Tag: The Indian Uprising

Mass-market Monday | Donald Barthelme’s Unspeakable Practices, Unspeakable Acts

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Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts, Donald Barthelme. Bantam Books, first edition, first printing (1969). No cover artist credited. 165 pages.

While there is no artist credited for the frenetic, Boschian cover of this Bantam edition of Unspeakable Practces, it is likely the work of Steele Savage — compare it in particular with Savage’s cover for Ballantine’s 1969 edition of John Brunner’s novel Stand on Zanzibar.

Barthelme’s second collection of short stories (most of which first ran in The New Yorker) is larded with some of the postmodernist’s greatest hits: “The Indian Uprising,” “The Balloon,” “Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning, “Game,” “See the Moon?”….It would be an ideal starting point for Barthelme if Sixty Stories and Forty Stories didn’t already exist. I wrote about many of the stories collected in Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts a few years ago when I revisited Sixty Stories. 

And if you want to get into Barthelme but aren’t sure of where to start, you could do far worse than to hear him read his classic, “The Indian Uprising”:

Donald Barthelme’s “The Indian Uprising,” but just the punctuation

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Donald Barthelme’s “The Indian Uprising,” but it’s just the punctuation.

Indian uprising (William Gaddis’s J R)

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From page 617 of my Penguin edition of William Gaddis’s novel J R, a nod (I think) to Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Indian Uprising.”

“The only form of discourse” (Donald Barthelme)

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“The only form of discourse of which I approve,” Miss R. said in her dry, tense voice, “is the litany. I believe our masters and teachers as well as plain citizens should confine themselves to what can safely be said. Thus when I hear the words pewter, snake, tea, Fad #6 sherry, serviette, fenestration, crown, blue coming from the mouth of some public official, or some raw youth, I am not disappointed. Vertical organisation is also possible,” Miss R. said, “ as in

pewter

snake

tea

fad #6 sherry

serviette

fenestration

crown

blue.

I run to liquids and colours,” she said, “but you, you may run to something else, my virgin,’ my darling, my thistle, my poppet, my own. Young people,” Miss R. said, “run to more and more unpleasant combinations as they sense the nature of our society. Some people,” Miss R. said, “run to conceits or wisdom but I hold to the hard, brown, nutlike word. I might point out that there is enough aesthetic excitement here to satisfy anyone but a damned fool.” I sat in solemn silence.

From Donald Barthelme’s short story “The Indian Uprising”; read the full story.