"DONALD BARTHELME: ...I was trying to make fiction that was like certain kinds of modern painting. You know, tending toward the abstract. But it’s really very dicey in fiction, because if you get too abstract it just looks like fog, for example. JO BRANS: Words, after all, have referents. They mean something—colors don’t. BARTHELME: Not in the same way. So, the project is next to impossible, which is what makes it interesting. There’s nothing so beautiful as having a very difficult problem. It gives purpose to life. And to work. I’m still worrying with it."
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“Interview with Jo Brans”, p. 298
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Not-Knowing%3A_The_Essays_and_Interviews_of_Donald_Barthelme
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Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme
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