Collected Stories by John Barth

Author:John Barth
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 2015-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

FIRST NIGHT

“Whoa, there! Hold on!”

My pleasure. By which we mean, of course, Graybard’s-the-Present-Teller-of-These-Tales.

“But not mine, as promised. Not Wyssywhatsit’s?”

WYSIWYG’s. Problem?

“Three problems, at least. First off, when you said your guy was quote fetching something forth for her possible delectation, his waterbedmate not unreasonably assumed, dot dot dot—you know? I mean, look at her!”

Who could not? Savoring every aspect and detail of what Narrative Imagination sees in (begging his colleague’s pardon) the perhaps counterproductively too-bright lights of Inspiration’s remarkable boudoir. Maybe hit the dimmer-switch a bit? Mood lighting, et cet.?

“Not yet: She wants him to see it all, because What you see, as the saying goes, is what you get. Hey! . . .?”

There it is: WYSIWYG, as the computer-types used to say back in the far-off Nineteen Eighties, when PCs were first actually able to show text on the monitor with the same fonts and line-breaks as the hard-copy printout. What you saw is what you’d get: WYSIWYG.

“I get it: Quite appropriate. Even painfully so.”

For her getting it, a Graybard kiss, right here. For its being maybe a tad painful in ways as yet unknown to him and a fortiori to our Reader, another . . . here?

“There. And when he’s finished—I mean, when she’s finished . . .

“There. Thankee kindly, sir,

and now to Problem One: Wyssie’s not unreasonable expectation, back at that Trial Invocation’s end, re what was about to be fetched forth by her visiting colleague-not-yet-in-arms?”

Yes. Well.

“She thought they’d agreed: Love before Language! Ardor before Art! He’s got a problem with that?”

Certainly not in principle. In homely, high-mileage fact, however, Hers Truly could use a bit of, shall we say, Help? Night One of their reconnection and Extended Congress may be young; her present company isn’t. Thus that forewarned-of Minor Adjustment: his fetching forth, in lieu of et cetera, Story Number One, believe it or not, of the aforespecified eleven: a little jeu d’esprit from the rambunctious High Nineteen Sixties, meant to illustrate not so much that art may be a cry for help as that Distress, like any other emotion, circumstance, or what have you, may be grist for Ms. Muse’s mill. Shall they grind on?

“Presently. Perhaps? One hopes.”

The above was Problem One, he believes she said? Of three, he believes she said?

“Three at least

is what she said, but three’ll do—and we haven’t even gotten to that Major Condition somebody spoke of awhile back. Problem Two is that by any reasonable definition, this Minor Adjustment by him fetched forth wasn’t a capital-S Story.”

Not a story?

“Granted, it had a Beginning, a Middle, and an Ending—but so does any sentence, any day, any life, without their therefore being Stories, as Wys and Graybard both well know. The thing even built through sequential escalations to a sort of climax and resolution, or at least a petering out, if one may so put it. But then so does any wave breaking on a beach, any off-the-shelf symphony or fireworks display—or, so one hears, the capital-A Act of capital-L Love, when all goes well.

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