Barthelme: The Balloon

I found this story amusing. I don’t know why but, it made me laugh the whole time I read it. Wouldn’t it be fun to play a prank like that? Just put up some huge balloon in the middle of New York City and observe everyone’s reactions!?

I like how people in the story start trying to figure out what the balloon represents, and how they start using it as a landmark. “There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the “meaning” of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings…” and “People began, in a curious way, to locate themselves in relation to aspects of the balloon…”

I like the line “As a single balloon must stand for a lifetime of thinking about balloons, so each citizen expressed, in the attitude he chose, a complex of attitudes.” Maybe he does intend to use the balloon as a metaphor (as Renee suggested). It could all be about perspective. He suggests these in the next paragraphs when he describes various citizens’ thoughts on the balloon. Barthelme could be referring to our need to always interpret everything (i.e. the way we want to interpret these poems, or art, etc.)

Then in the end he says: “I met you under the balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, at with sexual deprivation, but now that your visit to Bergen has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appropriate.” Why does he choose to explain the balloon in this passage when throughout the rest of the story he seems to insist that people shouldn’t try to interpret/explain it?