Donald Barthelme

Naked girls with the heads of Marx and Malraux prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights, tried to give them a little joie de vivre but maybe it didn’t take, their constant bickering and smallness, it’s like a stroke of lightning, the world reminds you of its power, tracheotomies right and left, I am spinning, my pretty child, don’t scratch, pick up your feet, the long nights, spent most of my time listening, this is a test of the system, this is only a test.

Do they lie? Fervently. Do they steal? Only silver and gold. Do they remember? I am in constant touch. Hardly a day passes. The children. Some can’t spell, still. Took a walk in the light-manufacturing district, where everything’s been converted. Lots of little shops, wine bars. Saw some strange things. Saw a group of square steel plates arranged on a floor. Very interesting. Saw a Man Mountain Dean dressed in heavenly blue. Wild, chewing children. They were small. Petite. Out of scale. They came and went. Doors banging. They were of different sexes but wore similar clothes. Wandered away, then they wandered back. They’re vague, you know, they tell you things in a vague way. Asked me to leave, said they’d had enough. Enough what? I asked. Enough of my lip, they said. Although the truth was that I had visited upon them only the palest of apothegms—the one about the salt losing its savor, the one about the fowls of the air.

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.

My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have one. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma momma momma.” I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.

“How does one conquer fear, Don B.?”

“One takes a frog and sews it to one’s shoe,” he said.

“The left or the right?”

Don B. gave me a pitying look.

“Well, you’d look mighty funny going down the street with only one frog sewed to your shoes, wouldn’t you?" he said. “One frog on each shoe.”

"Will you be wanting to contest the divorce?" I asked Mrs. Davis.

"I should think not," she said calmly, "although I suppose on of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce."

The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.

The actors feel that the music played before the curtain rises will put the audience in the wrong mood. The playwright suggests that the (purposefully lugubrious) music be played at twice-speed. This peps it up somewhat while retaining its essentially dark and gloomy character. The actors listen carefully, and are pleased.

People always like to hear that they’re under stress, makes them feel better. You can imagine what they’d feel if they were told they weren’t under stress.