The Genius of Barthelme's Short Stories

As I get older, I look for deeper and more abstract literature to read. I assume this is cyclical and one day I'll return to the classic stories, but right now I want bizarre things that make me think and feel.

I've read and watched the Hero's Journey to death. I get it. A regular person gets thrust into an extraordinary situation. They don't want to do the job at first, but eventually realize they must.

They have a fatal flaw. Yet they rise to the challenge and overcome their flaw, transforming themselves in the process. When done well, it can be a gripping read with depth and lessons about life and love.

But I've seen it all. I get it. It can't really surprise me anymore. Think Harry Potter, Superman, The Wheel of Time, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and so on. I know the details and execution of each are different, but my brain just sees that they are all exactly the same story.

And don't even get me started on romances and love stories.

I recently wrote about the genius of Anna Karenina, but even great, complicated classic literature has conventional plots and characters. It's deep, but it doesn't surprise in a meaningful way.

It might blow your mind to know that there is literature out there that defies all conventions and rationality. It taps into something more primal. The abstraction and symbolism works on your brain subconsciously causing you to have more of an experience than traditional literature.

Often times this literature is contradictory and paradoxical, forcing you to confront something with no resolution. There aren't real themes to takeaway, and this is good. Strong themes often come across as preachy and moralizing. They don't leave much room for the reader to explore them.

I think these ideas are well-known in movies because directors like David Lynch are popular (Mullholland Drive, Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Inland Empire). His movies don't use plot. They explore concepts through images and characters.

Another popular abstract film is Synecdoche, New York. It's probably my favorite movie of all time.

The harder you try to make sense of these things, the more you miss the point. These types of works of art can still surprise you because they aren't bound to conventional narratives.

This is a long-winded way to bring us to the short stories of Donald Barthelme. Most of his stories are very short (less than 3 pages), but they smack you with strangeness.

In The Balloon, a balloon suddenly appears over a city and starts to grow and overtake the city. People react to it. There is an escalation of emotion and intensity, but there is no traditional narrative.

Nothing about the story is rational. There aren't even main characters or character development. Half the time, his characters are never given names.

This is typical in his stories. In The School, things start to die for reasons that are never explained. It's a deeply emotional story that reveals something within the reader about their own relationship to death.

But it only works because the lack of coherence as a traditional narrative forces it past the rational brain and into your subconscious. It works on you days after you read it. Your brain wrestles to make sense of it, but there is no sense to be had.

It's pure genius how something so small can affect you much.

In The President, there's a new president and people start fainting. Are they related? That's something your brain wants to know even though it is obviously absurd. How could there be a causal relationship? There can't be. Yet it's the main subtext of the story.

I want more of this. I love this stuff. The connections and images and concepts are surprising in a way traditional stories can't be. These stories are works of art that force you into deep contemplation about the nature of the world, self, life, and death.

By not having traditional themes, it lets you explore your own thoughts on these matters uninhibited by the writer's own views.

It's genius.

These are the ways of writing I'm most drawn to right now as a reader and a writer. So, be warned, I'm probably going to start writing these sorts of stories here on Hive (though I haven't figured out if there's a good community for this: let me know if you have one).

They might surprise and confuse you. They might leave you feeling really uncomfortable at the lack of clarity or resolution. But this is the point.