Barthelme's Time Machine

Hilmar Örn Óskarsson Bókmenntir og myndlist

Time Machine
A Look at Barthelme’s “Sentence”

A brief glance at Barthelme’s “Sentence” might lead one to the conclusion that the story is simple and pure non-sense; completely devoid of all meaning and value in every respect. With such a glance one might even go so far as to call it gibberish – a total waste of the writer’s time and resources and then most definetely a waste of mine. However, a deeper and closer examination would without a doubt lead one to an entirely diffirent, more rewarding conclusion – there are in fact (at least) two highly important “factors of sense” to be found in Barthelme’s “Sentence.” One concerns the deceptive nature of literature as such and the other, to put it as simply as possible, tackles a question of time. I will discuss both of these here – however, for reasons soon to be known, my main emphasis is going to be on that second factor regardin...