J.D. O’HARA: You don’t...believe in entropy? DONALD BARTHELME: Entropy belongs to Pynchon. I read recently… — Donald Barthelme
J.D. O’HARA: You don’t...believe in entropy?
DONALD BARTHELME: Entropy belongs to Pynchon. I read recently that somebody had come forward with evidence that the process is not irreversible. There is abroad a distinct feeling that everything’s getting worse... I don’t think we have the sociological index that would allow us to measure this in any meaningful way, but the feeling is there as a cultural fact. I feel entropy—Kraus on backache is a favorite text around here.
O’HARA: Do you see anything getting better—art, for instance?
BARTHELME: I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—improvement, 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. Similarly the notion of an avant-garde is a bit off. The function of the advance guard in military terms is exactly that of the rear guard, to protect the main body, which translates as the status quo. You can speak of political progress, social progress, of course—you may not see much of it, but it can be talked about.
p. 276Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
BOBBIE ROE: Is the new generation of writers more concerned than their predecessors with politics, economics, and social class?
DONALD BARTHELME: I think that there are lowered expectations, not æsthetic expectations for the work, but lowered expectations in terms of life. My generation, perhaps foolishly, expected, even demanded, that life be wonderful and magical and then tried to make it so by writing in a rather complex way. It seems now quite an eccentric demand.
p. 319
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.
p. 317
When computers learn how to make jokes, artists will be in serious trouble.
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