Rangoon

Front cover

Rangoon is a book written by Frederick Barthelme and illustrated by Mayo Thompson, published in 1970 by Winter House Ltd.

Background

• Followed by War and War

Contents

	Title	pg.	Notes
1.	North American homes	0-10
2.	OPO: more girl	11-21
3.	Regular everything	22-35	illustrations only
4.	Mr. and Mrs. Frank Future	36-43
5.	But...	44-51
6.	01. Metasensorialism and extralogic (For J. K.)	52-53
7.	A short decade of emotions	54-65
8.	The Richard Widmark nets	66-73
9.	The chair	74-91	photos only
10.	On the availability of proof, circa 1967	92-103
11.	Plu and future perfect	104-116
12.	The patrolman's signature	117-121
13.	Bark, arf	122-127
14.	Gregory Park	128-145	illustrations only
15.	Theories of universe	146-155
16.	Monitor / Rotinom	156-158
17.	Some plumbing	159-165
18.	90°	166-173
19.	Peru / Babs	174-179
20.	Great ideas in modern geography: Making things plural: Hotels and motels: optional positivism: Hollywood paneling: Innocent citizens: How to enter tents: Bill normal: Recalling the composition of blacktop: Braless in Gaza: Defensible infants: Air: Indignite dialectique: The New Jersey stories: Rootage: The Orate Fratres and the secret bone	180-189
21.	Sport-mated	190-194

Editions

• 
  Title page
• 
  pg.168

Hardcover

• 
  Dust jacket
• 
  Hardcover

Paperback

• 
  Front

Retrospectives

Frederick Barthelme, 2004

My first two books, Rangoon and War & War, came out of the world of visual art. I liked the "book" as a container. I was interested in Daniel Spoerri's Anecdoted Topography of Chance (since renamed, I believe). My first two are hard to read now, in part because my literary interests were minimal, in part because they're often clumsily written and adolescent and in part because plastic art ideas didn't translate very comfortably to the literary form. In defense of these books, I can say that a lot of people have done the same things a lot better since.

Reviews

Houston Chronicle

August 30, 1970

The Barthelmes, Houston's Own Hardy Boys

[...] Frederick Barthelme, is 27, an artist and the author of a just-published book of short fiction pieces, "Rangoon." (Winter House $7.95). [...]

[...] His first book, "Rangoon," is the first book to be published by Winter House, a publishing company formed by Laurence Dent and his wife. Dent says that "Rangoon" is a modernization of Joyce, Camus and Stein. According to Frederick Barthelme, its central thesis is "the thunderous acceptability of the human lack of condition."

Prairie Schooner

Spring 1972

Rangoon, by Frederick Barthelme with illustrations by Mayo Thompson (Winter House Ltd.), is a relatively expensive ($7.95) put-on that, in its best moments, approaches Mad Magazine at its worst. The written text ranges from unentertaining short fictions to a half-page outline on logical and extralogical reasoning. Interspersed with the written text are three solid black leaves, a group of blurry photos of inconsequential scenes, and some popart drawings that are sometimes related to the text and sometimes interesting. I resent this book not because it is a put-on (to suggest that it is the author's best would be too insulting), but because it is not even a clever put-on.

Library Journal

1970s

Dorothy Nyren

Rangoon is a miscellany of surrealistic short fiction, drawings, and photographs whose themes seem to be the banality of America and an acceptance of the intrusions of technology into daily life. Some blank black pages in the middle are restful. There's one blurred picture of Brooklyn Bridge that's sort of poetic. As for the stories, well, probably one isn't supposed to read them; they are more turn-the-page found objects. The book itself is an example of the intrusion of technology, its banality too banal. For the library that wants everything.

Minimalism and morality: The achievement of Frederick Barthelme

2003

John Calvin Hughes

Barthelme's first two books were Rangoon (1970) and War and War (1971). Both were metafictional texts, very different in form and content from the work for which Barthelme is widely known. Rangoon is a series of short stories with illustrations by Mayo Thompson. The book, taken as a whole, including its cover and title page, is a self-conscious attempt to parody the idea of a book. The cover is a version of the black-and-white generic products that were once popular in grocery stores. The title pages (actually two facing pages) is a blurry photograph of some downtown area with the superimposition of the words "RANGOON1938." The stories are absurdist, though not really self-conscious. The book is 195 pages and contains 17 "stories" and numerous drawings and photographs, as well as two solid black pages. A reviewer for Library Journal wrote that the stories in Rangoon "probably [are not] supposed to be read; they are more turn-the-page found objects", and this is true. The stories are nearly unreadable, often pointless (if sometimes humorous) non sequiturs that challenge and disrupt the traditional short story and readers' expectations. For example, the first story is titled "North American homes." The story opens with the first person narrator walking in the woods in Florida when a woman leaps out of a bush and lands on her back before him. With some difficulty, he picks her up, leans her against a tree, and rubs ointment on her face, neck, and back. He thinks she likes it, and he decides to take her home with him. Carrying her over his shoulder, he realizes her skirt is riding up, and he wishes he had a mirror. At home, he puts her upstairs. He reflects upon his good luck in Florida, for nowhere else could he have found such a submissive girl lying on the ground for him to pick up. He is proud to live in Florida where important people come from other places to do their work, including a fat man who is planning a giant sweatshirt for the city square. The seemingly pointless non sequiturs continue throughout this story and throughout the entire book.

"North American homes" is not a story in the usual sense. There is complication, but no resolution. Indeed, every sentence in the story is yet another complication in that each new sentence confounds the reader's expectations of linear plot. In that sense, the story is a parody of the idea of complication and resolution. On the one hand, the story seems to ask for interpretation: some clever reader might suggest that the allusion to Fred Hoyle points to forces unseen in the story, that the lack of linear plot is actually a result of influences on characters and events by forces outside the readers' ken. Hoyle's physical theories have not been widely accepted: he is thinking outside the contemporary paradigm of physics, in the same way that writers of metafiction attempt to shift the paradigm of fiction. The way the characters in the story act may be a clue to posit some as yet unseen fictional force at work on them, as Hoyle uses the slowed rotation of the sun to claim the existence of forces he cannot yet identify. Max Planck's work with quantum mechanics proposes that on the level of the subatomic cause and effect and traditional logic break down, as indeed they seem to in "North American homes." But, on the other hand, the story also seems to suggest that, given the fictional nature of stories, anything can happen, no matter how absurd, how unrelated, how illogical, and that, therefore, the story does not have to mean, but be. And that is the rub: interpretation of literary texts, "readings," depend upon an article of faith, an understanding upon the part of the critic that what is written is done so in good faith. The whiff of a suggestion that the text is a "put-on" renders interpretation absurd.