A Donald Barthelme Collection


Title:  Not-Knowing  The Essays and Interviews
Printing:  First
Year of publication:  1997
Publisher:  Random House
City:  New York
Number of Pages:  332
Cover:  hard cover
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:  97-9170
ISBN:  0-0-679-40983-1
Introduction:  John Barth




Table of contents


    Preface by Kim Herzinger

    Introduction by John Barth

    On Writing

  1. After Joyce
  2. Not Knowing


  3. from Here in the Village

  4. Introduction
  5. Walking around the village...
  6. I have lately noticed...
  7. A fable...
  8. After spending an exciting eight or nine days...
  9. I like to think of myself...
  10. I went last week...
  11. In the morning post...
  12. There is something...
  13. Letter to a literary critic...
  14. Worrying about women...
  15. Because the government isn't very good...
  16. Spring in the Village!


  17. Reviews, Comments, and Observations

  18. Acceptance Speech: National Book Award for Children's Literature
  19. On Paraguay
  20. A symposium on Fiction (with William Gass, Grace Paley, and Walker Percy)
  21. Mr. Hunt's Wooly Utopia
  22. The Tired Terror of Graham Greene
  23. The Elegance Is Under Control
  24. Amphigorey Also: A Review
  25. The Most Wonderful Trick
  26. A Note on Elia Kazan
  27. The Earth as an Overturned Bowl
  28. Parachutes in the Trees
  29. Special Devotions
  30. Dead Men Comin' Through
  31. Three Festivals
  32. Peculiar Influences
  33. Earth Angel
  34. Culture, Etc.
  35. The Case of the Vanishing Product
  36. Synergy
  37. President Nixon's Announcement...
  38. My ten-year-old daughter...
  39. As Grace Paley Faces Jail with Three Other Writers
  40. Not Long Ago...
  41. There's Alleged...
  42. Rome Diary


  43. On Art

  44. Architectural Graphics: An Introduction
  45. The Emerging Figure
  46. Robert Morris: An Introduction
  47. Nudes: An Introduction to Exquisite Creatures
  48. Being Bad
  49. Reifications
  50. On the Level of Desire


  51. Interviews with Donald Barthelme

  52. Interview with Jerome Klinkowitz, 1971-72
  53. Interview with Charles Ruas andJudith Sherman, 1975
  54. Interview with Larry McCaffery, 1980
  55. Interview with J.D. O'Hara, 1981
  56. Interview with Jo Brans: "Embracing the World", 1981
  57. Interview with Billie Fitzpatrick, 1987
  58. Interview with Bobbie Roe, 1988




beginning:

Writing about revolutionary art in an early essay titled "The Calling of the Tune," Kenneth Burke says:

For the great the dissociation and discontinuity developed by the artist in an otherwordly art that leaves the things of Caesar to take care of themselves, the greater becomes the artist's dependence upon some ruler who will accept teh responsibility for doing the world's "dirty work."

This description of the artist turning his back on the community to pursue his "otherwordly" projects (whereupon the community promptly falls apart) is a familiar one, accepted even by some artists.



photo credit:  Bill Wittliff