Flying to America (2 page)
As was the case with
The Teachings of Don B.
and
Not-Knowing,
the two companion volumes to
Flying to America,
the work that appears in this book falls into four categories: (1) unpublished work; (2) uncollected work; (3) work — other than the novels — that did not appear in his two compendium collections,
Sixty Stories
and
Forty Stories;
and (4) work that, though perhaps later collected, first (or in one case later) appeared in significantly different form. Editorial information has been kept to a minimum, but certain crucial information has been included in the “Notes” at the back of the book.
For those truly dedicated followers of Barthelmismo who already know and love Donald Barthelme’s work,
Flying to America
is a rare and wonderful treat — to have in your hands at long last a handsome number of previously uncollected and even a few unseen stories. For those new to Barthelme, here is an opportunity to discover the literary giant whose influence was singular to many of today’s most celebrated writers. Picking up where
Sixty Stories
and
Forty Stories
left off, here — sadly but thankfully — are the final forty-five.
Kim Herzinger
F
LYING
TO
A
MERICA
18 March
S
ing, goddess, the brilliance of Perpetua, who came then to lend her salt-sweet God-gift beauty to the film. Sing the beauty of the breasts of a Perpetua, like unto the cancelment of action at law against you, sing the redness of her hair, like unto the anger of Peleus’ son who put pains a thousandfold upon the Achaeans. Sing the hauteur of Perpetua, like unto that of a thief of fine porcelains, sing the movement of her naked leg under the long gray gown, like unto the progress of that sad song, the Borodin Quartet in D Major. Sing the whiteness of her brow, like unto a failed poem pulped into Erasable Bond, sing her sudden smile, like unto the shriek of that swan which hid Zeus the powerful. Sing, goddess, the rancor of Perpetua, which is plain to see, sing her gold-glistering trumpet, with which she promulgates her rancor and earns her daily bread, by the sweat of her lip. Sing, goddess, the mystery of Perpetua, of which I cannot speak, without undue emotion, sing her stern eye, which tells me that, among the sons of men, I am not worthy.
Perpetua showed us her breasts.
“Yes, they’re wonderful,” I said.
All of the members of the crew were smiling.
She has just left her husband, Harold.
“Order is not interesting,” Perpetua said. “Disorder is interesting.”
“Thank you, Perpetua. Ezra will call you when we’re ready for you.”
20 March
Two days of inactivity.
The script is terrible.
Ezra said: “This script is no good.”
I maintained a grave and thoughtful silence. Then I asked: “Who have you hired?”
“Joan,” Ezra said. “Marty. Mitch. Marcello.”
“Who are they?”
“Marty,” Ezra said, “is a C.O. whose draft board requires him to work for extremely low pay at some hardship in a job with provable social utility.”
“Are we that?”
“I presented us as a leprosarium.”
This was reasonable.
“Mitch,” Ezra said, “has come from the asylum.”
“Which?”
“The Maryland Motherhouse of Our Lady of Perpetual Chagrin.”
“Is he a nun?”
“He is not.”
“In what capacity was he there?”
“In the capacity, borderline case.”
“Very good. Go on.”
“The podesta’s brief against Marcello,” Ezra said, and paused, “I have chosen to disbelieve.”
“And Joan?”
“Mail fraud.”
Mail fraud is not something that bothers me much.
“O.K., Ezra. You have done a good job. Monday we begin.”
“How?” Ezra asked. “With this script?”
“Have you never heard of grace?”
21 March
I heard a noise outside. I looked out of the window. An old woman was bent over my garbage can, borrowing some of my garbage. They do that all over the city, old men and old women. They borrow your garbage and they never bring it back.
My apartment is nearly empty. I’ve thrown everything out. Books, pictures, most of the furniture. The parquet needs a waxing, its brown has changed to brown-gray. The plants are withering because I don’t water them. My wife and child are gone.
The telephone rang. It was the genius (one of the people we’ve hired for the film).
“They haf removed the tooth,” he told me.
“Fine. Did it hurt?”
“Not so much. But I am worrying.”
“What about?”
“I haf the tooth. Which in your opinion museum should I donate it to — the Smithsonian or rather the Metropolitan?”
“The Smithsonian. Absolutely the Smithsonian.”
22 March
Thinking about the “Flying to America” sequence. This will be the film’s climax. But am I capable of mounting such a spectacle? And will the man from Brewers’ Natural (the bank that put up the money for the film) understand?
23 March
The first day of shooting. It took the crew to the desert. Perpetua came along to watch. It was necessary for me not to watch Perpetua watching.
“Tom,” Ezra said, “we should have stars.”
“No stars,” I said.
“Stars have bigger heads than ordinary people,” Ezra argued. “Bigger heads photograph better.”
“No stars.”
Shooting in the desert was a mistake but an instructive mistake. I blew my whistle. The crew gathered around. I explained
the sequence. We’d be shooting two parallel blue lines each one a mile long. I could smell resistance. Resistance-pheromones being released all around me.
Ezra took me aside. “What they object to is not the sequence but the whistle. They don’t like to be whistled at.”
I threw the whistle high in the air.
The whistle stayed up in the air for a long time.
Everyone looked at the whistle.
We shot the two parallel blue lines each a mile long.
Something wrong. The scene has no movement, no impact.
What about printing the words of Christ in red, across the bottom of each frame?
Dismal to want to succeed but I can’t help it. I watched the whistle, still in the air.
25 March
I was once a monster of a kind. I was bookish. Half man, half book.
No longer. Now I am worried about making the film.
Even today I am tempted to go to the library and find a book about great trumpet playing and read it so that when the moment comes (Perpetua is a trumpet player, with the New World Symphony Orchestra) I can discourse knowledgeably on the subject. I resist the impulse.
“And is it not the case,” said Ezra when we first met, “that I have been associated with the production of nineteen major motion pictures of such savage originality, scalding
vérité,
and honey-warm sexual indecency that the very theaters chained their doors rather than permit exhibition of these major motion pictures on their ammonia-scented gum-daubed premises? And is it not the case,” said Ezra, “that I myself with my two sinewy hands and strong-wrought God-gift brain have participated in the changing of seven high-class literary works of the first water and four of the second water and two of the third water into major muscatel? And is it not the living truth,” said Ezra, “that I was the very man, I myself and none other without exception, who clung to the underside of the
camera of the great Dreyer, clung with my two sinewy hands and noble well-wrought thighs and cunning-muscled knees both dexter and sinister, during the cinematization of the master’s ‘Gertrud,’ clung there to slow the movement of said camera to that exquisite slowness that distinguishes this masterpiece from all other masterpieces of its water? And is it not chapter and verse,” said Ezra, “that I was the comrade of all the comrades of the Dziga-Vertov Group who was first in no-saying, firmest in no-saying, most final in no-saying, to all honey-sweet commercial seductions of whatever water and capitalist blandishments of whatever water and ideological incorrectitudes of whatever water whatsoever? And is it not as true as Saul become Paul,” Ezra said, “that you require a man, a firm-limbed long-winded good true man, and that
I am the man
standing before you in his very blood and bones?”
“You are hired, Ezra,” I said.
27 March
Thinking of sequences for the film.
A frenzy of desire?
Sensible lovers taking precautions?
Swimming with horses?
28 March
Today we filmed the genius. I made no attempt to frame or place him. We simply stood him in front of the camera and let him speak.
“Divorce in Indonesia now costs a penny,” the genius began. “Architecture students in China must now build with their own hands whatever they design. The plan . . . the plan offers metabolic support to ninety-nine percent of reality as well as peak load servicing of maximum social stress. Under omni-favorable conditions no one will ask you any questions and you will be able to go your way utilizing our two great options, trial and error.
“There is no limit to what can be accomplished,” the genius said. “That is unfortunate, I would prefer a limit. The latest schedules call for a rate of growth in the corruption of public officials of
something like twenty-two percent per annum. This ‘noise’ in the system is a good thing. Successful administration endangers anti-growth positions.
“The sudden world population bulge offers no threat, contrary to certain opinions expressed in the newspaper. Preterminal mummification of the deserving poor has been spoken of but I don’t think we’ll actually do it — not yet. Managerial capabilities and leadership potential may yet be discovered in you, predicted by your colored felt-pen drawings as a child, but not noticed at that time. These qualities offer possible new solutions that should not be discounted until progressive failure phases have been worked through. ‘Pipe’ dreams, which allow brine to cool passions and oil to flow under the ice, should be sought after. Better people yet unborn will evolve still other methods, doubtless superior to our own, yet retaining a flavor of improvisation, poking around, smashed thumbs, chemical accidents. It is difficult to do anything right, the first time. As one erects slatted fences in order to control dune formation, so we mix vodka and vermouth in a fully bundled hard- and software operation designed to soothe those of our clients whose jitters incapacitate them for ordinary life. Cyclic event-recurrences distress those who had hoped that rewards and punishments would change places, that painting things with red lead would retard lust, that Breton would not patent the soluble fish, that in the fires along the coasts at midsummer, witches are not being burnt, really. That is all I have to say, at this time.”
“You did very well,” I said to the genius.
“Yes!” he said. “I think so!”
2 April
Just saw, on the street, a man in yellow shorts, orange shirt, orange straw hat. He was carrying three naked putters and a book, the latter decently dust-jacketed. And he was shouting, shouting at the top of his lungs:
“I am angry!”
“I am very angry!
“I am
extremely
angry!
“Oh, I am so angry!
“I am furious!”
Something for the film?
3 April
Today we shot “country music.” These country boys, despised and admired, know what they’re about. The way they pull on their strings — the strings of their instruments and the strings of their fates. Bringing up the bass line here, inserting “fills” there, in their expensive forty-dollar Western shirts and plain ordinary eight-dollar jeans. We’re filming a big battle dance in Rogers, Tennessee. It’s the first time the crew really has had something to chew upon, and everyone is slightly excited. We set up backstage trying not to get in the way. Four bands are competing at the Masonic Temple. The musicians are unscrewing their flasks and tasting the bourbon inside, when they are not lighting their joints and pipes and hookahs. Meanwhile they’re looking over the house, a big pile of stone erected in 1928, and wondering whether the wiring will be adequate to the demands of their art. The flasks and joints are being passed around, and everyone is wiping his mouth on his sleeve. And so the ropes holding the equipment to the roofs of the white station wagons are untied, and the equipment is carried onto the stage, with its closed curtain and its few spotty worklights shining. The various groups send out for supper, ordering steak sandwiches on a bun, hold the onions or hold the lettuce, as individual taste dictates. We send out for supper, too. The most junior member of each group or a high-ranking groupie goes over to the café with the list, an envelope on which all the orders have been written, and reads off the orders to the counterman there, and the counterman says, “You with the band?” and the go-for says, “Yup,” succinct and not putting too fine a point on it. Meanwhile the ushers have arrived, all high-school girls who are members of the Daughters of the Mystic Shrine Auxiliary, wearing white blouses and blue miniskirts, with a red sash slung across their breasts tied at the hip, a badge of office. These, the flower of Rogers’ young girls, all go backstage to look at the musicians, and this is their privilege, because the performance doesn’t begin for
another hour, and they stand around looking at the musicians, and the musicians look back at them, and certain thoughts push their way into all of the minds gathered there, under the worklights, but then are pushed out again, because there is music to be performed this night! and one of the amplifiers has just blown its slo-blo fuse, and nobody can remember where the spare fuses were packed, and also the microphones provided by the Temple are freaking out, if one can say that about a microphone, and in addition the second band’s drummer discovers that his heads are soggy (probably a result of that situation outside Tulsa, where the bridge was out and the station wagon more or less forded the river) but luckily he has brought along a hot plate to deal with this sort of contingency, and he plugs it in and begins toasting his heads, to bring them back to the right degree of brashness for the performance. And now the first people are filling up the seats, out in front of the curtain, some of them sitting in seats that are better, strictly speaking, than those they had paid for, in the hope that the real owners of the seats will not show up, having been detained by a medical emergency. All of the musicians take turns in looking out over the auditorium through a hole in the closed curtain, counting the house and looking for girls who are especially beautiful. And now the m.c. arrives, a very jovial man in a big Western hat, such as the Stetson company has stopped making, and he goes around shaking hands with everybody, cutting up old touches, and the musicians tolerate this, because it is part of their life. And now everybody is tuning up, and you hear parts of lots of different songs, fragments clashing with each other, because each musician has a different favorite bit that he likes to tune up with, although sometimes two musicians will start in on the same piece at the same time, because they are thinking alike, at that moment. And now the hall is filling up with people who are well- or ill-dressed, according to the degree that St. Pecula has smiled upon them, and the Daughters of the Mystic Shrine are outside, with their programs, which contain advertisements from the Bart Lumber Yard, and the Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise, and the House of Blue Lights, and the Sunbeam Vacuum Cleaner Company, and the Okay Funeral Home.
A man comes backstage with a piece of paper on which is written the order in which the various performers will appear. The leaders of the various groups drift over to this man and look at his piece of paper, to see what spot on the bill has been given to each band, while the bandsmen talk to each other, in enthusiastic or desultory fashion, according to their natures. “Where’d you git that shirt?” “Took it off a cop in Texarkana.” “How much you give for it?” “Dollar and a half.” And now everybody is being careful not to drink too much, because drinking too much slows down your attack, and if there is one thing you don’t want in this kind of situation it is having your attack slowed down. Of course some people are into drinking and smoking a lot
more
before they play, but that’s another idea, and now the audience on the other side of the closed curtain is a loud presence, and everyone has the feeling of something important about to happen, and the first band to perform gets into position, with the three guitar players in a kind of skirmish line in front, the drummer spread out behind them, and the electric-piano player off to the side somewhat, more or less parallel to the drummer, and the happy m.c. standing in front of the guitar players, with his piece of paper in his hand, and the stage manager looking alternately at his watch and at the people out front. One of the musicians borrows a last cigarette from another musician, and all of the musicians are fiddling with the controls of their instruments, and the drummer is tightening his snares, and the stage manager says “O.K.” to the m.c., and the m.c. holds up his piece of paper and prepares to read what is written there into the bunch of microphones before him, and the houselights go down as the stage lights come up, and the m.c. looks at the leader of the first group, who nods complacently, and the m.c. shouts into the microphones (from behind the closed curtain) in a hearty voice, “From Rogers, Tennessee, the Masonic Temple Battle of the Bands, it’s Bill Tippey and the Unhappy Valley Boys!” and the band crashes into “When Your Tender Body Touches Mine,” and the curtains part, and the crowd roars.
