"The School" by Donald Barthelme

1.15.22

Donald Barthelme painted by Elaine de Kooning

Oh, Barthelme. The writer read by so many great writers, whose work I haven’t read much of. I think I haven’t read a lot of Barthelme because I am allergic to even a waft of pretension, but I’ve learned that the wafting often originates in certain types of readers rather than specific writers. No, that’s a lie. Pretension lives everywhere. Even in me.

A guy in my cohort in my MFA program loved Barthelme. He wasn’t pretentious. Because I am a human who has some extra time on the weekends, and because I’ve committed myself to this project, I took myself on an internet tour of Barthelme. Here’s what I know now: I want to read all of his stories and books. I’ve been ignorant. I love his writing.

Barthelme was a collagist. He spoke and wrote about collage a lot. Collage is one of my favorite artistic mediums, because it never pretends to exist outside of anything. It needs everything to exist. When someone looks at a collage, they aren’t being st…