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Landscapes of Postmodernity: Donald Barthelme’s Architecture
Author(s): Nicole Sierra
Source: Pacific Coast Philology , 2012, Vol. 47 (2012), pp. 75-92
Published by: Penn State University Press on behalf of the Pacific Ancient and Modern
Language Association (PAMLA)
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Landscapes of Postmodernity:
Donald Barthelme’s Architecture
Nicole Sierra
University of Oxford
Abstract: Exploring Donald Barthelme’s literary representations of architecture, this essay
traces how the author manipulates architectural history as a means of critiquing modernism
and contemporary culture. Despite frequent references to Barthelme’s familial relationship to
architecture, little has been studied about how this intimacy is encoded in his imaginative
writings. Focusing on the short story collections Sixty Stories and Forty Stories, this essay
considers the usefulness of architecture as an interart analogy for Barthelme’s texts. Seizing on
the theories of Fredric Jameson, I argue that Barthelme’s works highlight popular displeasure
with modernist orthodoxy by using strategies similar to early postmodern architecture.
“[The house was] wonderful to live in but strange to see on the Texas
prairie. . . . On Sundays people used to park their cars out on the street and
stare. We had a routine, the family, … [w]e used to get up from Sunday
dinner, if enough cars had parked, and run out in front of the house in a sort
of chorus line, doing high kicks.”
Donald Barthelme (Daugherty 18)
There is a discursive exchange between literature and architecture that cuts
across centuries. Ellen Eve Frank in Literary Architecture addresses the
convention of comparing literature and architecture, from Plato to Samuel
Beckett (3-4). But the question of the connection between literature and
architecture in the postmodernist period is particularly charged due to the
movement’s putative association with architecture. Perhaps no other literary
theorist has been as bold and broad thinking about the cultural and social
implications of postmodern architecture as Fredric Jameson. In his highly
influential Postmodernism , or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism , Jameson
identifies postmodern architecture as the “realm” where “modifications in
aesthetic production have been most centrally raised and articulated,” and the
location where his own theories of postmodernism began to develop (2). More
recently, Jameson wrote that the “end of aesthetic modernism,” and perhaps
even social modernity, was heralded by the “great transformation” of
architectural postmodernity (“Globalization” 114). Linda Hutcheon in A
Poetics of Postmodernism also notably employs postmodern architectural theory
and practice as a “model” for interpreting the postmodern in fiction (ix). While
the largely rhetorical debate about ‘what is postmodernism?’ makes its
perennial return, a closer examination of intersections of postmodern literature
and architecture provide new critical insight. Such an investigation also
75
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76
Nicole
Sierra
elucidates
postm
modernism.
To
postmodern,
it
be
is
‘speak’
to
each
o
debates
about
po
architectural
Drawing
idiom
heavily
American
postm
commodified
ar
contemporary
Barthelme’s
(1981)
and
strat
Forti/
of
the
modern
Trachtenberg’s
perceptive
readin
primarily
on
a
b
architectural
pr
modernist
archi
with
architecture
way
in
which
w
extends
beyond
complex
visual
in
in
part
to
highlig
Despite
referenc
provides
the
most
This
not
sur
is
modernism’Lyotard,
the
aft
“‘p
“conversation”
wi
Barthelme’s
dep
classification,
ble
architecture.
architectural
collage
of
Wi
lang
commo
during
Barthelm
retrospective.
B
works,
with
the
postmodern
arc
postmodern
architectural
(19).
As
the
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pa
styl
narra
Landscapes of Postmodernity 77
signs, and some of them are lies” (Sixty 26).
multiplicity of culture is indicative of Barthel
pluralism,” the unifying maxim of the postmo
theorist Charles Jencks proposes (Post-Modernis
Architecture as Personal Biography
For Barthelme the development of an architectural dialectic began at an
early age. Growing up on the outskirts of Houston in a house resembling Mies
van der Rohe’ s Villa Tugendhat, the Barthelme family was, as the author
states, “enveloped in Modernism” (O’Hara 184). The family patriarch and
designer of the house, Donald Barthelme, Sr., was a zealous convert to the
International Style trained in the Beaux- Arts tradition (H. M. Barthelme 7). The
building existed in a constant state of amendment. Barthelme, Sr. was
meticulous in his following of modernist design principles, regularly
rearranging the domestic space, tearing down walls if necessary to achieve his
iconoclastic vision. Capitalizing on the readily available workforce of his four
sons, the entire family participated in the evolution of their father’s project in
every aspect from rug making to demolition (Daugherty 19-20). The house,
which Barthelme described as an “‘anomaly amidst all the houses around it/”
was effectively a showcase for modernism featuring Aalvar Aalto and Eero
Saarinen furniture (Daugherty 18-19). This intimate understanding of spatial
aesthetics was coupled, and perhaps reinforced by, the unusual landscape of
Houston, Texas – the only major city in the United States without zoning
ordinances. An article in The Nero York Review of Books speculates as to the
“deep and abiding influence” of Barthelme’s first three decades in Houston,
where “surreal juxtapositions (billboards next to churches next to barbecue
shacks)” define the environment, “though his early reading of Mallarmé is
usually given the credit” (Moore 26). 4 Yet in an act of characteristically
‘Barthelmian gray/ even after the author moved out of his parent’s house, and
began to develop his own literary aesthetic, Barthelme continued to take great
care in the design of his domestic space, enthusiastically decorating his
residences with modernist furniture (H. M. Barthelme 48-49).
Consuming Architectural History: From Baroque to
Bauhaus and Beyond
Key to unpacking Barthelme’s manipulation of the spectacle of architecture
is Jameson’s reading of early postmodern buildings in Postmodernism , or, The
Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Citing Charles Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New
Orleans as an exemplar of “the so-called historicism of the postmodern
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78
Nicole
Sierra
architects,
describes
and
this
int
[T]he
elements
flo
sign
or
logo
for
a
commodity
…
in
that
a
…
in
co
modernism
could
not
be
c
The
“elements”
classical
architec
dormer and dome,” that have been detached into a series of consumable
spectacles under the phantasmagoric gaze of postmodernism (100). Through
this assemblage of historical references, architecture itself becomes a brand
available for visual purchase, an architectonic signature of Warholian
commodity fetishism. In the postmodernist scenario, the urgent sincerity of
modernism is dismissed, replaced by a “depthlessness, a new kind of
superficiality in the most literal sense” 0ameson 9).
The historical “antigravity” of postmodernism is highlighted through
Barthelme’ s architectural intertext (Jameson 101). Reflecting the dislocated
nature of postmodernism is Barthelme’s literary style of the “short-short
story,” “flash fiction,” or “sudden fiction,” which grew out of 1960s wordplay.5
As the oft-quoted character of “See the Moon?” (1968) states: “Fragments are
the only forms I trust” (Sixty 100). This fragmentation also serves to spatialize
the text, recasting it as a multi-dimensional medium – jump cutting from story
to story, from scene to scene, from block of text to block of text – a parallactic
technique that defies conventional literary perspective, creating psychovisual
collages of textuality, thus opening the potential of text rendered not as image,
but as ‘shapes/ Yet for Barthelme this tactic is less about creating a literature
that belongs to the realm of ‘the visual/ and more about transforming the
medium of text through the adoption of cinematic and photographic
experiences (Not-Knowing 213). 6 As Barthelme simply describes this strategy in
one of his few unrevised interviews, “You grab something outside of literature
drag it into literature and renew the writing thereby” (Not-Knowing 214 )7
Following this path of logic where the textual and the visual interface,
Jerome Klinkowitz characterises Barthelme’s first novel Sncnu White (1967) as
using the “facilitating principle of collage” which the critic then claims
matured into a technique of ‘silkscreening’ in the author’s second novel, The
Dead Father (1975). Klinkowitz describes how this “silkscreening of language”
informs the novel: the narrative elements are “photomechanically
superimposed” and “bleed through” creating “simple juxtaposition” (8).
“[T]he principle of collage is one of the central principles of art in this
century,” Barthelme wrote (Not-Knoiving 76). Ironically, Barthelme’s third
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Landscapes of Postmodernity 79
novel Paradise (1986), the text that most ove
discourse is perhaps his least ‘spatial’ novel, exh
through the relatively strong sense of nar
predictably, and I would argue partially du
Paradise was also Barthelme’s least critically su
overlooked for scholarly engagement.8
To return to the theories of Jameson, for Ba
become postmodernist codes” (17). This tec
articulated in “Sentence” (1987). One of the
stories, “Sentence” is one long multi-page passa
and searching detours and not quite dead end
the author’s work, the short story begins with
through the disjointed progression of the narr
broader message.
and here comes Ludwig, the expert on sentenc
borrowed from the Bauhaus, who will – “Guten T
find a way to cure the sentence’s sprawl, by usin
thinking developed in Weimar – “I am sorry to info
no longer exists, that all of the great masters who f
either dead or retired, and that I myself have bee
books on how to pass the examination for polic
falls through the Tugendhat House into the histo
not the one we wanted of course, but still a constru
to be treasured for its weakness, as opposed to the
153)9
The character Ludwig refers, in part, to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, director of
the Bauhaus School of Design from 1930 until the institution closed in 1933
under Nazi pressure.10 The implication that Ludwig is an expert on “sentence
construction” who can “cure” the ills of the run-on sentence, suggestively
referred to as “sprawl” – evoking urban or residential sprawl – is a
statement designed to mock the presumption of orthodox modernist
architects’ claims to be able to ‘solve’ the challenges of town planning through
innovation and technology. For example, in Le Corbusier’s The Radiant City , he
suggests conserving land for green spaces by purging cities of their original
structures, replacing them with vertical buildings that can house 1,500 people
per tower block. This type of pragmatic insensitivity to the social needs of
human beings underlies Jane Jacobs’s influential critique of twentieth century
urban planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities , where she
underscores Greenwich Village in New York City as an example of a
successful urban community, the neighborhood where Barthelme lived during
the writing of most of his short stories.
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80
Nicole
Sierra
Ludwig’s
‘fall’
man-made
of
is
a
the
in
a
role
thr
objects
experiment
constant
in
st
determ
alternative
ways
o
that
cities
reflect
language
of
operate
“conceptual
Narrative
which
on
a
to
“A
nar
architectu
between
aspect
:
w
or
narrative
of
narrativ
conciliatory
the
cold
writer/
n
rigi
architect
grammatically/
st
Disarmingly
co
language,
two
typ
decline
of
the
B
‘constructs’
book
essay
“After
magazine
Joyc
Location
Herzinger
calls
B
Knmoing
322),
the
how
readers
(and
The
reader
is
not
by
an
expert
bumping
into
lis
(Faul
some
reader
reconstitutes
object,
tapping
It
is
rush
to
of
be
pleasant
read.
remaining
or
it,
sh
characteristic
the
He
o
nai
con
always
t
buildings
b
problematic,
unexha
When
reading
“Sen
reference
to
Joyc
infamously
employment
like
lon
of
language
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a
syn
Landscapes of Postmodernity 81
allegorical path of author as architect, just
neighborhoods making up the twentieth cen
intervention and design of architects and urba
rendered into text is constructed by the a
buildings, is impenetrable and monumental. Ba
an interview on The Dead Father (19 75), ex
predecessors are “a problem” for the aspirin
these ancestral obstacles as the “lions in the pat
The question of formal interart comparison
Location. As one of the editors’ introductions t
art and literature had become segregated in
point of departure for Location was therefo
poems, short stories, or essays. This una
compromised piece by piece in favor of wr
problem of form by shoving it aside'” (R
methodological challenge, Barthelme repeat
metaphor to create an argument about lang
always there, like the landscape surround
buildings bounding the reader’s apartment.”
allusion in “After Joyce” when incorporatin
analysis. Examining William Burroughs’ s techn
of cognition” Barthelme writes (Not-Knowing 5
The form of [Burroughs’ s] work . . . suggests that a
may fall on you at any moment. Burroughs’ [sic]
appropriate to his terroristic purpose. . . . Burrough
long at a sitting; like Joyce he enforces contempl
which his work must be approached. (Not-Knowing
This passage captures the degree to which
controlling through physical form the nature
between their walls. Similarly, the texts of Jo
how they are to be read through the configurat
It is also from the perspective of architect
Klinkowitz’s assessment that the author’s engag
on the level of form, not content (13-19). In
retelling of Charles Perrault’ s late 17th centur
wife recounts a conversation with Bluebeard:
“The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light/’
[Bluebeard] said one day. I have latterly seen his remark attributed to the
Swiss Le Corbusier, but it was first uttered, to my certain knowledge, in our
sitting room, Bluebeard paging through a volume of Palladio. (Forty 82-83)
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82
Nicole
The
Sierra
latter
Venice
and
manifesto
name
Vicen
of
mo
important
work
plagiarism,
or
a
serves
to
humbl
elite
(and
Since
perhap
1900
Wil
architecture
wa
bohemia,
or
.
.
.
taste
of
‘everyma
and Crafts movement, which had … been based on time-worn notions of
dwelling” (291). The fact that Bluebeard is inspired to expound the Le
Corbusier passage while reading an 18th century study of a Cinquecento
architect, is a playful blasphemy of the modern movement’s rejection of
historical allusions.
As the name ‘International Style’ suggests, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and
Philip Johnson’s manufactured movement envisioned a homogenous model of
architecture, irrespective of place or vernacular tradition. In architectural
discourse this is frequently referred to as a style that does not ‘communicate/
in essence a method without historical homage, disconnected from geographic
situation. Encapsulating the most frequent criticism of modernist architecture
Jencks writes:
Among the several ills that modern architecture suffered during its brief
reign as the dominant mode of building in the West – from the late 1920s to
the early 1960s – was the loss of historical consciousness. This was a selfinflicted condition . . . due to strictures of such architects as Walter Gropius,
who wished to ban the teaching of architectural history from the Bauhaus. …
The result of this doctrine soon became apparent: an abstract architecture
shorn of location in place and time, an architecture of amnesia …. (“Time
Fusion” 141^42)
Of course many associated with the International Style studied the classical
orders, and some architects like Le Corbusier referenced his trips to Greece as
locations of inspiration; yet despite this, the dogma of orthodox modernist
architecture demanded the omission of history from its dominant discourse.
The concept was to create a design of technological principles, free from the
“yoke” of history. These architects believed that in order for buildings to be
“transparent, functional, and necessary” it was prerequisite to be “acultural
and ahistorical” (“Time Fusion” 142).
The modernist architectural spectacle was intended to be an experience
predicated on clarity, innovation, and formal exploration. Consider Le
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Landscapes of Postmodernity 83
Corbusier’s description of the experience o
Roche in Oeuvre complète ; he writes, “‘You e
once offers itself to the eye; . . . Here, reborn
architectural events: pilotis, the horizontal wi
façade'” (Colomina 5).14 This spectacularize
different approach to the classical ornamenta
as described by Jameson. Although Le Corb
defined as ‘classical hierarchy,’ the ‘event’
usurped architectural histories of the past, bu
Where postmodernism promotes classical prec
elements, modernism’s desire is to reshape arc
Further emphasizing this debate about histo
on the following page of “Bluebeard,”
architectural references from the past. “[T]he
the castle, [was] bastardized in the eighteenth
overlaid the Georgian pristinity with Bar
Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor” (Forty 83).What
culling of the architectural canon, a strange c
calculated act of pastiche. Moving swiftly
modernism to Georgian and British Baroque, B
upon multiple historical periods in rapid suc
early postmodern architecture’s reliance on th
dispersive imagery to ‘wholeness’.
This strategy of “ornamental layering and
architectural analogue in the works of Robe
Venturi’s influential ‘gentle manifesto’ of
Contradiction in Architecture, the architect s
histories to influence contemporary work. He
masters, like Borromini, and twentieth centu
such as Edwin Lutyens, to overcome the ‘cont
landscape. Among the historical periods em
and Rococo. Barthelme’s casual dismissal
suggest an ambivalence towards Venturi’s t
postmodernist theory in general. More like
authority of any aesthetic movement that cla
dwelling, a hesitation which Venturi would
Hudgens, the pattern of Barthelme’s stories
“problem-solving” (108). Similarly, Venturi ch
than ‘straightforward,’ ambiguous rather than
Conscious of the problematic legacy of the
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84
Nicole
Sierra
Utopian
visions/’
(Ellin
58).
future
Yet
an
this
is
not
to
unrestrained
immortalized
in
about
Frank
great
admirer
d
t
Lloyd
of
unapologetic
innov
detects
an
unchar
expressed
through
Gaudi
is
an
archit
Nouveau
curves,
a
architectural
mad
architect
Gaudi
de
word,
since
he
is
n
it
down.
This
is
people'”
(Zerbst
house
receiving
l
teenage
Sagrada
The
girls,
Familia,
speaker
-But
when
I
Familia,
the
seeing
one
also
recou
saw
th
great
the
plans
not
yet
built
and
p
working
on
the
bea
the
workmen
on
th
Familia
in
Barcelon
still
working
under
Antonio
Gaudi,
hav
before,
what
had
es
more
but
that
more
corollary.
-What is the ethical corollary?
-More. (Sixty 448)15
In this compressed Gaudi hagiography, the primary speaker captures the
grandeur, the excess, the ‘higher calling’ of architecture. In the process,
Barthelme manipulates the concepts of physical creator and spiritual creator,
conflating god and architect – an association with a long ancestry, dating back
to the ancient Egyptians (Kostof 5). While the second speaker later emphasizes
Gaudi was “laboring in nomine Domini ” (Sixty 448), the popular legacy of
Sagrada Familia is not as a shrine to the workings of God, but to the endurance
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Landscapes of Postmodernity 85
and vision of the human spirit. More precis
Antonio Gaud! himself, creator-architect imm
hand of the living.
Straddling Mies (“less is more”) and Ventu
speaker (” more is more too”) moderates betw
and the decorativeness of postmodernism,
two prominent forces of twentieth centu
resistance to absolutes is illuminated. The stat
. . . more is more too,” is less authoritative di
more “gentle” Venturi, than respectful ob
mediation. The tone acknowledges the valid
while calling the reader’s attention to alter
like Gaudi, a figure situated outside of th
movements, specifically the linear story o
postmodernism.
While there are numerous twentieth cen
“Bluebeard,” the time in which the story is se
was irrelevant and the distant past and the re
modernism is firmly classified as ‘the past.’ A
introduction to Sixty Stories , “by the time Ba
it new was getting old” (xi). This is not to sug
inclined architectural movements are not ex
For instance, in “Sinbad” (1984) the protagonis
Beaux-Arts Ball sponsored by “the Arts and A
he sees “a young woman wearing what
underwear” (Forti/ 19). When asked, the wom
Lady Macbeth. Similar to all the non-sequen
event occurs without explanation and the
connection a scantily clad woman might hav
one is a scholar of architecture, it might be kn
notoriously louche affair where cross-dres
confronted with this spectacularized image, ev
forced to recognize the absurdity of this ac
hidden irrationality of conventional culture. T
when one considers that the Beaux-Arts te
“erring in the direction of academicism” (C
penchant for industry jargon and boasts of
Knowing 56), a seemingly democratic principl
of postmodern “aesthetic populism,” at tim
unpack Barthelme’s works undercuts this gene
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86
Nicole
Sierra
The
post-World
States
gave
way
1920s
gradually
industrialism”
early
1930s
Barthelme
also
anticlimactic
waiting
“Rif”
(C
mode
junc
rooms'”
(1987)
(
captu
when
she
descri
furniture
to
her
blanket
sons
of
“brass
quasi-Eam
table
with
canno
Barthelme’s texts modernism is used as a historical location. Conscious of the
irony of relegating modernist architects to merely ‘another’ historical period
within the cannon of architecture, Barthelme also indiscriminately places
postmodern design within the same paradigm. Here Barthelme is responding
to the rapid cultural permeation of design into mainstream consciousness in
the era of late capitalism. By the time Barthelme authored “Rif” Ettore
Sottsass’s subversive postmodern works of the 1970s had seeped into the
Italian suburbs, ice-cream parlors, and gaudy three star hotels, in bastardized
form. Mimicking this intersection of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, Sottsass then
utilized this phenomenon in the 1980s as a location of inspiration. The
resulting aesthetic belonged to a “non specific past,” a palimpsest of history,
recent past, and contemporary (Sudjic 84).
Postmodernism was decidedly comfortable with commerciality and
artificiality, unabashedly welcoming the messy insincerity of mass consumer
culture. Referring to the “value” of the Las Vegas Strip’s “commercial
vernacular,” Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour write in their
seminal exploration of American “pop architecture,” Learning from Las Vegas :
“For the artist, creating the new may mean choosing the old or the existing.
Pop artists have relearned this” (6). 17 When in 1984 the American furniture
manufacturer Knoll hired Venturi and his partner Scott Brown to design a
range of chairs, Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum in London
recalled that “it seemed as if the postmodern moment had really come.”
Venturi sought to subvert “Miesian purity” by recollecting memory and
association through a sense of commodified historicism. The architect
designed:
a series of three-dimensional cartoons that evoke the forms of Chippendale
or Queen Anne, or apply decorative patterns to bent plywood. They were
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Landscapes of Postmodernity 87
deliberately transgressive … a reference to anothe
the modernist idea of approaching design as thou
done before. (Sudjic 81)
In the late twentieth century and early twent
architects’ affinity for commerciality has exte
mass-markets. Modeled on Alessi’s success, the commodified architect is
personified by figures like Michael Graves, whose cutlery at the American
mega-retailer Target proudly features his image on the packaging (Sudjic 35).
The postmodern architect actively participates in capitalism’s mobilization of
fantasies, stimulating desire and consumption. An extension of commodity
fetishism, this is the architect as celebrity, recasting his or her buildings in the
role of pornographic avatar.
In a sense Barthelme anticipates this eventuality in “The Genius” (1987), an
eclectic account of a questionably profound scholar who simultaneously
lampoons academic and celebrity culture. A savagely humorous story, part of
‘the genius’s’ intellectual ritual is a sort of architectural tourism – voyeuristic
visits to historic architectural spectacles, as a means of validating his elite
status. “The genius is only visiting the church in the first place because the
nave is said to be a particularly fine example of Burgundian Gothic” ( Forty 12).
The reader is wryly aware that this is the same genius who declared earlier
that the most important tool of today’s genius is “rubber cement” (Forty 8).
The veracity of his intellectual pursuit is dubious, opening the possibility of
architecture as simply an activity or product, performed or acquired as a
means of enhancing one’s own personal stature, a symbol of cultural charade.
In contrast, the subject of political economy was a tenuous one for the
modern movement. While the theorists of the Deutscher Werkbund rejected
capitalism, they simultaneously wished to retain industrialization and a
technological future, especially in relation to mass-produced buildings. The
belief was in the “third way,” a space in between capitalism and communism,
a location that was never realized (Colquhoun 11). This is not to suggest that
modernist architecture had no relationship with commerce. Architecture as an
industry requires large financial investment and highly skilled labor;
modernist architecture relied on corporations and wealthy patrons to further
its implementation. As suggested previously, by the 1950s corporate America
began to utilize modernist architecture as a model of efficiency and a
marketing tool. Moving from counterculture to commercial, during this same
period a soft drink advertisement featured “a rosy-cheeked Santa sitting in a
form-fitting Saarinen chair with a bottle of Coke” (Nicolai). While Mies
appeared to be content to tint the glass of the Seagram Building the color of his
commissioner’s whisky, underlying this flagrant advancement of corporate
prestige was still a sincere agenda of public service.
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88
Nicole
Sierra
While
the
destr
Missouri
on
July
with the end of modernist dominance, Barthelme foretold of its decline in
short stories like “Paraguay” (1970). A story favored by the author, in 1974
Barthelme described “Paraguay” as “an almost beautiful place” and “a hint of
what I would like to do, if I could do it” (Not-Knowing 56-57). It is a tale of Le
Corbusier’s Utopian vision of a “radiant city” gone awkwardly fantastical.
Using the phrase ‘”silver cities”‘ as a pseudonym, the narrator of the story
observes “the dim piles of buildings” and recounts in the vein of a travelogue
his encounter with what rapidly reveals itself as a regimented mode of urban
existence. The narrator explains that this Paraguay “is not the Paraguay that
exists on our maps,” it is a “new country” ( Sixty 121-23). The mode of life is
bureaucratically “‘predictive,'” everything from “rationalized art” to “white
noise” is carefully produced and distributed in mass ( Sixty 124-25). The city
even has a “plan,” stored in a box, which “‘governs more or less everything'”
(Sixty 128).18
To ensure the reader does not overlook the allusion to Radiant City ,
Barthelme footnotes a paragraph to the attribution of Le Corbusier’s Le
Modulor, in a “[s]ightly altered” state (Sixty 125). The critical impulse behind
this farcical representation is the “prophetic elitism” of the orthodox modernist
Utopian message (Jameson 2), which claimed to be able to ‘fix’ the traditional
city, and its failure to deliver this promise. In an interview Barthelme states:
the Modern movement in architecture . . . envisioned not just great buildings
but an architecture that would engender a radical improvement in human
existence. The buildings were to act on society, change it in positive ways.
None of this happened and in fact a not insignificant totalitarian bent
manifested itself. (O’Hara 190)
While architectural historian Alan Colquhoun cautions not to equate 1930s
fascism with the modern movement, he does note that the proliferation of antidemocratic totalitarian ideologies in the first half of the twentieth century was
“no accident.” He further concludes that in relation to capitalism, modernist
theory “misread the very Zeitgeist it had itself invoked” (Colquhoun II).19
Retrospective evaluations of the modern movement have identified that the
architecture was not as “coherent, logical, [or] objective” as its apologists
believed and accusations of inefficiency, high cost, and responsibility for the
decline of craftsmanship have haunted its legacy (Curl 496).
In 1983 art historian and critic Hal Foster wrote in his preface to The AntiAesthetic : Essays on Postmodern Culture, ‘Postmodernism: does it exist at all and,
if so, what does it mean? Is it a concept or a practice, a matter of local style or a
whole new period or economic phase? What are its forms, effects, place? How
are we to mark its advent?’ (ix). It appears that Foster is suggesting that the
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Landscapes of Postmodernity 89
amorphous postmodern system of “‘both
Hutcheon has described it, has resulted in
confusion (49). Venturi himself famousl
architectural tension and conflict in the ope
Contradiction. In his chapter “Nonstraightf
Manifesto,” he wrote: “I like complexity and co
like elements which are hybrid rather than ‘pu
‘clean/ distorted rather than ‘straightforward/
vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent
and clear. … I prefer ‘both-and’ to ‘either-or/ b
gray, to black or white” (16). Of course, ar
purposeful, ambiguity and ambivalence abou
continues today.20 In Dissident Postmodernists: B
Maltby advocates using alternative approaches
“the innovation of modernism as the principal p
the perspective of architecture this is redu
Barthelme’s writings in relation to modernism
into the author’s relationship to architectural
negate his response to the postmodern conditio
architecture where these elements intersect.
Notes
1. Arguably, Barthelme does lend himself to this type of interpretation. His mos
successful novel, The Dead Father (1975), and his posthumously
