{"id":30371,"date":"2024-08-12T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T12:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30371"},"modified":"2026-05-09T12:19:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T16:19:56","slug":"donald-barthelme-chablis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2024\/08\/12\/donald-barthelme-chablis\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Barthelme: “Chablis”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Chablis”<\/strong><\/span>
by Donald Barthelme<\/span>
from the August 19, 2024 issue of The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s this? A “new” story from Donald Barthelme? I thought this might be a week where we get some recently uncovered and formerly unpublished story from a legend (Barthelme died in 1989), but it turns out that is not the case. Rarely does The New Yorker<\/em> do this, but they are reprinting a story: they originally published “Chablis” in the December 12, 1983 issue. I can’t see where they explain this decision. The only time I can recall them doing this was when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize and they reprinted “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” When John Updike died there was a week when there was no fiction but where they published a number of his poems. I’m not against them publishing something from the archive, though. I myself went back to their archive to read and then post on<\/a> Barthelme’s “Affection,” which was originally published in the November 7, 1983 issue (lots of Barthelme at that time of year, it seems — he had also published “Sakrete” in September and “Kissing the President” in July of 1983).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read “Chablis” quickly (it’s less than three columns in the magazine), and Barthelme’s writing is direct, so the story reads easily, though the story itself is not so direct. Here is how the story begins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have it. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girls are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” the baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma Momma Momma.” I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps a blessing to be with this narrator for only a few columns, huh? I don’t know just what to make of the story itself, though I will read it again because it was interesting and well done. But who is this narrator, really? What is he concerned about? “What is wrong with me? Why am I not a more natural person, like my wife wants me to be?” he wonders, and he makes me wonder as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please feel free to share your thoughts below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s New Yorker fiction is Donald Barthelme’s “Chablis.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[185,94],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-donald-barthelme","category-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/August-19-2024-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7TR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30371"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31154,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30371\/revisions\/31154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30371"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}