Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme
This article is about the author, Donald Barthelme Jr. For his father, the architect, see Donald Barthelme...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 April 1931
CountryUnited States of America
art thinking progress
I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.
artist doe failing
Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.
art moving errors
One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless.
art wish difficult
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.
art thinking progress
I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.
art moving knowing
The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.
art simple long
Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, rather because it wishes to be art. However much the writer might long to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He discovers that in being simple, honest, straightforward, nothing much happens.
art reading mean
What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature... (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).
art new-work genuine
Any genuine work of art generates new work.
strong fiction facts
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there.
obscure
I am never needlessly obscure I am needfully obscure, when I am obscure.
dripping instant-gratification seasons
Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.
intelligent garden agony
I keep wondering if, say, there is intelligent life on other planets, the scientists argue that something like two percent of the other planets have the conditions, the physical conditions, to support life in the way it happened here, did Christ visit each and every planet, go through the same routine, the Agony in the Garden, the Crucifixion, and so on...
self world mouths
Now, here is the point about the self: it is insatiable. It is always, always hankering. It is what you might call rapacious to a fault. The great flaming mouth to the thing is never in this world going to be stuff full.