玛雅好!咱们是没直接对话的老熟人了。XW好，谢谢你推荐的书。令胡,康妮等老朋友好。其他新朋友容我慢慢结识。
下面是我翻译的Donald Barlthelme的一篇小说，他是后现代派最后一个值得重视的作家。我在网上看到国内也有人翻译了他的“白雪公主”和部分短篇小说。我暂时主要是想练笔，他很喜欢玩word game.这里只是初稿，许多地方还欠斟酌。比如unveiled existence 来源于veiled existence，我还没有找到确切的中文。还有他喜欢用怪，冷僻的词，也经常造词，比如miserabilism，我还没想好怎么翻。第一段的意大利文，我也拿不准该不该翻，老实说，还不知道是什么意思。他的英文extremely funny，故意用awkard, 甚至bad English造成幽默的效果。假如大家有兴趣，我也可以将英文贴上来。
资本主义的崛起
唐纳德·巴塞尔姆
我把第一件事儿就弄错了。我以为我搞懂了资本主义，但我所做的也就是对它采取了一种态度, 一种悲伤与忧郁混杂的态度。这种态度是不正确的。所幸你的信就在那一刻抵达。“亲爱的鲁佩特，我每天都爱你。你是世界，世界就是生活。我爱你我崇拜你我为你发狂。爱你的，玛塔。”从字里行间，我读出我对资本主义的看法让你颇不以为然。一定要记住：批评家必须“studiare da un punto di vista formalistico e semiologico il rapporto fra lingua di un testo e codificazione di un—”就在这当儿，一根巨大的大拇指—资本主义的大拇指—将文本玷污。我们都生活在它的淫威之下。黑暗降临，我的邻居以平均两周一次的频率自杀。我把他的自杀记入了日程表，因为我的使命就是救活他。有一次我去迟了，他在地板上人事不省地躺了两天。但是现在我明白我还没有将资本主义搞懂，或许，我能琢磨出一个对资本主义不那么模棱两可的态度。我女儿要求买更多的泡沫先生给她洗澡用。捞虾船下了网，一本叫做“18世纪的幽默家”的书刚刚出版。
资本主义鼓励每个人为一份有限的财富与同伴竞争。一少部分人积攒了大笔财富，但是大多数人没有。群体感成为这一斗争的牺牲品。日益增加的富裕和繁荣与生产力的增长紧密相联。一支等级森严的官员队伍在人民和领袖之间进行干预。私有企业的利益被认为高于公共利益。世界市场的体制加紧了对资本主义国家的控制，并对第三世界实施恐吓。所有的一切都从头到尾受到操纵。约旦国王坐在他的业余无线电电台旁，邀请陌生人去参观他的宫殿。我去看望我的助理情妇。“那么，杜鹃花，”我坐在最好的椅子上问，“从我上次看你以来，你的情况如何？” 杜鹃花向我讲了她的情况：她给沙发加了罩，还写了一部小说。杰克行为不检，罗杰丢了工作（一只电子眼睛取代了他。）姬姬的三个孩子都进医院去戒毒了。杜鹃本人则给爱情折腾得死去活来。我抚摸着她完美无缺的屁股—假如在资本主义制度下有所谓完美这档子事儿的话。圣保罗说：“结婚比燃烧好。” 但圣保罗的话现在不那么流行了，因为他的观点太严格，与发达工业社会留给我们的经验不符合。我抽了一根雪茄，好让猫不快。
与此同时, 玛塔越来越生气。“鲁佩特，” 她说，“你比一条该死的狗好不到哪里去！一只普通的狗也比你更懂女人的心！” 我想向她解释这不是我的错，而是资本主义的错。可她简直是油盐不进。“我就站在资本主义制度的背后，” 玛塔说，“它给了我们所拥有的一切—马路，公园，林荫大道，海滨人行道和商业区—还有一些我现在一时想不起来的东西。” 但是市场一直在干些什么呢？我扫了一眼十五种最热门的股票：
西方宠物 983，100 20 5/8 + 3 ¾
纳托莫斯 912,300 58 3/8 + 18 ½
多让人懊恼！为什么我没早点对纳托莫斯感兴趣呢？就象我对漂亮衣服着迷一样？漂亮的衣服在你去舞厅时会增加你的社会价值。今天早上我不再富有！我将头埋在玛塔的双乳之间，好掩饰我的羞惭。
洪诺留·德·巴尔扎克去了电影院。他看的是他最喜欢的电影 —“资本主义的崛起。” 同去观摩的还有赛蒙尼·西蒙及雷蒙德·拉第格特。看完电影后，他奔出去用五万法郎买了一座印刷厂。他宣称：“从今以后，我要自己搞出版。我要出版漂亮，昂贵的精装本，廉价本，外国版，十二开本，十六开本，还有十八开本。我要出版地图册，集邮本，布道全集，性教育各卷，评论，自传，日记，铁路时刻表，日报，电话号码簿，赛马小报，宣言，歌剧剧本，字母表，有关针灸的著作，还有烹调书。” 洪诺留说完，跑出去喝醉了酒，然后去了他女朋友的家。他在楼梯上又是吼叫，又是跺脚，把女友的丈夫给吓死了。那可怜的丈夫就这么给埋掉了。人们沉默不语地站在他的坟墓旁，思考着他们从哪里来，又要到哪里去的问题。当最后一把湿土撒在坟墓上时，洪诺留感到很内疚。
资本主义取得的成就：
(a) 幕墙
(b)人工降雨
© 洛克菲勒中心
(d) 卡萨尔斯
(e) 神秘化
“资本主义当然是阳光灿烂啦!” 我在拉雷多的街上散步时，听到一位失业的刀具工嚷嚷道。“中欧那些道德败坏的悲惨东西，我们一点也没有。”确实，我所看到的一切似乎都在支持他的论点。拉雷多现在的情况相当不错，这全得感谢“新资本主义”卓越原则的实施。拉雷多的产品总产量在上升，与此同时，它的内部矛盾在下降。农业综合经营业里一项新型的产业—鲶鱼养殖业—也正在创造奇迹。酒吧和赌场的楼房分别达到十九层高。“一点用也没有，” 杜鹃花说，“就算你揭掉你的面纱，你仍然是条该死的狗！” 在拉雷多的乡村俱乐部，男人和女人们正在讨论法国的大教堂。他们最近刚刚到那儿旅游过。有的喜欢图尔，有些喜欢里昂，还有些喜欢克雷蒙特。“在这儿，你会感受到对上帝虔诚的恐惧。”
资本主义崛起并除去了它的遮羞布。又过了一天，又赚进一块美金。个人的价值取决于他为市场带来的好处。劳动本来的意义消失了，取而代之的是酬劳的意义。失业率抹杀了失业个体的存在。在资本主义晚期，工人在文化上的不发达被作为一种操控手段，随处可见。个体真正的自决权受到阻扰。由大众文化创造并反过来迎合它的错误意识使无知和无力繁衍不绝。一缕缕乌亮的头发在恒河的水面上漂浮……为什么他们不治理恒河呢？假如有人能迫使那些开办恒河假发厂的资本家们在工厂的排污处安装过滤网……但是现在神圣的恒河塞满了头发，河水不再知道自己该往哪儿流，月光被头发吞噬，水变得乌黑发亮。以毗瑟孥的名义！是可忍，孰不可忍！难道人们不该对此做点什么吗？
朋友们来赴晚宴。蔬菜沙拉准备好了，碧绿而新鲜……上好的餐巾纸也摆上桌面……每个人都在谈论资本主义(虽然有些人在谈老年心理学，有些在谈对人类的人性使用，还有些在谈经验政治学。)“你怎么可以这样说？”杜鹃花嚷嚷道。玛塔也嚷嚷道，“那么空气呢？” 正如花儿向花商移去, 女人们向不适合他们的男人靠拢。自我实现并不能通过另一个人来获得，当然，刚开始时你并没有意识到这一点。对否定的否定是建立在对不正确的书的正确阅读上。即将到来的宇宙热寂不是一件坏事，因为它是个慢慢死亡的过程。混沌是一种假设，一种理由不充分的假设。它与不聚焦有关，关于这一点我忘了谈到。现在，圣人们开始一个接一个地走进来，宣传他们的教义。他们中间有圣·阿尔伯特（他曾经教过托马斯·阿奎那），圣·阿尔马修斯（他为试图结束角斗士比赛而成为烈士），圣·阿玛多（隐士），克里特的圣·安德罗（他的“伟大的颂歌”长达二百五十个诗节），山洞里的圣·安东尼，圣山阿陀斯的圣·亚大纳西，柱上苦行僧圣·奥布里，还有其他许许多多。“听啊，”圣人们说，“那个想要真正的安息和幸福的人，必须从腐烂和消逝的事物中寻找希望，并将它安置在圣经之中。” 唉，仍然是些陈腔滥调的预言。“鲁佩特，”玛塔说，“在来自各个阶级的人那里，你的资产阶级化达到了令人恶心的深渊。一条该死的猪也比你更明事理。至少，一条该死的猪不会中‘糖衣炮弹’（用中国人的话来说）的毒。” 她是对的。
烟雾，雨，意志缺失。忧心忡忡的公民该如何在他自己的社区与资本主义的崛起作斗争呢？在一个结构不平等的系统内研究冲突和权力的浪潮是一项重要的工作。对1789年以来的欧洲知识分子史的了解会提供有用的背景资料。信息论也提供了有趣的新可能性。激情—特别是那些不合法的类型—也会有帮助。怀疑是任何有意义行为的先决条件。恐惧是最终的驱动力。
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/19/2004
若之，真高兴你来这儿，请都请不来的稀客。
这本书的英文是什么，我去amazon没有找到这本书。 请再介绍一下这位作者和书名。
checked google, and there is nothing about him at all?!
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/19/2004
玛雅,对不起,将名字打错了一个字母.应该是Donald Barthelme. 下面是一个link.
http://www.jessamyn.com/barth/ 奇怪,他的短篇小说在网上也可以找到,在英文网中倒很少见.我对他的生平知道得并不多,他还有两个兄弟也是小说家.他大概死于1989年. 两个兄弟前几年在赌场舞弊,闹了个丑闻.不过,他们的文学才华是出众的,特别是Donald Barthelme,被称为美国后现代派小说之父.也有许多人不喜欢他,我比较喜欢胡说八道的东西--只要说得有趣,有深度. :-)
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/19/2004
wow，弱女侠来这里混了。一出手就是天大的话题，厉害。:)
不同于所谓的社会主义和共产主义这种纯学术概念炮制出来的意识形态产物，“资本主义”是人类利益不断纷争中自然进化出的产物，一种统计意义上的自动调节机制，不是完美的，却是迄今最为现实的机制。这方面，东方比西方落后了两千五百年。东方首先解决了天地间的文化和存在问题，可西方首先解决了土地上的人间利益问题。中国直到今天都无法澄清政府的权力来源问题，而西方却至今还坚持认为人类的存在是一种上帝的阴谋。
玩笑玩笑。:) - Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/19/2004
此篇俩个文本。一个是对于资产阶级生活方式的假批判真陶醉，什么让锚不高兴啊，。。。。。。另一个是理论上的消极介入，好像在谈批判，其实啥也没有。这个复调在两方面都是装腔做事，等于啥也没说－——啥也没说就是一个“说” _____这好像很洒脱，其实还是装腔做事，皮毛文本。
。。。。。。我看一些所谓后现代，就是把凡高的草稿拿来和乔托的真迹比，虾米了。
当然老巴也有好的，如白雪公主啊。 - posted on 09/19/2004
The New York Times
July 24, 1989, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section D; Page 11, Column 1; Cultural Desk
LENGTH: 1042 words
HEADLINE: Donald Barthelme Is Dead at 58; A Short-Story Writer and Novelist
BYLINE: By HERBERT MITGANG
Donald Barthelme, a short story writer and novelist whose minimalist style placed him among the leading innovative writers of modern fiction, died of cancer yesterday in Houston at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. He was 58 years old and lived in Manhattan and Houston.
Mr. Barthelme had recently completed a new novel, "The King," which will be published as an Edward Burlingame Book by Harper & Row in the spring of 1990. "The King is Arthur," Mr. Burlingame said recently. "It includes the members of his Round Table, and it takes place in England during World War II while Winston Churchill is Prime Minister. The book is illustrated by Barry Moser. It's pure Barthelme - wacky and wonderful."
Mr. Barthelme's short stories frequently appeared in The New Yorker before being collected into books. He won a National Book Award in 1972 for a children's book entitled "The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine" and the PEN/ Faulkner Award for fiction in 1982 for his "Sixty Stories." He was a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Authors League of America, the Authors Guild and PEN.
Mr. Barthelme once likened his style to that of collage. "The principle of collage is the central principle of all art in the 20th century," the author said.
'Dealing With Not-Knowing'
Rebutting criticism of himself and of other writers as being too difficult, Mr. Barthelme said: "Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens."
"Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how," Mr. Barthelme said. "We have all heard novelists testify to the fact that beginning a new book, they are utterly baffled as to how to proceed, what should be written and how it might be written, even though they've done a dozen. At best there is a slender intuition, not much greater than an itch. The not-knowing is not simple, because it's hedged about with prohibitions, roads that may not be taken. The more serious the artist, the more problems he takes into account, the more considerations limit his possible initiatives."
In public appearances and in print, Mr. Barthelme often defended what he termed "the alleged post-modernists" in literature. He placed himself in this category and included, among Americans, John Barth, John Hawkes, William Gass, Robert Coover and Thomas Pynchon. Among Europeans, he named Peter Handke, Thomas Bernhard and Italo Calvino.
The writers he admired, he said, included Stephane Mallarme, Upton Sinclair, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett and George Orwell. He especially respected Mallarme, he once told an interviewer, because the French poet "shakes words loose from their attachments and bestows new meanings upon them, meanings which point not toward the external world, but toward the Absolute, acts of poetic intuition."
Grew Up in Houston
Mr. Barthelme was born in Philadelphia on April 7, 1931. He had a Roman Catholic upbringing in Houston, where his father was a professor of architectural design at the University of Houston. While studying at the university, he adopted an existentialist philosophy. After serving in the Armed Forces in Korea and Japan, he returned to Houston, where he worked as a reporter for The Houston Post. In 1961-62, he became the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston.
Mr. Barthelme moved to Manhattan in 1963. He lived in Greenwich Village with his fourth wife, the former Marion Knox, whom he married in 1978. Mr. Barthelme described New York City in the same terms as his own work, "as a collage, as opposed to a tribal village in which all the huts are the same hut, duplicated. The point of collage is that things are stuck together to create a new reality." In 1974-75, he served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of English at the City College of the City University of New York.
His first novel, "Snow White," took up virtually a whole issue of The New Yorker in 1967 and brought him national attention. His interpretation owed more to the Walt Disney film than to the Grimm story. It parodied the fairy tale with erotic touches. Some critics described the story as a surrealistic Snow White. In the story, Snow White shares a shower and an apartment with the seven dwarfs, who become respectable bourgeois entrepreneurs.
When Mr. Barthelme received the National Book Award for his 1971 children's book, "The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine," which he also illustrated, the jurors described the book as one "of originality, wit and intellectual adventure, at once elegant and playful, and each rereading discovers fresh surprises and delights."
Other Works Listed
His books of stories included: "Come Back, Dr. Caligari" (1964); "Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts" (1968); "City Life" (1970); "Sadness" (1972); "Amateurs" (1976); "Great Days" (1979), which was fashioned into an off-Broadway play in 1983; "Sixty Stories" (1981), and "Overnight to Many Distant Cities" (1983).
His novels, apart from "Snow White," included: "The Dead Father" (1975), and "Paradise" (1986). In addition to the children's book, he was author of a book of parodies, "Guilty Pleasures" (1974).
The critic Alfred Kazin, in "Bright Book of Life: American Novelists and Storytellers From Hemingway to Mailer," called Barthelme an "antinovelist who operates by countermeasures only."
"He is outside everything he writes in a way that a humorist like S. J. Perelman could never be," Mr. Kazin continued. "He is under the terrible discipline that the system inflicts on those who are most fascinated with its relentlnessness."
In addition to his wife, Mr. Barthelme is survived by two daughters, Anne, of San Diego, Calif., and Katherine, of Houston; his parents, Donald Sr. and Helen Barthelme of Houston; a sister, Joan Barthelme Bugbee of Houston; and three brothers, Peter R., of Houston, and Frederick and Steven, both of Hattiesburg, Miss.
Plans for a memorial service were incomplete last night. - posted on 09/19/2004
The Washington Post
July 25, 1989, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: METRO; PAGE B4; OBITUARIES
LENGTH: 1000 words
HEADLINE: Donald Barthelme Dies at 58; Wrote Short Stories, Novels
BYLINE: Richard Pearson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Donald Barthelme, 58, a critically acclaimed author of novels and short stories who also wrote and illustrated a prize-winning children's book, died of cancer July 23 at a hospital in Houston. He maintained homes in Houston and New York's Greenwich Village.
He was best known for his short stories, which appeared in The Atlantic, Paris Review, and most often The New Yorker, before being collected into volumes that ranged from "Come Back, Dr. Caligari," published in 1964, to "Sixty Stories," which won the 1982 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.
Mr. Barthelme had won a National Book Award in the juvenile literary category for his 1971 book, "The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine; or The Hithering Thithering Djinn." The award cited his "originality, wit and intellectual adventure."
His novels included "Snow White," published in 1967; "The Dead Father (1975)" and "Guilty Pleasures" (1986). He recently completed a fourth novel, "King," which is to be published by Harper & Row next year.
Although Mr. Barthelme's books won prizes, appeared in the nation's leading literary journals and were hailed by critics, they did not have long runs on best-seller lists. Among the reasons for this may have been his complicated stylistic techniques and the unusual themes of his work.
"Snow White," for example, was a parody of the Disney film version of the classic fairy tale. The Barthelme version included a Snow White who became good friends (and shared her shower) with seven oversexed dwarfs. The dwarfs also become successful capitalists, a Grimm Brothers embodiment of small businessmen. Prince Charming is delayed not only by the evil queen but also by a perverse fondness for hot baths.
Mr. Barthelme's short story collections were no less singular. His "Caligari" was composed of 14 seemingly unconnected stories. They ranged from a brief tale of a defeated Batman whose career is saved by friends to one about an abandoned husband who takes up residence in a radio station where he broadcasts the saga of his marriage while a band plays "The Star-Spangled Banner."
While many critics applauded his work, especially his wry humor and innovative style, some complained of writing they found tedious, repetitious, and above all, depressing. Harper's wrote that he and Truman Capote were "depression freaks whose anger is muted in pessimism and discontent. The rage takes the form of despair over the possibilities for life."
Others applauded what they perceived as a surreal, diverse and dizzying writing act. One of his stories consisted of a single sentence, a sentence without a subject. Another is composed of 100 numbered sentences. His writing featured varying rhythms, typographical inventiveness and even footnotes. It was as convoluted as life itself.
Hailed by the New York Times as a worthy successor to Franz Kafka, Mr. Barthelme said he considered himself one of the "alleged post-modernists" whose ranks he said included John Barth, John Hawkes, Thomas Pynchon and Italo Calvino.
He said he found writing a "process of dealing with not knowing, a forcing of what and how. We have all heard novelists testify to the fact that beginning a new book, they are utterly baffled as to how to proceed, what should be written and how it might be written, even though they've done a dozen.
"At best there is a slender intuition, not much greater than an itch," he said. "The more serious the artist, the more problems he takes into account, the more considerations limit his possible initiatives."
Mr. Barthelme was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Houston. He attended the University of Houston before becoming a reporter for the Houston Post. Drafted into the Army during the Korean War, he arrived in Korea the day the armistice was signed in 1953.
He then joined the public relations staff of the University of Houston. Later he was director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston for two years before going to New York City in 1963. He was managing editor of a short-lived journal, Locations, then began contributing a stream of stories and non-fiction pieces to the New Yorker.
In addition to his writing, Mr. Barthelme taught creative writing at the City College of New York. He was a member of the Authors League of America, the Authors Guild, PEN, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Survivors include his fourth wife, the former Marion Knox; two daughters; his parents; a sister; and three brothers. - posted on 09/19/2004
The Independent
July 27 1989, Thursday
SECTION: Gazette ; Pg. 31
LENGTH: 922 words
HEADLINE: Obituary: Donald Barthelme
BYLINE: RICHARD BURNS
Donald Barthelme, writer, born Philadelphia Pennsylvania 7 April 1931, died Houston Texas 23 July 1989.
DONALD BARTHELME was one of the most innovative and inventive writers of the post-war era.
Born in Philadelphia in 1931, he served in the United States Army in Korea. In the early Sixties he was based in Houston, Texas, first as a student and later as a university administrator and curator of a small gallery of modern art; although he later moved to New York, he never lost touch with Houston, and continued to do some teaching at the university there.
A fine writer with a distinctive style, his work was easier to pastiche than to predict. Certainly, his writing has its mannerisms: a wryness, a joy in bathos, a self- conscious minimalism. The minimalism is perhaps his most acknowledged characteristic; one of his best-known stories, 'Eugenie Grandet' reduces Balzac's great novel to some eight pages and a handful of drawings. Although he wrote three novels - Snow White, The Dead Father and Paradise - his true medium was the short story.
Yet to emphasise his minimalism is to obscure his other achievements. Though his commitment to his art was overshadowed by his relentless and some would say unnecessary experimentation, and though the technical innovation marks him as a writer of his period, he rarely experimented for experiment's sake. Barthelme's best work was an even-handed if restless disquisition on the theme of the role of art and the artist in society, and his importance rests as much on integrity as innovation.
'Eugenie Grandet', for instance, can be read as a jeu d'esprit, a piece of virtuoso audacity and iconoclasm. Certainly it has its ludic qualities: the question 'Who will obtain Eugenie Grandet's hand?' is followed by a crude line drawing of that hand; the section entitled 'Part of a letter' reveals the left side only, the right being left to the reader to guess. But this is more than literate tomfoolery. The short scenes and rapid transitions in this short story are a serious attempt to render the rich variety of a nineteenth-century novel into terms accessible to the more fragmented and less leisurely twentieth.
There is, of course, something pessimistic in Barthelme's approach: the very fact that such a translation could seem necessary indicates a profound mistrust of the importance of literature in the twentieth century. But at the same time Barthelme is refreshing, insisting on the importance of Balzac's story despite the restrictions of the modern age.
Another of his best, and best- known, stories is 'The Glass Mountain'. The most immediately apparent feature of this story is its appearance on the page, for the sentences are laid out like a list and numbered consecutively. The second thing one notes is the curious tale itself, which juxtaposes the romantic aspirations of a fairy-tale hero with the grubby street-life of contemporary New York - 'The glass mountain stands at the corner of 13th Street and 8th Avenue'. Finally, there is the true subject of the story, which is the question of where the artist and dreamer stands, or more precisely climbs, in this mundane urban scene. The conclusion is hardly encouraging, for despite the long climb the hero's quest ends unromantically, almost brutally; the innovation and wit only partly conceal the author's lack of faith in the medium of story-telling.
For Barthelme was essentially a modernist - if by that we can mean one born in a period when it was fashionable, and inevitable, that artists would doubt the importance of their art. It was an age, after all, of rapid technological advance and appalling political acts, an age which seemed to move too fast for the careful linear elegance of the written word, the static representation offered by painting, the graceful harmonies which are classical music. Barthelme was a lover of art, and of the arts; he used the conventions of the late-twentieth century - cynicism, abstraction, obscurantism - in what seemed to him a sometimes desperate rearguard action to preserve the relevance of his art.
More confidence might have made him a greater artist - 'greater' at least in the sense of writing longer and larger pieces - but he was determined, as he wrote in the semi-autobiographical story 'See The Moon', to trust only the fragments. This uncompromising approach frequently makes his writing difficult, and certainly his work, though widely respected, has received neither the scholarly attention nor the popular acclaim accorded many of his contemporaries. When he won the National Book Award it was for a children's book, The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine. His moment of public exposure was in 1967 when The New Yorker, exceptionally, devoted a whole edition to his novel-length story Snow White, a gloss on the Disney story, which, in its grudging acceptance of the importance of the cartoon, says much about Barthelme's feelings on the direction contemporary culture was taking.
He never courted fame, and what fame his work has achieved is principally for its economy and wit; these were born of his lack of faith in the traditional methods of story-telling, that made him so typical of his time. His real achievement is that he defied his lack of faith. While preserving the authenticity of his pessimistic vision he nonetheless kept writing, and though his approach is that of the third quarter of this century, his concern with the role of the artist is of a far greater significance.
Gazette Page 31
- posted on 09/19/2004
The New York Times
September 3, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 7; Page 9, Column 1; Book Review Desk
LENGTH: 1629 words
HEADLINE: THINKING MAN'S MINIMALIST: HONORING BARTHELME
BYLINE: By JOHN BARTH; John Barth's most recent novel is "The Tidewater Tale."
"The proper work of the critic is praise, and that which cannot be praised should be surrounded with a tasteful, well-thought-out silence."
This is to praise the excellent American writer Donald Barthelme, who, in a 1981 Paris Review interview, cited in passing that arguable proposition (by the music critic Peter Yates).
Donald worked hard on that anything-but-spontaneous interview - as wise, articulate and entertaining a specimen as can be found in the Paris Review's long, ongoing series of shoptalks. He worked hard on all his printed utterance, to make it worth his and our whiles. His untimely death in July at the age of 58, like the untimely death of Raymond Carver just last summer at 50, leaves our literature - leaves Literature - bereft, wham-bang, of two splendid practitioners at the peak of their powers.
Polar opposites in some obvious respects (Carver's home-grown, blue-collar realism and programmatic unsophistication, Barthelme's urbane and urban semi-Surrealism), they shared an axis of rigorous literary craftsmanship, a preoccupation with the particulars of, shall we say, post-Eisenhower American life, and a late-modern conviction, felt to the bone, that less is more. For Carver, as for Jorge Luis Borges, the step from terse lyric poetry to terse short stories was temerity enough; neither, to my knowledge, ever attempted a novel. Barthelme was among us a bit longer than Carver and published three spare, fine specimens of that genre - all brilliant, affecting, entertaining and more deep than thick - but the short story was his long suit. Without underrating either Carver's intellectuality or Barthelme's emotional range, we nevertheless associate Raymond with reticent viscerality and may consider Donald the thinking man's - and woman's - Minimalist. Opposing stars they became, in recent years, for hundreds of apprentice writers in and out of our plenteous university writing programs; one has sometimes to remind student writers that there are expansive easts and wests in their literary heritage as well as those two magnetic poles.
His writing is not the only excellent thing that Donald Barthelme leaves those who knew him personally or professionally. He was by all accounts a first-rate literary coach (most recently at the University of Houston), a conscientious literary citizen much involved with such organizations as PEN, and a gracious friend. But his fiction is our longest-lasting souvenir and the one that matters most to those of us who knew him mainly, if not only, as delighted readers.
"We like books that have a lot of dreck in them," remarks one of the urban dwarfs in Barthelme's first novel, "Snow White"; and included in that novel's midpoint questionnaire for the reader is the item, "Is there too much blague in the narration? Not enough blague?" In fact the novel is blague-free, like all of Donald Barthelme's writing. Not enough to say that he didn't waste words; neither did extravagant Rabelais or apparently rambling Laurence Sterne. Donald barely indulged words - he valued them too much for that - and this rhetorical short leash makes his occasional lyric flights all the more exhilarating, like the sound of Hokie Mokie's trombone in Donald's short story, "The King of Jazz":
"You mean that sound that sounds like the cutting edge of life? That sounds like polar bears crossing Arctic ice pans? That sounds like a herd of musk ox in full flight? That sounds like male walruses diving to the bottom of the sea? That sounds like fumaroles smoking on the slopes of Mt. Katmai? That sounds like the wild turkey walking through the deep, soft forest? That sounds like beavers chewing trees in an Appalachian marsh? That sounds like an oyster fungus growing on an aspen trunk? That sounds like a mule deer wandering a montane of the Sierra Nevada? That sounds like prairie dogs kissing? That sounds like witchgrass tumbling or a river meandering? That sounds like manatees munching seaweed at Cape Sable? That sounds like coatimundis moving in packs across the face of Arkansas? That sounds like - "
More characteristic is the dispatch with which he ends "Snow White": a series of chapter-titles to which it would have been de trop to add the chapters themselves.
THE FAILURE OF SNOW WHITE'S ARSE
REVIRGINIZATION OF SNOW WHITE APOTHEOSIS OF SNOW WHITE SNOW WHITE RISES INTO THE SKY THE HEROES DEPART IN SEARCH OF A NEW PRINCIPLE HEIGH-HO And at his tersest, with a single comma he can constrict your heart: "I visited the child's nursery school, once."
Bright as is his accomplishment in it, the genre of the novel, even the half-inch novel, must have been basically uncongenial to a narrative imagination not only agoraphobic by disposition but less inclined to dramaturgy than to the tactful elaboration of bravura ground-metaphors, such as those suggested by his novels' titles: "Snow White," "The Dead Father," "Paradise." His natural narrative space was the short story, if story is the right word for those often plotless marvels of which he published some seven volumes over 20 years, from "Come Back, Dr. Caligari" in 1964 to "Overnight to Many Distant Cities" in 1983. (Most of the stories first appeared in The New Yorker; five dozen of the best are collected in "60 Stories," published by Putnam in 1981.) These constitute his major literary accomplishment, and an extraordinary accomplishment it is, in quality and in consistency.
Is there really any "early Donald Barthelme"? Like Mozart and Kafka, he seems to have been born full-grown. One remarks some minor lengthening and shortening of his literary sideburns over the decades: the sportive, more or less Surreal, high-60's graphics, for example, tend to disappear after "City Life" (1970), and while he never forsook what Borges calls "that element of irrealism indispensable to art," there is a slight shift toward the realistic, even the personal, in such later stories as "Visitors" and "Affection" (in "Overnight to Many Distant Cities"). But a Donald Barthelme story from any of his too-few decades remains recognizable from its opening line:
"Hubert gave Charles and Irene a nice baby for Christmas." "The death of God left the angels in a strange position." "When Captain Blood goes to sea, he locks the doors and windows of his house on Cow Island personally."
I have heard Donald referred to as essentially a writer of the American 1960's. It may be true that his alloy of irrealism and its opposite is more evocative of that fermentatious decade, when European formalism had its belated flowering in North American writing, than of the relatively conservative decades since. But his literary precursors antedate the century, not to mention its 60's, and are mostly non-American. "How come you write the way you do?" a Johns Hopkins apprentice writer once asked him. "Because Samuel Beckett already wrote the way he did," Barthelme replied. He then produced for the seminar his "short list": five books he recommended to the attention of aspiring American fiction writers. No doubt the list changed from time to time; just then it consisted of Rabelais's "Gargantua and Pantagruel," Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy," the stories of Heinrich von Kleist, Flaubert's "Bouvard and Pecuchet" and Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" - a fair sample of the kind of nonlinear narration, sportive form and cohabitation of radical fantasy with quotidian detail that mark his own fiction. He readily admired other, more "traditional" writers, but it is from the likes of these that he felt his genealogical descent.
Similarly, though he tsked at the critical tendency to group certain writers against certain others "as if we were football teams" - praising these as the true "post-contemporaries" or whatever, and consigning those to some outer darkness of the passe - he freely acknowledged his admiration for such of his "teammates," in those critics' view, as Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, William Gaddis, William Gass, John Hawkes, Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut, among others. A few springs ago, he and his wife, Marion, presided over a memorable Greenwich Village dinner party for most of these and their companions (together with his agent, Lynn Nesbit, whom Donald called "the mother of postmodernism"). In 1988, on the occasion of John Hawkes's academic retirement, Robert Coover impresarioed a more formal reunion of that team, complete with readings and symposia, at Brown University. Donald's throat cancer had by then already announced itself - another, elsewhere, would be the death of him - but he gave one more of his perfectly antitheatrical virtuoso readings.
How different from one another those above-mentioned teammates are! Indeed, other than their nationality and gender, their common inclination to some degree of irrealism and to the foregrounding of form and language, and the circumstance of their having appeared on the literary scene in the 1960's or thereabouts, it is not easy to see why their names should be so frequently linked (or why Grace Paley's, for example, is not regularly included in that all-male lineup). But if they constitute a team, it has no consistently brighter star than the one just lost.
Except for readers who require a new literary movement with each new network television season, the product of Donald Barthelme's imagination and artistry is an ongoing delight that we had looked forward to decades more of. Readers in the century to come (assuming etc.) will surely likewise prize that product - for its wonderful humor and wry pathos, for the cultural-historical interest its rich specificity will duly acquire, and - most of all, I hope and trust - for its superb verbal art. - posted on 09/19/2004
miserabilism, n.
[In early use < German Miserabilismus (E. Hartmann Zur Geschichte u. Begründung des Pessimismus (1880) 36) < classical Latin miserbilis MISERABLE a. + German -ismus -ISM. In quot. 1958 independently < French misérabilisme, as the name of an artistic tendency (1937). In quot. 1990 perh. representing an independent formation < MISERABLE a. + -ISM.
French misérabilisme also occurs as an unnaturalized loan from the second half of the 20th cent.:
1961 Times Lit. Suppl. 13 Oct. 713/3 Form cannot be an end in itself. Dull themes, misérabilisme, mundane drawing-room patter, depth (when attained) are not enough. 1972 E. LUCIE-SMITH in C. B. Cox & A. E. Dyson 20th-cent. Mind III. xvi. 466 The thinness of these figures [in Giacometti's sculpture] also seemed to be an expression of existentialist misérabilisme.]
A tendency to take a pessimistic or negative view; pessimism, esp. of a self-indulgent kind; gloomy negativity.
1882 J. W. BARLOW Ultimatum of Pessimism 8 The third..of these unscientific species combines the characteristic evils of both wrathful and quietistic pessimism. It has been aptly termed Miserabilism (Miserabilismus). 1904 T. B. SAUNDERS tr. A. von Harnack What is Christianity? 45 A miserabilism which clings to the expectation of a miraculous interference on God's part. 1958 Yale French Stud. No. 21. 132 The comic spirit has not deserted the poets who are the contemporaries of Existentialism, miserabilism [etc.]. 1990 S. REYNOLDS Blissed Out (BNC) 32 A while back, somebody invented the term ‘miserabilism’. The people who used this vile slander seemed to believe that any kind of troubled, troubling music..was self-indulgent wallowing.
OED Online - Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/19/2004
这篇东西是小说？看来我对后现代的陌生连我自己都感到不可饶恕。
若之，我觉得中国人现在还看不懂这个，因为太后现代了。中国连现代还到不了。
不知自立对这个问题怎么看？ - Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/19/2004
DUP - posted on 09/19/2004
adagio wrote:
这篇东西是小说？看来我对后现代的陌生连我自己都感到不可饶恕。若之，我觉得中国人现在还看不懂这个，因为太后现代了。中国连现代还到不了。不知自立对这个问题怎么看？
妄自菲薄啊，兰舟。:) 古典是正像，现代是写实，后现代是反像。反像是现实中的垃圾。当然，垃圾中偶尔也能拣出好东西，不过爱捡的人不多，这是可以理解的。为此。我们向这些出色的、不派脏累的同志们致敬。
玩笑玩笑。谢谢A Reader的转贴，受益匪浅。A reader象CND上的dean网友，什么都能找到。有时间能不能传授一二招。:))
- posted on 09/20/2004
zili先生的眼光真厉害,一下子就看出这个小短篇有两个文本，当然这两个文本是high-brow，low-brow至少也有两个文本，比如巴尔扎克，玛塔，杜鹃花什么的，这就是我以前跟令胡说的拼贴风格，当然拼贴也没什么新奇的了，早在西方玩过时了，后现代也已寿终正寝。不过，我认为，无论拿种风格流派，新潮也好，古典也好，最主要的是要有substantial的东西，没有老巴的博学做底子去模仿他，就真正是皮毛了。
“这个复调在两方面都是装腔做事，”自立先生又看得很准，这里是mannerism, 也是老巴玩得很地道的东东，当然，这种mannerism每每让我忍俊不止，是我阅读他的乐趣之一。
“皮毛文本”也非常有见地，无论理论也好，故事也好，在老巴的小说里都只是点到而只，suggestive,剩下的部分让读者完成，有点象一个interactive game。
这个短篇在老巴的集子里并不是最出色的，我挑它来译主要是里面的术语多。如我所说，目的是为了练笔，贴到这里来也是为了听听大家对文字的意见，并不是为了谈老巴。不过，引出自立先生的一番评论，也算是一种意外收获吧。不枉。当然，假如自立先生能对文字方面提提意见，我就更感激了。
zili wrote:
此篇俩个文本。一个是对于资产阶级生活方式的假批判真陶醉，什么让锚不高兴啊，。。。。。。另一个是理论上的消极介入，好像在谈批判，其实啥也没有。这个复调在两方面都是装腔做事，等于啥也没说－——啥也没说就是一个“说” _____这好像很洒脱，其实还是装腔做事，皮毛文本。
。。。。。。我看一些所谓后现代，就是把凡高的草稿拿来和乔托的真迹比，虾米了。
当然老巴也有好的，如白雪公主啊。 - posted on 09/20/2004
哇，令胡，又出山了？看来你在假期里很勤奋么，“中国直到今天都无法澄清政府的权力来源问题，而西方却至今还坚持认为人类的存在是一种上帝的阴谋。”
难怪许多“坏份子”都在试图引进上帝。好了，咖啡馆的规矩，不谈政治。：-）
令胡冲 wrote:
wow，弱女侠来这里混了。一出手就是天大的话题，厉害。:)
不同于所谓的社会主义和共产主义这种纯学术概念炮制出来的意识形态产物，“资本主义”是人类利益不断纷争中自然进化出的产物，一种统计意义上的自动调节机制，不是完美的，却是迄今最为现实的机制。这方面，东方比西方落后了两千五百年。东方首先解决了天地间的文化和存在问题，可西方首先解决了土地上的人间利益问题。中国直到今天都无法澄清政府的权力来源问题，而西方却至今还坚持认为人类的存在是一种上帝的阴谋。
玩笑玩笑。:) - posted on 09/20/2004
多谢绝A reader，古狗的这些东西都很有帮助，特别是这个。我都认真读了，又受到些启发。
A reader wrote:
miserabilism, n.
[In early use < German Miserabilismus (E. Hartmann Zur Geschichte u. Begründung des Pessimismus (1880) 36) < classical Latin miserbilis MISERABLE a. + German -ismus -ISM. In quot. 1958 independently < French misérabilisme, as the name of an artistic tendency (1937). In quot. 1990 perh. representing an independent formation < MISERABLE a. + -ISM.
French misérabilisme also occurs as an unnaturalized loan from the second half of the 20th cent.:
1961 Times Lit. Suppl. 13 Oct. 713/3 Form cannot be an end in itself. Dull themes, misérabilisme, mundane drawing-room patter, depth (when attained) are not enough. 1972 E. LUCIE-SMITH in C. B. Cox & A. E. Dyson 20th-cent. Mind III. xvi. 466 The thinness of these figures [in Giacometti's sculpture] also seemed to be an expression of existentialist misérabilisme.]
A tendency to take a pessimistic or negative view; pessimism, esp. of a self-indulgent kind; gloomy negativity.
1882 J. W. BARLOW Ultimatum of Pessimism 8 The third..of these unscientific species combines the characteristic evils of both wrathful and quietistic pessimism. It has been aptly termed Miserabilism (Miserabilismus). 1904 T. B. SAUNDERS tr. A. von Harnack What is Christianity? 45 A miserabilism which clings to the expectation of a miraculous interference on God's part. 1958 Yale French Stud. No. 21. 132 The comic spirit has not deserted the poets who are the contemporaries of Existentialism, miserabilism [etc.]. 1990 S. REYNOLDS Blissed Out (BNC) 32 A while back, somebody invented the term ‘miserabilism’. The people who used this vile slander seemed to believe that any kind of troubled, troubling music..was self-indulgent wallowing.
OED Online - Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/20/2004
若之，把翻译送给《我们》还有翻译月刊吧，或者译林。
zanmen.com
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/20/2004
多谢玛雅,等再润润色，多翻译几篇后，说不定就给你说的哪家寄去了。：-）
玛雅 wrote:
若之，把翻译送给《我们》还有翻译月刊吧，或者译林。
zanmen.com
- posted on 09/29/2004
若之好，
欢迎光临咖啡！说咖啡，我还真不能喝咖啡呢。但很喜欢咖啡在口里
的余味，不是其令人头晕的气味。
咖啡（Coffea arabica L.），还真是阿拉伯人的发明。伊斯兰教严
格执行经律戒，拒绝偶象，拒绝酒；故而在植物图曼，数字空间，气
味尝味以及语言意象（诗句）上开拓出不少东西。
只可惜这篇“资本主义”，还有“后现代”，我的耳目跟不上哟…
你在另一翻译贴中谈到小说技巧，其实我对小说一窍不通。小狼是新
浪的旧朋友，贴点东西让看看，我以自己写诗看戏得来的一点模式提
点建议，实属私下的意见，不值得讨论的。
若之对西方文艺的形态流变了如指掌，不时给大家提示提示，也增长
增长大家的耳目呢！
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 09/30/2004
若之好. 我常来这里坐. 因为不讲话, 已经被玛雅定了腹诽罪:):):)
没给你回妹儿, 不好意思. 见了令胡, 也觉得惭愧.
总之罪人一个, 闭上嘴听别人讲话 :):):)
若之 wrote:
玛雅好!咱们是没直接对话的老熟人了。XW好，谢谢你推荐的书。令胡,康妮等老朋友好。其他新朋友容我慢慢结识。
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 10/03/2004
象罔(本该称象罔君或先生,但考虑到要男女平等,再说咱们也算是朋友啦,就免客套了:-).)知识渊博，够我学的东西很多，看你贴中关于阿拉伯的议论已可窥一斑。当然，现在这社会知识爆炸，所以我不得不慢慢来，第一，只学习能将自己的思考推向深入的知识；第二，不能仅因为自己不懂就去接受某种知识。所以，你看，咱们这笨人只能采取笨法子了！
康妮原来是不还嘴的？那我就不客气了囉！：-）
- Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 02/15/2005
若之:你好!你有唐的"白雪公主"的英文版吗?或者你在哪见过吗?我毕业论文想写这个可是他的书好难找啊!我已经从04年找到现在了!若有可以麻烦你传上来吗?万分感谢!!或者你可以传我邮箱里:ema-syq@sohu.com! - posted on 02/16/2005
It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. The world is a business, it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. - Re: 璧勬湰涓讳箟鐨勫礇璧� (鍞愮撼寰枫兓宸村灏斿)posted on 02/17/2005
说得好啊。谁说的？你还是唐纳德·巴塞尔姆？ - posted on 02/17/2005
It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. The world is a business, it has been since man crawled out of the slime. Our children will live, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock - all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused ...
(let me add a few more word -)
and all individualities erased, all pluralism of life unified, all human past forgotten ... till we all become the parts of a no-feeling, no-perception giant machine.
(Is this the future of humankind? )
- posted on 02/19/2005
(Is this the future of humankind? )
No. Human being can always manage to produce some surprises during crises.
The unpreditability - that's the umtilmate truth of the human race, or any race with similar level of intelligence.
Capitalism is a form of the economic survival of human society at a certain stage of the evolution of our civilisation. It of course has great and far reaching impact on human life in every aspect. But however overwhelming, still it's a thing which may not last forever.
How ling is the our known civilization? Merely 5000 years.
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