A Story I Loved- "The School" by Donald Barthelme

What a class gerbil and a class orphan might have in common

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Once, on a train ride, I couldn’t connect to Wi-Fi and had forgotten, foolishly, to bring any books. All I had with me was a copy of “The School” by Donald Barthelme, which I’d printed one day for a workshop, shoved in my bag, and promptly hadn’t given much thought since. I spent that entire train ride reading and then re-reading the story. I practically memorized it. When I walked off my destination, every line of the story was burned into my mind. I could practically close my eyes and recite it. 

The story sort of lends itself to that, though. It has a mythic quality to it, almost fairytale like in its intonations. It’s a very funny story, and very short. It’s a story about Death, which should contradict the previous statement, but of course it doesn’t. It’s a story that is irreverent about the topic of Death. Death is everywhere in the story- and it happens to everything and everyone. 

The absurdity of the story really works. After my fifth re-read on the train, everything seemed to sort of slur and slide together. It’s about a teacher, seemingly recounting his experiences to somebody off the page. He teaches a classroom full of elementary students, who have had to encounter Death in various unconventional ways- their classroom pets, orphans, even their own parents. The story is wacky and fun because it takes the fundamentally very serious job of explaining the concept of death to a small child and completely skewers it- taking our expectations and vaulting them out the door. Nothing is sacred, in this world. Which is a hard truth, but also hardline. And yet there’s something innocent here, and ultimately rather comforting. So many authors try to talk about Death- to bang on about what we all exist around and live in fear of and what it means for our very brief, entangled mortal lives here on Earth. This fundamental concept which is fundamentally absurd- just once, and then never again? Never, never again? Not forever? Not in three thousand years or in infinity? Seeing Death through a child’s eyes- everything just dropping dead, from the class pet to the class orphan (oh yes), makes for a very cheeky read. It’s this flippancy towards Death, which other authors have tried to do, but it’s just done so well here, so pitch-perfectly. What could skewer towards being totally inane or even insensitive, Barthelme makes darkly humorous. Something that sticks with me is that someone once told me everything is mostly in good taste as long as it’s done well. If you create anything, you can make mostly anything, but it just has to be executed properly. Executed- (get it?)

That’s what’s really egalitarian about art. You can make a story about anything, with any kind of spin- as long as it’s good enough that someone can sit on a train ride and memorize it by heart, and still want to have a chat about it afterwards. If you can just evoke the right feeling, you can talk about anything with heart and verve. Of course, getting to the feeling is the hard part. 

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Resources:

Read "The School" here: https://electricliterature.com/the-school-donald-barthelme/