Ann Beattie Wonders What Donald Barthelme Can Do with Spy Balloon ‹ Literary Hub

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Donald Barthelme and I are friends, although before we met, I loved—and taught, as a teaching assistant in Connecticut—Come back, Dr. Calagari. I think about him a lot and miss him (he died very young, in 1989). Although I no longer remember where a book of fairy tales I had from my days in New York, it contained one that made Donald laugh so much. It’s about two characters named Municar and Manicar, who always greet each other by asking, “What’s the news today?” When we met, sometimes by chance in the Village, sometimes by chance at a bar on Tenth Avenue, one of us said, “What’s the news today?”

I wish he was here to see the Chinese spy balloon. What did he like about it? That someone is being mischievous; its courage; its wonder; the way its presence made the day more interesting.

As we know today, the predecessors were not identified. Or don’t care. At first, I wondered what, exactly, a spy balloon was. It’s not a plastic balloon you’ll see at a birthday party (of course, since Barthelme’s time, those have been replaced by Mylar, and come with pre-printed good wishes). Instrument controlled, or remotely operated by super mice? AI riding inside? What, exactly? The Late Night writers had a blast! Maybe even the kids at school crayoned in its likeness. (Excuse me: glitter gel writing this.)

Coincidentally, my husband has a new favorite t-shirt that almost depicts a balloon, but instead says, “Potatoes.” (Not as many people ask about this as they do his St. Pierre et Miquelon t-shirt, or the most asked, R>G. I don’t think he’ll wear a spy balloon t-shirt, although as I write we are in Key West, so I’m sure there are many for sale on Duval street.

In 1966, Donald Barthelme published a story in the New Yorker called, appropriately enough, “The Balloon.” It was so long ago, he might as well have written, “My Afternoon with Dinosaurs at the Plaza.” “The Balloon” is an account that shifts from the journalistic (and digressively portentous) to the exhilaratingly poetic, at the end of the story. His wolf covers a lot of territory. It contains insider-references, current and outdated buzzwords, and a heartfelt wish, I’d say. But more on that later.

In the end, it’s not a sendup (no pun intended), because it’s not really satire; It’s tongue-in-cheek and painfully sincere. In it, a character narrates an unusual event. Here is the first paragraph: “The balloon, starting from a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, spread northward all night, while the people slept, until it reached the Park.”

It is quite recognizable as a beginning of Barthelme. It contains references to things seen and unseen—that’s the wonderful paradox he’s trying to navigate, as a writer—so that the more we hear about the wolf, the more the small details or word choice, which informs us that the wolf, literalized, becomes a symbol for a state of mind: deprivation, cause of love and loss.

One of the many pleasures of reading Barthelme is his adaptability, his ease with words and concepts that contradict each other, his ability to paint a perfect still life.

Reading it, New Yorkers immediately understand its terrain, even if unsure (until the end of the story) of its parameters. Naming certain streets in New York elicits the same kneejerk reaction as the little hammer used on our knees in the Babinski Reflex test: Ah, okay, Fourteenth Street, the dividing line, the line of demarcation , after which it was (gasp!) painful in Uptown. “Park” doesn’t need to be named; outsiders called it, “Central Park.” And that awkward syntax (“which I cannot express”): who is this self-important jerk? Well, our narrator is a poseur, shown by a writer who understands something about archness: that people who claim importance or power in this way become sadly ridiculous, as they try to be important .

One of the many pleasures of reading Barthelme is his adaptability, his ease with words and concepts that contradict each other, his ability to paint the perfect life, in effect (he refers to painting the story, in a passage that I will quote later) by going into an unexpected, sometimes rude detail whose inclusion you see through hypocrisy. (Consider, for example, Magritte’s portrait of a well-dressed man in a black hat, whose image is interrupted by the presence of a floating green apple.)

In this particular story, our narrator has a mission. He is the (rather stupid) master of ceremonies, or at least the Maitre d’ of Balloons: Don’t we on the sidelines step this way to observe it. . . Well, this uncomfortable, but potentially important new presence in the city—a new reality that can shake things up (as the writer always hopes), de-familiarize our world so that we can return to it a little differently; it gives us a new “landscape.”

Forget the swing set and the slide; The balloon offers a new playground, a playtime for adults. It can be—like the story, itself—a game. He wrote: “The upper surface [of the balloon] is so arranged that it shows a ‘landscape’, small valleys as well as small hills, or mounds. Once on top of the balloon, walking is possible. . . .” It’s as if the balloon is infinitely pliable—which, of course, may be in his imagination. This balloon was made to be a pop-up book! It is also made for storytelling, with appropriate written gestures used to describe it, and the hint that we, too, can experience a pleasant moment crossing the balloon, getting (I guess) of a softer, kinder, art-conscious New York walk.

Imagine how deflating it would be if it was just another Chinese spy balloon, one shot over the water off the coast of South Carolina. Barthelme’s balloon has an advantage: it cannot be demolished, more than the tendency to hyperbole will disappear in both writing and the way we speak. (Among many other things, this wolf incarnates hyperbole.)

Our narrator guide has a hidden agenda, not about the wolf, but as a way to find something sensual, a relationship for his thwarted love and the woman who went abroad, that he is missing. A question is implied: How do we talk about feelings, how do we make something real, rather than metaphorical? How can we explain that we are depressed, desperately living our hopes and desires, while everyday life is too slow?

I read “The Balloon” as a story about the power of love. It’s also a gorgeous, ruffly, satin-y Valentine that retains all of its sparkle, minus any of those things.

Barthelme’s story is written for many people: for the readers he captures and dazzles; as a good bedtime story for kids, who might not really care that the explanation for the wolf’s existence is one person’s ho-hum, yucky love for another; for the New Yorker, where they no doubt appreciate a homey’s local references, as well as his startling brilliance. He also wrote it for himself: Yeah, disguised autobiography, or “autofiction,” or “faux-memoir.” Attempting to define the story’s genre reminds me of Mark Rylance’s character’s oft-demanded response in Bridge of Spies: “Will it help?”

It’s easy to be surprised, as a writer. Any good writer can convince the reader that something improbable is inevitable. Barthelme’s The Balloon is also launched so that we can see a writer’s (his) mind. It’s an intimate story, and in it, he spies on himself. In so many ways, in this story, he turns things around, to show us the workings of fiction, to see the seam. (Well, he’s a postmodernist.)

Maybe he’s thinking of Roy Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dot paintings based on comic frames: character thought balloons containing unintelligent, but terrifyingly recognizable, dialogue. In “The Balloon,” he refers to high and low art: in 1990, MoMA presented a show called that. In the beginning, before turning around and achieving such success as a writer, Barthelme was the acting director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston.

I read “The Balloon” as a story about the power of love. It’s also a wonderful, rugged, satin-y Valentine that retains all of its sparkle, minus any of those things. And the story is more polite than the Chinese balloon. Its presence did not result in Anthony Blinken having to cancel his trip to China. No shy Pentagon general felt the need to fill us in on past spy balloon sightings. Barthelme’s balloon does not need to factor in biodegradability and the environment. In writing it, he claims what is at hand, whether through allusions to visual art, or through the perfect choice of the place where the wolf ends up: West Virginia, a state that is often left in our ruins.

For writers, he offers a lesson in timing—how to reveal a story—that makes us feel his terrain, both actual (New York) and metaphorical. This story is also a reminder about the power of imagination and the power of language. We associate the reading of the word “inflated” with the negative criticism that will follow, even though Barthelme’s balloon, deflated and decoded after serving its purpose, remains buoyant. Inspirational.

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Ann Beattie’s new essay collection, More to Say: Essays and Appreciations, is forthcoming from Godine.

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