ability to catch the allusions to the original fairy tale. He also scatters witty axioms in capitals throughout the text, the most famous of which is probably, “ANETHEMATIZATION OF THE WORLD IS NOT AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE WORLD.” Barthelme explains his literary style in an important section that discusses the pointless junk found in ordinary language. He admits, “We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant.” Barthelme explains, “That part, the ‘filling‘ you might say, of which the expression ‘you might say’ is a good example, is to me the most interesting part, and of course it might also be called the ‘stuffing.’”
'Just as the modern economy produces trash in increasing quantities, modern culture produces linguistic trash - meaningless details, empty phrases, and so on - in growing amounts. Barthelme argues that a change of strategy is required when trash becomes total: “Now at such a point, you will agree, the question turns from a question of disposing of this ‘trash’ to a question of appreciating its qualities. . . . And there can no longer be any question of ‘disposing’ of it, because it’s all there is, and we will simple have to learn how to ‘dig’ it – that’s slang, but peculiarly appropriate here.” He goes on, “It’s that we want to be on the leading edge of this trash phenomenon, the everted sphere of the future, and that’s why we pay particular attention, too, to those aspects of language that may be seen as a model of the trash phenomenon.”' -- The Voice Imitator
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Readings & Homages
Barthelme's Snow White is Awesome
Rick Moody reads DB's 'A City of Churches'
Donald Barthelme and Narrative Appeal
plechazungaMG reads DB's 'The Rise of Capitalism'
Clay Banes reads DB's 'The School'
Доналд Бартелми 'Немножко не то пожарное авто, или Джин Инисё-Инито'
jessamyn reads DB's 'The First Thing the Baby Did Wrong'
This is a short film based on the short story by Donald Barthelme.
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Further
Barthelmismo
The Scriptorium: Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme's Syllabus
'Heteroglossia and collage: Donald Barthelme's 'Snow White'.'
On Barthelme's 'Snow White'.'
'The Enthusiast: Donald Barthelme's 'Snow White''
John Barth pays tribute to Donald Barthelme
'The Year of Reading Dangerously – Donald Barthelme'
'Fairy tales, old and new: Barthelme and Coover, two contemporary fabulators'
'Donald Barthelme: A Glass of Water and A Letter'
'A Deconstructionist Analysis of Donald Barthelme’s Snow White'
'Book Briefs: Donald Barthelme’s Snow White'
'Barthelme’s Snow White, Typographic'
'Donald Barthelme and Writing as a Political Act'
'The Beastly Beatitudes of Donald B.'
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Gallery
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Interview
from The Paris Review
TPR:You said last night that you enjoyed teaching because the young writers talk about their concerns, about what’s happening to them, that you learn from them.
DONALD BARTHELME: And they learn from each other. I’ve just read an article that strongly implies that teaching writing is a dismal racket, an impoverishing fraud, and maybe it is as practiced in some venues, but I’d hate this to be taken as generally true. At City College, where I teach a graduate workshop, the writing students are fully the equals in seriousness and accomplishment of the other graduate students. Maybe writing can’t be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation. Notions of the lousy can be taught. Ethics.
All of this is new in universities, didn’t exist when I was in school, but it’s hardly a racket.
TPR: Your feelings about the new are ambivalent.
DB: I’m ever hopeful, but remember that I was exposed early to an almost religious crusade, the modern movement in architecture, which, putting it as kindly as possible, has not turned out quite as expected. The Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe and his followers, Frank Lloyd Wright and his followers, Le Corbusier, all envisioned not just great buildings but an architecture that would engender a radical improvement in human existence. The buildings were to act on society, change it in positive ways. None of this happened and in fact a not insignificant totalitarian bent manifested itself. There’s a brand-new state university campus not far from here that the students call, with perfect justice, Alphaville. The architects somehow managed eeriness. Now we find phrases like “good design,” or “planning,” quite loaded, quite strange.
There is an ambivalence. Reynolds Price in the Times said of my story “The New Music” that it was about as new as the toothache. He apparently didn’t get the joke, which is that there is always a new music—the new music shows up about every ten minutes. Not like the toothache. More like hiccups.
TPR: Which reminds me: Some of your detractors say that you’re merely fashionable.
DB: Well, the mere has always been a useful category.
TPR:That you’re a jackdaw, and your principle of selection is whatever glitters most.
DB: I weep and tear my hair. And disagree.
TPR:What about the moral responsibility of the artist? I take it that you are a responsible artist (as opposed, say, to X, Y, and Z), but all is irony, comic distortion, foreign voices, fragmentation. Where in all this evasion of the straightforward does responsibility display itself?
DB: It’s not the straightforward that’s being evaded but the too true. I might fix your eye firmly and announce, “Thou shalt not mess around with thy neighbor’s wife.” You might then nod and say to yourself, Quite so. We might then lunch at the local chili parlor and say scurrilous things about X, Y, and Z. But it will not have escaped your notice that my statement has hardly enlarged your cosmos, that I’ve been, in the largest sense, responsible to neither art, life, nor adultery.
I believe that my every sentence trembles with morality in that each attempts to engage the problematic rather than to present a proposition to which all reasonable men must agree. The engagement might be very small, a word modifying another word, the substitution of “mess around” for “covet,” which undresses adultery a bit. I think the paraphrasable content in art is rather slight—“tiny,” as de Kooning puts it. The way things are done is crucial, as the inflection of a voice is crucial. The change of emphasis from the what to the how seems to me to be the major impulse in art since Flaubert, and it’s not merely formalism, it’s not at all superficial, it’s an attempt to reach truth, and a very rigorous one. You don’t get, following this path, a moral universe set out in ten propositions, but we already have that. And the attempt is sufficiently skeptical about itself. In this century there’s been much stress placed not upon what we know but on knowing that our methods are themselves questionable—our Song of Songs is the Uncertainty Principle.
Also, it’s entirely possible to fail to understand or actively misunderstand what an artist is doing. I remember going through a very large Barnett Newman show years ago with Tom Hess and Harold Rosenberg, we used to go to shows after long lunches, those wicked lunches, which are no more, and I walked through the show like a certifiable idiot, couldn’t understand their enthusiasm. I admired the boldness, the color and so on but inwardly I was muttering, Wallpaper, wallpaper, very fine wallpaper but wallpaper. I was wrong, didn’t get the core of Newman’s enterprise, what Tom called Newman’s effort toward the sublime. Later I began to understand. One doesn’t take in Proust or Canada on the basis of a single visit.
To return to your question: If I looked you straight in the eye and said, “The beauty of women makes of adultery a serious and painful duty,” then we’d have the beginning of a useful statement.
TPR: Snow White at once anticipates and superseded much feminist writing. Would you like to say something about its feminist themes? About the replacement of the wicked stepmother with a coeval of Snow White?
DB: Changing the stepmother-figure was a way of placing the emphasis on Snow White’s network of relationships with the seven cohabitors. Her chief plaint is that the seven of them only add up, for her, to possibly two real men—this arithmetic is the center of the novel, gives rise to the question of what real men are, what the attitudes of the male characters mean. The situation of the horsewife can then be examined in regard to this, the situation of the potential world-redeeming hero examined.
TPR:What’s your greatest weakness as a writer?
DB: That I don’t offer enough emotion. That’s one of the things people come to fiction for, and they’re not wrong. I mean emotion of the better class, hard to come by. Also, I can’t resist making jokes, although that’s much more under control than it used to be. And of course these weaknesses have to do with each other—jokes short-circuit emotion. I particularly prize, but can’t often produce, a kind of low-key emotional touch that speaks volumes. At the end of Ann Beattie’s Falling in Place, for example, Jonathan’s made a wish and Cynthia asks Spangle what he wished for and the reply is “The usual, I guess.” That’s beautiful.
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Book
Touchstone
'David Barthelme's Snow White, unlike some other specimens of avant-garde fiction, never loses its grip on the plot or the emotions of its characters in favor of retaining its experimental rhythms. One is able to feel sympathy for the many long-suffering dwarves, hope for the romantic leads, and an appropriate sense of the apalling regarding the villains, and still appreciate the puns and absurdities Barthelme was so adept at creating. At first glance, readers of more mainstream fiction might be put off by the seemingly random leaps between viewpoints and styles. However, on closer inspection, one finds a distinct pattern and a remarkable fullness to the prose. Not to mention the often tremendously funny, yes laugh-out-loud funny, episodes sprinkled throughout the book. By the time one reaches the last, very short, chapter, one sees that every line has been carefully crafted to reach this conclusion. It has become inevitable.' -- anon
Excerpt
She is a tall dark beauty containing a great many beauty spots: one above the breast, one above the belly, one above the knee, one above the ankle, one above the buttock, one on the back of the neck. All of these are on the left side, more or less in a row, as you go up and down:
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The hair is black as ebony, the skin white as snow.
Bill is tired of Snow White now. But he cannot tell her. No, that would not be the way. Bill can't bear to be touched. That is new too. To have anyone touch him is unbearable. Not just Snow White but also Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem or Dan. That is a peculiar aspect of Bill, the leader. We speculate that he doesn't want to be involved in human situations any more. A withdrawal. Withdrawal is one of the four modes of dealing with anxiety. We speculate that his reluctance to be touched springs from that. Dan does not go along with the anxiety theory. Dan does not believe in anxiety. Dan speculates that Bill's reluctance to be touched is a physical manifestation of a metaphysical condition that is not anxiety. But he is the only one who speculates that. The rest of us support anxiety. Bill has let us know in subtle ways that he doesn't want to be touched. If he falls down, you are not to pick him up. If someone holds out a hand in greeting, Bill smiles. If it is time to wash the buildings, he will pick up his own bucket. Don't hand him a bucket, for in that circumstance there is a chance that your hands will touch. Bill is tired of Snow White. She must have noticed that he doesn't go to the shower room, now. We are sure she has noticed that. But Bill has not told her in so many words that he is tired of her. He has not had the heart to unfold those cruel words, we speculate. Those cruel words remain locked in his lack of heart. Snow White must assume that his absence from the shower room, in these days, is an aspect of his not liking to be touched. We are certain she has assumed that. But to what does she attribute the "not-liking" itself? We don't know.
"Oh I wish there were some words in the world that were not the words I always hear!" Snow White exclaimed loudly. We regarded each other sitting around the breakfast table with its big cardboard boxes of "Fear," "Chix," and "Rats." Words in the world that were not the words she always heard? What words could those be? "Fish slime," Howard said, but he was a visitor, and rather crude too, and we instantly regretted that we had lent him a sleeping bag, and took it away from him, and took away his bowl too, and the Chix that were in it, and the milk on top of the Chix, and his spoon and napkin and chair, and began pelting him with boxes, to indicate that his welcome had been used up. We soon got rid of him. But the problem remained. What words were those? "Now we have been left sucking the mop again," Kevin said, but Kevin is easily discouraged. "Injunctions!" Bill said, and when he said that we were glad he was still our leader, although some of us had been wondering about him lately. "Murder and create!" Henry said, and that was weak, but we applauded, and Snow White said, "That is one I've never heard before ever," and that gave us courage, and we all began to say things, things that were more or less satisfactory, or at least adequate, to serve the purpose, for the time being. The whole thing was papered over, for the time being, and didn't break out into the open. If it had broken out into the open, then we would really have been left sucking the mop in a big way, that Monday.
Then we went out to wash the buildings. Clean buildings fill your eyes with sunlight, and your heart with the idea that man is perfectible. Also they are good places to look at girls from, those high, swaying wooden platforms: you get a rare view, gazing at the tops of their red and gold and plum-colored heads. Viewed from above they are like targets, the plum-colored head the center of the target, the wavy navy skirt the bold circumference. The white or black legs flopping out in front are like someone waving his arms over the top of the target and calling, "You missed the center by not allowing sufficiently for the wind!" We are very much tempted to shoot our arrows into them, those targets. You know what that means. But we also pay attention to the buildings, gray and noble in their false architecture and cladding. There are Tiparillos in our faces and heavy jangling belts around our waists, and water in our buckets and squeegees on our poles. And we have our beer bottles up there too, and drink beer for a second breakfast, even though that is against the law, but we are so high up, no one can be sure. It's too bad Hogo de Bergerac isn't up here with us, because maybe the experience would be good for him, would make him less loathsome. But he would probably just seize the occasion to perform some new loathsome act. He would probably just throw beer cans down into the street, to make irritating lumps under the feet of those girls who, right this minute, are trying to find the right typewriter, in the correct building.
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p.s. Hey. There's an interview with me on the Esoterrorist site if you're interested. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. If I knew 'Dead of Night', I would probably eagerly await that too. Ha, didn't know that about Ludlam. ** S., I've always considered you a big escorts fan, so I'm glad to have my instincts bolstered. Thanks for the sparkly run down. I stopped listening to the new Bowie shortly after I listened to it. Maybe I'll should crease it again. ** Mononoke Paradice, Hi. That is a nice photograph. Thank you for giving me direct access. My headache finally seems to have died last night, but, then again, the day is young. Oh, yes, I like Ponge. Yes, 'Le Magnolia', I know that, and, yes, it's gorgeous, I totally agree. Thank you so much for the quoting. I think my headache has just met its match. That was a miracle worker, I think. ** Sypha, Hotties? Uh, whoa. Great story about your youthful foray into ventriloquism. The possible Gisele piece has a multiple personality subtext kind of thing. Sounds like sitting on the stories collection idea is good. No rush, right, and sitting innocently has certainly been known to invite the muse back in. ** Scunnard, I like left field posts too. They're kind of my favorites. When posts sneak up on me, it's the funnest. Dude, good morning to you! ** Steevee, Oh, yeah, I heard about Varg's arrest. It's giant news over here. Strange story. I haven't checked the news today, but, as of yesterday, I don't get why his wife having legally bought a few rifles and some obnoxious blog posts by him was cause for arrest. But everyone seems to be saying that. ** Gary gray, There's something sad about it, yeah. 'Heartbreaking' was a bit of an overstatement, but I didn't use it for no good reason, I guess. Wow, your brother. It's good you're talking to him, yeah. He thinks a lot. Road trip! I'm one of those who doesn't like SF, although I like the people I know there. Life affirming, huh, I'll have to give the place another chance to reorient, in my imagination anyway. Thanks a lot for propping those posts and for spinning off them so lustrously. Really nice. No, I hadn't seen that Copypasta archive. I'll delve. Thanks for the share. Bon-est of days to you! ** Empty Frame, Hi, Frame! I was going to say 'Hi, Empty', but that obviously came off weird. Ache, I think, is gone, or gone-ish for sure. You mean VentHaven. Yeah, I know it. If this piece Gisele wants to do actually starts to happen, I think she wants us to go visit it. She gave me this ventriloquism documentary to watch as research called 'Dumbstruck' that takes place at the ventriloquist convention at VentHaven. I haven't watched it yet. I'll probably do a VentHaven-centered post of some sort at some point. Rousseau, interesting, I haven't read him since I was pimply. Sounds kind of hot, yeah. Maybe, hm, maybe I'll try him again, hm, maybe, I don't know. I would like to, but it's so hard for me to really want to read old stuff at the moment. If I could help unleash compulsion on you, I would. I've got a lot to spare at the moment, but it seems kind of agoraphobic about me or something. May today be way more than OK. ** Chris Goode, Hi, Chris! Oh, I was just thinking that I should watch that Nina Conti documentary yesterday. Interested to see if/how Gisele's ventriloquism piece idea evolves. At the moment, she did a workshop thing with a bunch of ventriloquists in Germany, as I may have already mentioned, sorry. She had them do this thing where they sat in a circle and talked to each other, and had their dummies talk to each other, and there was dummy to/fro ventriloquist talking too, and she asked them to also find a third voice, a secret voice that was neither theirs nor the dummies, and have those voices talk to each other while the other conversations were going on. Anyway, she recorded that, and she's having it transcribed, and, at least at the moment, she wants me to revise and refine and create subtexts, etc. in that text, and then she'll have them perform that and improvise off of it to create the performance text. Or something like that. It's still early. Yeah, don't tell anyone, but I have a hard time with Galas too. I have friends who would disown me if they knew, so, seriously, mum's the word. Wow, what an odd phrase: 'mum's the word'. I wonder what that actually means. I have this fan that just sits there toppled over and looking fucked up for 90% of the year. Right now, due to its sweet breath and down-home method of keeping mosquitos at bay, it's my knight in shining armor. I don't think you told me you've started CBT, and, yeah, I did get a start when I first saw those initials. Well, not a start, whatever a 'start' is -- oh, it's short for startled, duh -- but a ... huh. Anyway, that sounds kind of really cool. Food diary, wow, that could be so good. Tell me what your entries are like. I would be so interested. I'll go muscle in on that Berger/Silverblatt interview, thanks! Everyone, the great Chris Goode is 'totally obsessing over this conversation between Michael Silverblatt and John Berger.' You should find out why. I just peeked. I like his face. Berger's face. Well, Michael's too, of course. Happy day, C! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks, man, about the interview, and the prop was a natch and my pleasure. So great to read the novel excerpt! It's, you know, amazing, man. Oh, and I think it was your birthday yesterday? Much happiness a day late! A second Barthes? Hm, maybe 'The Pleasure of the Text' or 'A Lover's Discourse'? I was kind of positive-ish but not adoring re: those Kieslowski films. I think there was one 'color' one I quite liked. I can't remember which. What did you think of them post re-dive? ** Misanthrope, Not all of the new stuff is boring. Try the alleyways. Sorry about the furlough loss, man. Oh, jeez, that's going to be sad taking Little Show down there. Man, that made me ache. ** Rewritedept, It takes a bit for the second season to kick in 'cos Lynch wasn't that involved in it at first, but then it gets pretty amazing. Some of the very best episodes are from the second season. I think you'll see. I guess probably, yeah, about the best artists being obsessive. I would have to think more about it. Maybe obsessively diligent is enough. Great luck with your writing today if you get to do any. ** _Black_Acrylic, Sweet on the three days off. Let me know what you think of the new Seidel, won't you? Best, man. ** Done. I don't think I've ever spotlit Barthelme on this blog before, and now I have. See you tomorrow.