The Visible Aspect of Things: Towards a Synchronic Reading of Donald Barthelme1

Abstract

Fragments are the only forms I trust. (Barthelme, "See the Moon?"; Sixty 91) 'Fragments are the only form I trust.' This from a writer of arguable genius, whose works reflect the anxiety he himself must feel, in book after book, that his brain is all fragments... (Oates, "Whose" para. 14 of 19) The fragment 'See the Moon?' deserves note because it is one of the most clearly autobiographical of Barthelme's fragments and because it contains the line 'Fragments are the only form I trust,' which has become a commonplace in nearly all of Barthelme's criticism. (Warde 53) 1 Donald Barthelme's phrase, above, has become a critical shortcut in discussions of his work. Both Oates and Warde read the line as autobiographical, yet both refuse to justify this claim. Warde declares that the story it comes from, "See the Moon?," is "clearly" autobiographical, whilst Oates makes an unhelpful comment about what Barthelme "must feel." Part of the reason the phrase has been picked up repeatedly is its formal neatness. In its original context, the sentence is set off in its own paragraph, leading to the impression that it is important. Metrically, too, it is enticing: an acephalous variation of five iambic feet. It employs the familiarity of iambic pentameter and yet turns it into an almost-a fragment. 2 This reductionist approach to the line annoyed Barthelme. In an interview with Jerome Klinkowitz carried out between 1971 and 1972, Barthelme himself poses a question on which to end: KLINKOWITZ: In your story 'See the Moon' one of the characters has the line, 'Fragments are the only forms I trust.' This has been quoted as a statement of your aesthetic. Is it? BARTHELME: No. It's a statement by the character… that particular line has been richly misunderstood so often (most recently by my colleague J. C. Oates in the