John, Jack, and I took a little jaunt to Borders on West End Saturday to pick up the hot-of-the-presses Donald Barthelme biography, Hiding Man by Tracy Daugherty.Now, this may have been totally lost on Jack, but he sure enjoyed saying hi to everyone in the store. For me and John, this was a big deal. Barthelme is one of our favorites, mostly because he stands for freedom. I was introduced to his delicious stories in May 2004, just before I went to Dublin for the Bloomsday centenary. It was a time in my life when I was exploring what personal freedom meant to me, and Barthelme fit right in. To him, a story was an object to craft and polish; it was a work of art. And it was a playground. He was, perhaps, the first true postmodernist. He turned the world on its ear with silly stories and novels that required a bit of a twisted imagination and dry sense of humor.
John studied with Barthelme's brothers, Steve and Rick, at the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Writers, and Rick directed his doctoral thesis. John read Barthelme's The Dead Father in bed the week after Jack was born. He probably influenced John more than any other writer.
This was a big day. We got to purchase a small key to this elusive man's life. And we got to imagine how we might be viewed one day, long after we've written all we're going to write, and after we've lived as heartily as we could. Slick photos in the center of a book of me pregnant with Jack, of John working feverishly at his computer with a baby on his lap. Snippets about what inspired us and how we inspired each other. An author's declarations about our contributions to life. There will be someone interested in all of us one day--how we lived, who we loved. We are biographies in motion. We are books: walking, talking, breathing books.
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