/lit/ - Literature

>>21643546
Well Barthelme's whole thing was 'having fun with language', just starting with some basic conceit (a big balloon appears over the city) and seeing what interesting images and twists and ideas get generated by following the autonomous flow of free-association and narrative escalation. Any 'themes' are more like elements in that mix than they are the secret meaning behind it all, the guiding masterplan.

I think you would benefit from also focusing on having fun writing and paying attention to the small-scale surprises at the level of sentence and image, rather than trying to think about your place as an Artist within Literary History, about 'wanting to be a writer', about the unique message you have to impart -- that mindset's a total neurotic narcissistic energy-sink, and I know because I've been there. Just find a way to generate words on a page that surprise and entertain you ('entertain' in the broadest sense). That's what Barthelme does.