Eugénie Grandet by Donald Barthelme

Butter butter butter butter butter butter butter butter

Does anyone still read Balzac anymore? Perhaps he's gone out of fashion in the 21st century but his novel Eugénie Grandet undergoes a complete re-interpretation through Donald Barthelme's postmodern lens and parodic style. In typical Barthelme fashion, any kind of  conventional "plot" or linear structure is thrown out the window, replaced with a collage of narrative fragments. It's quirky, absurd and experimental—common adjectives that I have used before many times in describing his work. 

Barthelme version is interested in transforming the original text into parody. The reader is tasked with filling in the gaps through context, which includes fragmented narrative threads, pencil drawings of the title character's hand ("Who will obtain Eugenie Grandet's hand?"), a sketch of her holding a ball, an unfinished letter, etc. There's even an old photograph of Charles (her cad of a fiancé) and a whole paragraph with the word butter repeated over and over again after asking her father to bake Charles his favorite dessert (could this be an exaggeration of her having a temper tantrum?). Again, Barthelme's collage technique is on full display and these textual fragments are representative of his subversive art. I might have appreciated this story more if I was familiar with the original source material but it's still a fun literary experiment.

Barthelme clearly isn't trying to retell Eugénie Grandet in any traditional sense. He’s more interested in bending, poking and deconstructing Balzac's novel while seeing what happens when you filter 19th-century melodrama through postmodern absurdity. There's something entertaining about the way he reshapes this French novel into something strangely compelling and self-aware. It has this playful energy that makes the story enjoyable on its own terms even though there's probably a lot more going on beneath the surface that might not be apparent on a first read.