Authors: Donald Barthelme
The psychology of Snow White:
What does she hope for? “Someday my prince will come.” By this Snow White means that
she lives her own being as incomplete, pending the arrival of one who will “complete”
her. That is, she lives her own being as “not-with” (even though she is in some sense
“with” the seven men, Bill, Kevin, Clem, Hubert, Henry, Edward and Dan). But the “not-with”
is experienced as stronger, more real, at this particular instant in time, than the
“being-with.” The incompleteness is an ache capable of subduing all other data presented
by consciousness. I don’t go along with those theories of historical necessity, which
suggest that her actions are dictated by “forces” outside of the individual. That
doesn’t sound reasonable, in this case.
Irruption of the magical in the life of Snow White:
Snow White knows a singing bone. The singing bone has told her various stories which
have left her troubled and confused: of a bear transformed into a king’s son, of an
immense treasure at the bottom of a brook, of a crystal casket in which there is a
cap that makes the wearer invisible. This must not continue. The behavior of the bone
is unacceptable. The bone must be persuaded to confine itself to events and effects
susceptible of confirmation by the instrumentarium of the physical sciences. Someone
must reason with the bone.
“I AM being followed by a nun in a black station wagon.” Bill wiped his hands on the
seat covers. “I cannot fall apart now. Not yet. I must hold the whole thing together.
Everything depends on me. I must conceal my wounds, contrive to appear unwounded.
They must not know. The bloody handkerchief stuffed under the shirt. Now she signals
a right turn. Now I will make a left turn. That way I shall escape her. But she makes
a left turn too. There it is. That does it. She is following me. Following the spiritual
spoor of my invisible wounds. Is she the great black horse for which I have waited
all my days, since I was twelve years old? The great devouring black horse? Of course
not. Don’t be ridiculous, Bill. You are behaving like a fool. She is nothing like
a black horse. She is simply a woman in a black dress, in a black station wagon. That
she signals for a right turn and then makes a left turn means nothing at all. Don’t
think about it. Think about leadership. No, don’t think about leadership. If you hang
a right at this corner . . . No, she hung a right too. Don’t think about it. Don’t
think. Turn on the radio. Think about what the radio is telling you. Think about the
various messages to be found there.”
I’m not her cup of tea I’m afraid
Ah ah ah ah ah
I’ll find a way somehow in my lonely room
Ah ah ah ah ah
Emily Dickinson, why have you left me and gone
Ah ah ah ah ah
Emily Dickinson, don’t you know what we could have meant
Ah ah ah ah ah
“HELLO Hogo.” “Hello chaps.” “The floor is yours Hogo.” “Well chaps first I’d like
to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of
me but also because I enjoy it. One of them is that this cunt you’ve got here, although
I’ve never seen her with my own eyes, is probably not worth worrying about. Now excuse
me if I’m treading on your toes in this matter. God knows I love a female gesture
as much as any man, as when, for instance, sitting in the front seat of a car in their
bikini, they kind of shrug themselves into a street shift before getting out, or while
the car door is open but they haven’t gotten out yet; and if you happen to be looking
out of a window of a house near the curb, or if you can move your window nearer the
curb, you can sometimes see one sitting in her absolute underwear, in the hot weather,
and then going through that ‘shrugging’ business, and sort of hitching the shift up
over her hips, and then shaking her head to get the hair to fall the right way, and
all that. And all this is the best that has been thought and said, in my opinion,
or ever will be thought and said, for the only thing worth a rap in the whole world
is the beauty of women, and maybe certain foods, and possibly music of all kinds,
especially ‘cheap’ music such as that furnished at parades by for instance the St.
Pulaski Tatterdemalion Band
of Orange, New Jersey, which can reduce you to tears, in the right light, by speaking
to you from the heart about your land, and what a fine land it is, and that it is
your
land really, and my land, this land of ours—that particular insight can chill you,
rendered by a marching unit. But I wander. The main thing I wanted to point out is
that the world is full of cunts, that they grow like clams in all quarters of the
earth, cunts as multitudinous as cherrystones and littlenecks burrowing into the mud
in all the bays of the world. The point is that the loss of any particular one is
not to be taken seriously. She stays with you as long as she can put up with your
shit and you stay with her as long as you can put up with her shit. That’s the way
it is behind the veil of flummery that usually veils these matters. Now think, I ask
you, of all those women who are beyond the moment of splendor. They are depressed.
The minister comes to call and recommends to them the things of the spirit, and tells
them how the things of the spirit are more durable than the things of the flesh and
all that. Well he is entirely correct, they are more durable, but durable is not what
we wanted. The terrible poignance of this predicament is not vitiated by the fact
that everybody knows it, in the backs of their minds. Ruin of the physical envelope
is our great theme here, and if we keep
changing girls every four or five years, it is because of this ruin, which I will
never agree to, to my dying day. And that is why I keep looking out of the window,
and why we all keep looking out of the window, to see what is passing, what has been
cast up on the beach of our existence. Because something is always being cast up on
that beach, as new classes of girls mature, and you can always get a new one, if you
are willing to overlook certain weaknesses in the departments of thought and feeling.
But if it is thought and feeling you want, you can always read a book, or see a film,
or have an interior monologue. But of course with the spread of literacy you now tend
to get girls who have thought and feeling too, in some measure, and some of them will
probably belong to the Royal Philological Society or something, or in any case have
their own ‘thing,’ which must be respected, and catered to, and nattered about, just
as if you gave a shit about all this
blague
. But of course we may be different, perhaps you do care about it. It’s not unheard
of. But my main point is that you should bear in mind multiplicity, and forget about
uniqueness. The earth is broad, and flat, and deep, and high. And remember what Freud
said.”
THE VALUE THE MIND SETS ON EROTIC NEEDS INSTANTLY SINKS AS SOON AS SATISFACTION BECOMES
READILY AVAILABLE. SOME OBSTACLE IS NECESSARY TO SWELL THE TIDE OF THE LIBIDO TO ITS
HEIGHT, AND AT ALL PERIODS OF HISTORY, WHENEVER NATURAL BARRIERS HAVE NOT SUFFICED,
MEN HAVE ERECTED CONVENTIONAL ONES.
“
Which prince?
” Snow White wondered brushing her teeth. “Which prince will come? Will it be Prince
Andrey? Prince Igor? Prince Alf? Prince Alphonso? Prince Malcolm? Prince Donalbain?
Prince Fernando? Prince Siegfried? Prince Philip? Prince Albert? Prince Paul? Prince
Akihito? Prince Rainier? Prince Porus? Prince Myshkin? Prince Rupert? Prince Pericles?
Prince Karl? Prince Clarence? Prince George? Prince Hal? Prince John? Prince Mamillius?
Prince Florizel? Prince Kropotkin? Prince Humphrey? Prince Charlie? Prince Matchabelli?
Prince Escalus? Prince Valiant? Prince Fortinbras?” Then Snow White pulled herself
together. “Well it is terrific to be anticipating a prince—to be waiting and knowing
that what you are waiting for is a prince, packed with grace—but it is still waiting,
and waiting as a mode of existence is, as Brack has noted, a darksome mode. I would
rather be doing a hundred other things. But slash me if I will let it, this waiting,
bring down my lofty feelings of anticipation from the bedroom ceiling where they dance
overhead like so many French letters filled with lifting gas. I wonder if he will
have the Hapsburg Lip?”
PAUL stood before a fence posing. He was on his way to the monastery. But first he
was posing in front of a fence. The fence was covered with birds. Their problem, in
many ways a paradigm of our own, was “to fly.” “The engaging and wholly charming way
I stand in front of this fence here,” Paul said to himself, “will soon persuade someone
to discover me. Then I will not have to go to the monastery. Then I can be on television
or something, instead of going to the monastery. Yet there is no denying it, something
is pulling me toward that monastery located in a remote part of Western Nevada.” Lanky,
generous-hearted Paul! “If I had been born well prior to 1900, I could have ridden
with Pershing against Pancho Villa. Alternatively, I could have ridden with Villa
against the landowners and corrupt government officials of the time. In either case,
I would have had a horse. How little opportunity there is for young men to have personally
owned horses in the bottom half of the twentieth century! A wonder that we U.S. youth
can still fork a saddle at all. . . Of course there are those ‘horses’ under the
hoods of Buicks and Pontiacs, the kind so many of my countrymen favor. But those ‘horses’
are not for me. They take the tan out of my cheeks and the lank out of my arms and
legs. Tom Lea or Pete Hurd will never paint me standing by this
fence if I am sitting inside an Eldorado, Starfire, Riviera or Mustang, no matter
how attractively the metal has been bent.”
SNOW WHITE let down her hair black as ebony from the window. It was Monday. The hair
flew out of the window. “I could fly a kite with this hair it is so long. The wind
would carry the kite up into the blue, and there would be the red of the kite against
the blue of the blue, together with my hair black as ebony, floating there. That seems
desirable. This motif, the long hair streaming from the high window, is a very ancient
one I believe, found in many cultures, in various forms. Now I recapitulate it, for
the astonishment of the vulgar and the refreshment of my venereal life.”
THE President looked out of his window. He was not very happy. “I worry about Bill,
Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and their lover, Snow White. I sense that
all is not well with them. Now, looking out over this green lawn, and these fine rosebushes,
and into the night and the yellow buildings, and the falling Dow-Jones index and the
screams of the poor, I am concerned. I have many important things to worry about,
but I worry about Bill and the boys too. Because I am the President. Finally. The
President of the whole fucking country. And they are Americans, Bill, Hubert, Henry,
Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and Snow White. They are Americans. My Americans.”
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you like the story so far? Yes ( ) No ( )
2. Does Snow White resemble the Snow White you remember? Yes ( ) No ( )
3. Have you understood, in reading to this point, that Paul is the prince-figure?
Yes ( ) No ( )
4. That Jane is the wicked stepmother-figure? Yes ( ) No ( )
5. In the further development of the story, would you like more emotion ( ) or less
emotion ( )?
6. Is there too much
blague
in the narration? ( ) Not enough
blague?
( )
7. Do you feel that the creation of new modes of hysteria is a viable undertaking
for the artist of today? Yes ( ) No ( )
8. Would you like a war? Yes ( ) No ( )
9. Has the work, for you, a metaphysical dimension? Yes ( ) No ( )
10. What is it (twenty-five words or less)?
11. Are the seven men, in your view, adequately characterized as individuals? Yes
( ) No ( )
12. Do you feel that the Authors Guild has been sufficiently vigorous in representing
writers before the Congress in matters pertaining to copyright legislation? Yes ( )
No ( )
13. Holding in mind all works of fiction since the War, in all languages, how would
you rate the present work, on a scale of one to ten, so far? (Please circle your answer)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
14. Do you stand up when you read? ( ) Lie down? ( ) Sit? ( )
15. In your opinion, should human beings have more shoulders? ( ) Two sets of shoulders?
( ) Three? ( )
PERHAPS
we should not be sitting here tending the vats and washing the buildings and carrying
the money to the vault once a week, like everybody else. Perhaps we should be doing
something else entirely, with our lives. God knows what. We do what we do without
thinking. One tends the vats and washes the buildings and carries the money to the
vault and never stops for a moment to consider that the whole process may be despicable.
Someone standing somewhere despising us. In the hot springs of Dax, a gouty thinker
thinking, father forgive them. It was worse before. That is something that can safely
be said. It was worse before we found Snow White wandering in the forest. Before we
found Snow White wandering in the forest we lived lives stuffed with equanimity. There
was equanimity for all. We washed the buildings, tended the vats, wended our way to
the county cathouse once a week (heigh-ho). Like everybody else. We were simple bourgeois.
We knew what to do. When we found Snow White wandering in the forest, hungry and distraught,
we said: “Would you like something to eat?” Now we do not know what to do. Snow White
has added a dimension of confusion and misery
to our lives. Whereas once we were simple bourgeois who knew what to do, now we are
complex bourgeois who are at a loss. We do not like this complexity. We circle it
wearily, prodding it from time to time with a shopkeeper’s forefinger: What is it?
Is it, perhaps,
bad for business?
Equanimity has leaked away. There was a moment, however, when equanimity was not
the chief consideration. That moment in which we looked at Snow White and understood
for the first time that we were fond of her. That was a moment.