BOBBIE ROE: Is the new generation of writers more concerned than their predecessors with politics, economics… — Donald Barthelme

Americans have political problems that they don’t recognize as political. The impoverishment of the country by the arms race is a good example. Money spent on arms is, among other things, useless money in terms of the economy because it’s stored. It’s in nerve gas, aircraft carriers, the Stealth bomber. I gave a reading at the University of Alabama a couple of years ago, and on the way to the campus we passed an airfield packed with military aircraft, trillions of dollars’ worth of planes stacked up there, National Guard stuff, not even first-line stuff. The cost, the weight of this, is not understood by most Americans. They don’t know where their money’s going. They know they’re pressed for money and that their school systems are being eighty-sixed by national accrediting organizations, but they don’t connect this to that National Guard elephant graveyard. Black people think that they’re poor because they’re black and the white folks control the money. This is true, but black folks are damaged more by lousy economic policy than by racism.

When computers learn how to make jokes, artists will be in serious trouble.

LARRY MCCAFERRY: Like a lot of painters in this century, you seem to enjoy lifting things out of the world, in this case words or phrases, and then...

DONALD BARTHELME: And then, sung to and Simonized, they’re thrown into the mesh.