The New Yorker and the World (1) Fiction: Donald Barthelme's "The School"

One year ago on Round and Square (12 September 2011)—Remonstrance: Introduction
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The New Yorker and the World"

[a] Schooled RF

Over the next few months, I plan to post a little bit of the "content" from the first-year seminar I am teaching on "The New Yorker and the World." I will introduce several writers—fiction and nonfiction—and will give at least a snippet from the pages of the magazine, along with some of the context that I give while teaching the material. The next few days will feature some of the fiction writers who brought fresh perspective to The New Yorker short story in the 1970s and 1980s.

Just about forty years ago, The New Yorker published the first story from a "new" author—he was actually forty-two years old—who hit the sometimes stodgy magazine like a two-by-four across the back. Readers familiar with stories of suburban angst written by John Cheever, John Updike, and several other authors not named "John" were taken by surprise. It is hard to describe just what Donald Barthelme brought to the story form in The New Yorker, but it surely was different.

Trust me. No one saw it coming. Not only did Barthelme create an efficient fictional form (one New Yorker page), but he crafted a kind of narrative minimalism that was breathtaking from start to finish. 

[b] L'école RF

In class on Tuesday, I read aloud a passage—the first few paragraphs of a story called "The School"—to my first-year seminar. Their reaction was similar to mine thirty-odd years ago, when I first saw the story (I hadn't started my subscription yet, but my English teacher had us read it in class). I was repelled and entranced at the same time, and I could not believe that the author had packed so much into only about a thousand words.

I will have much more to say about Donald Barthelme in the coming weeks, but let's have "The School" speak for itself today, before we start to examine more deeply the work of one of the great American writers of the second-half of the twentieth century.

     Donald Barthelme
     The School (1974)
     Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured 
     that...that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems...
     and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually 
     responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange 
     trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil 
     possibly, or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We 
     complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own 
     little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at 
     these little brown sticks, it was depressing.

      It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing 
     with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes—well, the reason 
     that the snakes kicked off was...well, you remember, the boiler was shut off
     for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something 
     you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents 
     would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on 
     and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes 
     they weren't too disturbed.

     With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now 
     they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb 
     gardens and some of them probably...you know, slipped them a little extra water 
     when we weren't looking. Or maybe...well, I don't like to think about sabotage, 
     although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We 
     were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the 
     white mice had died, and the salamander...well, now they know not to carry them 
     around in plastic bags.

     Of course, we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those 
     numbers, you look at them crooked and they're belly up on the surface. But the 
     lesson plan called for tropical fish input at that point, there was nothing we could 
     do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.

     We weren't even supposed to have a puppy...[1]
        [Continue on The New Yorker website]

***  ***

It might be hard for you to believe, but the story is actually a beautiful one in its own twisted way. If you subscribe to The New Yorker, you may finish it by clicking on the link below. If not, I have included a link to the NPR website, which has permission to run the whole piece. As you can see, it is not your ordinary story. It is vintage Barthelme, though.

[c] Re: Nascence RF

[1] Donald Barthelme, “The School,” The New Yorker, June 17, 1974, 28