The New Music by Donald Barthelme

Demeter and Persephone.

Even though I can appreciate Donald Barthelme's bold experimentation in The New Music, which consists entirely of dialogue, it's probably one of my least favorite short-stories by him. It mostly left me feeling confounded and frustrated, as if I had just listened to a jazz solo with every instrument playing a different song. 

Barthelme, true to his post-modernist roots, is all about breaking the rules of conventional storytelling. He loves to turn narrative expectations on their head, and staying true to the title, it's as if he's trying to compose a new kind of literary "music." But instead of a harmonious symphony, it often feels more like a chaotic jam session. If the goal was to disorient the reader and shake up traditional form, then mission accomplished.

The basic framework of the story is a conversation between two brothers. There's repetition, fragmented anecdotes, and plenty of nonsensical detours. At times it felt like eavesdropping on a conversation in a dream. And yes, there’s even a large sketch of a bird (I think it's a bird?) tossed into the mix, just to keep you guessing. Because, why not. 

One of the recurring threads in their conversation is the complex relationship with their mother, blending childhood trauma, myth, and themes of death and mortality. Heavy stuff buried beneath layers of absurdity and randomness. Perhaps a narrative logic does exist here but it eludes me.

Look, if you enjoy decoding literary puzzles and don’t mind wading through jangling narrative noise, you might get more out of this than I did. But for me? I felt like I was tuning into a radio station that never quite landed on a clear signal.

Here are a few quotes that stood out to me:

If one does nothing but listen to the new music, everything else drifts, goes away, frays. Did Odysseus feel this way when he and Diomedes decided to steal Athene’s statue from the Trojans, so that they would become dejected and lose the war? I don’t think so, but who is to know what effect the new music of that remote time had on its hearers?

To the curious: A man who was a Communist heard the new music, and now is not. Fernando the fish-seller was taught to read and write by the new music, and is now a leper, white as snow. William Friend was caught trying to sneak into the new music with a set of bongos concealed under his cloak, but was garroted with his own bicycle chain, just in time. Propp the philosopher, having dinner with the Holy Ghost, was told of the coming of the new music but also informed that he would not live to hear it.

The new music burns things together, like a welder. The new music says, life becomes more and more exciting as there is less and less time.

Barthelme leans hard into absurdity and irony to reflect how ideology, identity, and knowledge are rendered unstable or even meaningless in the face of this "new music" he is creating. It becomes a metaphor for radical change or innovation, something so all-consuming that it pulls focus from everything else. Barthelme layers in myth and historical detachment to show how even the most heroic or legendary moments feel uncertain and destabilized in the face of modern absurdity. It's both a playful and melancholy nod to the way meaning becomes obfuscated in the postmodern condition. This "new music" can also be viewed as metaphor for art, societal upheaval, and the way meaning slips through our fingers when we try to hold onto it too tightly. The author is not offering answers but rather, he’s reveling in the questions. I just don't care enough to ponder them.