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Interpretation of absurdity by intertextuality:

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Feb. 2008, Volume 5, No.2 (Serial No.50) Sino-US English Teaching, ISSN1539-8072, US A

Interpretation of absurdity by intertextuality:

Comments on Donald Barthelmes The glass mountain

ZHANG Min
(Foreign Language Teaching & Research Department, Hebei University, Baoding 071002, China)

Abstract: The paper focuses on the analysis of the intertexts to show the reality hidden inside Barthelmes
The glass mountain. Barthelme is a representative of postmodernism. He employs typical writing skills, such as
collage, fragments and discontinuous narratives, in The glass mountain to illustrate absurdity in the text. As a
centerpiece of postmodernism, this fiction can be correctly interpreted by the way of intertextuality, which is a key
to reveal the texts absurdity. Through such comparison, readers can understand that the purpose of absurd writing
is to demonstrate reality in the modern world.
Key words: Barthelme; The glass mountain; absurdity; intertextuality; postmodernism

1. Postmodernism and absurdity

According to Frederic Jameson, postmodernism is a cultural formation which accompanies particular stages
of capitalism. The phase that were now in is multinational or consumer capitalism with the emphasis placed on
marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them, associated with nuclear and electronic
technologies, and correlated with postmodernism1 .
As a result of the Second World War, American literature came into a period of nightmarish alienation and
absurdity. The Holocaust and the Atom Bomb, with all their destruction, cruelty, and inhumanity, created a
prevailing sense of hopelessness and despair. Combining this sense of disillusionment, some writers began to
make writing strange. Post-modern stories tend to use irony, nonsense, contradiction, surrealism, and absurdity. If
post-modern writing reflects reality at all, it reflects it like a shattered glass, disjointed and dangerous2 .
Absurdity means ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous. As a literary term, absurdity
denotes narratives, characters, and situations that are illogical, dream-like, or unreal3 . Often absurdstories are
nightmare or dreamscape narratives, just as often they are satiric.
Writers have attempted to convey the concept of absurdity through deliberate distortions and violations of
conventional forms, to undermine ordinary expectations of continuity and rationality. They view a human being
as an isolated existent who is cast into an alien universe, to conceive the universe as possessing no inherent truth,
value or meaning, and to represent human life in its fruitless search for purpose and meaning, as it moves from
the nothingness whence it came toward the nothingness where it must end as an existence which is both
anguished and absurd(M. H. Abrams, 2004).
Absurdity is a constant theme in Barthelmes work. His thoughts and work are largely the result of

ZHANG Min (1979- ), female, teaching assistant of Foreign Language Teaching & Research Department, Hebei University,
graduate student of Shanghai International Studies University; research field: translation.
1
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html.
2
http://www.hcc.cc.il.us/online/engl111/historyss.htm.
3
http://core.ecu.edu/engl/whisnantl/4300/barthelme.htm.

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 Interpretation of absurdity by intertextuality: Comments on Donald Barthelmes The glass mountain

twentieth-century angst and challenge accepted practices of form, tone and content, and was highly influential on
the field of letters. He rejects traditional plot, character, time and space as well as the traditional distinctions
between fact and fiction. What used to organize reality time, space, and the structure of language is now often
disjointed. He refuses to be an orderly reflection of, and comment upon, a stable, external world.

2. Intertextuality in Donald Barthelme

s The glass mountain
Based on the story of the same name in Andrew Langs The yellow fairy book, a very well-known
Scandinavian fairy tale, Donald Barthelmes The glass mountain is a re-writing of the classic with 100 short
descriptive sentences arranged in a numbered list. This experimental story tells that a man attempts to climb a
glass mountain, gain the rewards at the top, but finally subverts the traditional happy ending. In order to interpret
it correctly, we should compare the story with Andrew Langs original text. Then it is not hard to find that
intertextuality is an important characteristic in the story.
Derived from the western Structuralism and Post-Structuralism ideological trend, intertextuality was first
introduced by Julia Kristeva in her work of the late-1960s. It is a way of accounting for the role of literary and
extra-literary materials without recourse to traditional notions of authorship. It subverts the concept of the text as
self-sufficient, hermetic totality, foregrounding, in its stead, the fact that all literary production takes place in the
presence of other texts; they are, in effect, palimpsests4 .
Literary works are constructed by codes, forms and systems deposited by previous works. The codes, forms
and systems of culture as well as of other art forms function as guidance to the meaning of a literary work. Texts,
whether they are literary or non-literary, are viewed by modern theorists as lacking in any kind of independent
meaning. They are practically what theorists called intertextual. The act of reading, theorists claim, leads the
readers to explore an enormous network of textual relations. To interpret a text is to trace those relationships. Thus
reading becomes a process of traveling between texts. Meaning turns out to be something that exists between a
text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates. Text thus falls into intertext.
Andrew Langs fairy tale starts with once upon a time there was a Glass Mountain at the top of which stood
a castle made of pure gold .and ends with the princess gave the youth all her treasures, and the youth became
a rich and mighty rulerThe blood of the eagle has restored all the people below to life. Such a beginning and
ending force readers to be far away from reality and come to an idealistic world. Although Donald Barthelmes
text follows the basic structure of the fairy tale with the climber attempting to disenchant the beautiful princess but
the story takes place in the modern world and is totally anti-heroism. The glass mountain is a class surfaced
skyscraper situated in the Thirteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, New York. The climber is not sure of the meaning
of disenchanting a beautiful symbol. Thus when he approaches the final success, he threw the beautiful princess
headfirst down the mountain to my acquaintances. Such an absurd reaction is not insane, but a reflection of the
contrast between reality and tradition. The knights, a castle of pure gold and the eagle are all the codes existing in
the two intertexts, but they have lost their traditional value and meaning in the modern story.

3. Absurdity reflected by intertextuality in the structure and plot of The glass mountain
The glass mountain gives up the traditional structure of a fairy tale but turns to the author
s own experiment in
writing. Barthelme has ever said, Fragments are the only form I trust. Actually, the story is a combination of

4
http://elab.eserver.org/hfl0278.html.

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 Interpretation of absurdity by intertextuality: Comments on Donald Barthelmes The glass mountain

postmodern fragments with 100 numbered sentences to form the basic structure. Unlike traditional fictions,
nearly all the sentences in this short story are simple declarative statements without obvious transition and
explanation. The story breaks the linear narrative structure and switches among scenes the climbing process, the
acquaintancesreaction and incidents in the real world. There is no logic in the fiction. Sentences 56, 65, 71, 80 and
87 are the fragmented narratives of quotations (some of which are coined by the author himself) and literary term.
These five sentences are inserted in the process of climbing the mountain, which disturbs the normal narration of a
story. The result of such insertion puzzles the readers because it challenges their conventional reading habit and
conveys the absurdist writing techniques. Such narrative skill makes one feel like reading a not closely connected
fiction and disperses one s attention. The only way to link the fragments together is intertextuality. They are
connected by readersacknowledgement to the original fairy tales, but are endowed with new meaning.
Barthelmes text shares one common character with the original text: simple words and sentences. However,
it does not necessarily mean easy understanding. Readers must be alert to grasp the meaning of the story or they
will feel confused with the fragmented narratives. Actually postmodernism refuses to be interpreted. It emphasizes
confusion and absurd nature of human existence.
Another characteristic of the story is cluttering up similar words in a statement. In sentence 30, the author
applies ocher, umber, Mars yellow, sienna, viridian, ivory black, rose madder, different colors used by artists, to
describe dogshit in order to unveil the ugliness and the hypocritical nature of the real world. Sentence 63 gives a list
of knightsnames that are real names in history or coined by the author. The knights are the symbols of tradition
and the echoing of the original text, but the death of them emphasizes the conflict between tradition and reality.
Donald Barthelmes text is against traditional fairy tale, subverting the plot of the original one. From
sentence 58 to 61, the climber explains that the purpose of climbing the mountain is to disenchant a symboland
he claims that todays stronger egos still need symbols. He refuses to write clearly that the symbol is a princess,
because in his heart the symbol must be more meaningful than a princess, however, when he approaches the top of
the mountain and finds that the symbol is only a beautiful princess, he threw the beautiful princess headfirst
down the mountain tohis acquaintances. The ending is, abrupt and absurd, completely out of our expectations.
At the same time, many modern elements are added in the story in an absurd way. The climber is afraid of
being attacked by the eagle and he thinks of Bandaidsin such critical moment. Does that mean the climber is a
coward compared with the hero in the original text? In my opinion, that is the normal reaction of a person in
danger and reflection of the common person s inner world. Human beings are not dauntless and fearless as the
fairy tale has depicted.

4. Reality in absurdity
Although the story is to show us a virtual world, the focus is actually on the real world. The glass mountain
looks like some splendid, immense office building, representing the typical architecture of modern society the
skyscraper. People shooting up in doorwaysis a picture of street violence. The scenes of cutting down trees
and a power sawreflect the conflicts between modern men and the nature. My acquaintances were prising out
the gold teeth of not-yet dead knights is a reflection of real stories happened during the World War . A
number of nightingales with traffic lights tied to their legssymbolizes planes. Such modern symbols are inserted
in the story to remind us that this story is not a fantasy, but an image of reality.
The whole fiction can be interpreted as the writer s struggling in the real world. As a postmodern author,
Barthelme tried to find out what is fiction, something between cultural tradition and reality. He strayed and wondered,

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 Interpretation of absurdity by intertextuality: Comments on Donald Barthelmes The glass mountain

seeking a way to transcend the reality. He thought back the tradition represented by knights. But they were failures,
not fit for the modern society any more. He looked forward to a bright future, but the future was like a castle of pure
gold, unreal and illusionary. The sense of fragmentation, disjunction and collage constituted his brand of reality.
The unconventional nature of Barthelmes work has provoked extensive critical debate. When I am
climbing the mountain, my acquaintances offer shithead, asshole and dumb motherfucker as
encouragement. Such abusive words of the cruel observers are glasses of his detractors. According to many
critics, one common term for his way of story-telling is metafiction. His detractors perceive in his work a
destructive impulse to subvert language and culture and an emphasis on despair and irrationalism. These critics
claim that he offers no remedies for the ills of contemporary life that he documents and that he refuses to convey
order, firm values, and meaning5 . Nevertheless, it was in the criticism that Barthelmes work was made, for good
or ill, the centerpiece of postmodernism. Disputes between admirers and detractors just revealed a characteristic
principle in Barthelmes short fiction and novels: the tension between everyday life and the possibilities of art6 .
It is important to cite Barthelmes essay Not-knowing here:

Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how.... The not-knowing is crucial to art, is
what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having
the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.... The not-knowing is not simple, because it's
hedged about with prohibitions, roads that may not be taken. The more serious the artist, the more problems he takes into
account and the more considerations limit his possible initiatives.

He was an experimental writer on his way to seek writing, language and art. Although the tough road might
lead to uncertainty and confusion, like the beautiful enchanted symbolchanging into only a beautiful princess,
he would relay on himself to find an answer through his works. At the end of the fiction there is no real message,
no easy resolution, only a text that makes us wondering.

5. Conclusion
Barthelme makes use of absurd techniques to tell us an anti-traditional fiction of The glass mountain. By
subverting the reader s expectations, he creates a hopelessly fragmented verbal collage reminiscent of such
modernist works. He includes fragmented narrative, collages and quotations, but still maintained his commitment
to a world out of joint(WU Ding-bo, 1998). Such writing skills can be well interpreted only with the help of
intertextuality, an important character of postmodernism.

References:
CHENG Xi-lin. 2001. Fragments are the only form I trust Donald Barthelme s works. Foreign Literature. (in Chinese)
George Perkins & Barbara Perkins. 1988. Contemporary American literature. McGraw-Hill, Inc.
HU Quan-sheng, LIN Yu -zhen. 2003. Selected readings in 20th-century British and American literature-postmodernism. Shanghai:
Shanghai Jiaotong University s Press. (in Chinese)
LI Yu-ping. 2004. Interpretation of snow white by intertextuality. Foreign Literature Studies. (in Chinese)
LIU Hui, SHAN Xue-mei. 2003. Views of the characteristics of postmodernism from The glass mountain. Journal of Guangdong
University of Foreign Studies. (in Chinese)
M. H. Abrams. 2004. A glossary of literary terms. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 168-169.
PANG Jia-guang. Barthelme s works: Reality behind absurdity The glass mountain as an example. Journal of Hunan University of
Science and Engineering. (in Chinese)
WU Ding-bo. 1998. An outline of American literature. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. (in Chinese)
(Edited by Katrina and Doris)

5
http://www.enotes.com/short-story -criticism/barthelme-donald.
6
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2455/is_n2_v30/ai_14081629.

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