Cousteau of the Heart
Donald Barthelme, from a 1980 interview conducted by Larry McCaffery (included in Not-Knowing: The Essays and the Interiews):
McCaffery: It's very obvious in Snow White--and in nearly all your fiction--that you distrust the impulse to "go beneath the surface" of your characters and events.
Barthelme: If you mean doing psychological studies of some kind, no. I'm not so interested. "Going beneath the surface" has all sorts of positive-sounding associations, as if you were a Cousteau of the heart. I'm not sure there's not just as much to be seen if you remain a student of the surfaces.
See also this.
Very cool!
Posted by: Daniel | April 18, 2008 at 01:20 PM
No, I knew Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and you, Don B., are no Dostoevsky!
Posted by: Jim H. | April 20, 2008 at 10:03 AM
Quite thought provoking.
http://warrenadler.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Warren Adler | April 20, 2008 at 01:27 PM