The difficulty here is not producing mere run-of-the-mill outrageousnous, but the nature of the… — Donald Barthelme
The difficulty here is not producing mere run-of-the-mill outrageousnous, but the nature of the transformational process by which aspects of the world are made over into art. How to prevent the ugly (what we have agreed to call ugly) from becoming, in some sense, beautiful (what we now agree to call beautiful) over time, thus losing the electrical charge which made the artist choose it in the first place? You can’t. But there are strategies of delay. Céline, with the aid of some truly revolting politics, managed to remain a monster almost to the end.
p. 184Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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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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