Lightning by Donald Barthelme
"Lightning" by Donald Barthelme is a short story centered on Edward Connors, a freelance writer tasked with interviewing individuals who have experienced being struck by lightning. His assignment from the magazine Folks includes finding at least nine interviewees, one of whom must be "slightly wonderful." As Connors navigates his research, he reflects on his past career as a reporter and the transition to public relations, which ultimately led to his personal upheaval following his wife's departure.
Throughout the story, Connors interviews a diverse range of characters, each offering unique perspectives on how being struck by lightning has impacted their lives. The interviews reveal a mix of transformative experiences, from newfound serenity to unexpected life changes. One significant figure is Edwina Rawson, a young woman whose life was altered by the lightning strike, which has left her both physically and emotionally affected. Connors develops feelings for Edwina, and their interactions explore themes of connection, change, and the search for meaning.
The narrative juxtaposes these personal stories with larger societal themes, including a darker encounter with an individual who joins the American Nazi Party after his experience. Ultimately, Connors grapples with understanding the profound effects of lightning on people's lives, while his own feelings for Edwina complicate his quest for clarity in his article. The story concludes with a hint at the complexities of human experience that transcend simple explanations or outcomes.
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Lightning by Donald Barthelme
First published: 1982
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: The late twentieth century
Locale: New York City
Principal Characters:
Edward Connors , a freelance writerEdwina Rawson , a black fashion model, part-time student, and mother of a two-year-old boyPenfield , an editor ofFolks magazine
The Story
The protagonist of "Lightning," Edward Connors, is introduced as he begins to interview people who have been struck by lightning, an assignment given him by Penfield, an editor of Folks. He instructs Connors to interview at least nine people, including one "slightly wonderful" person to be featured in the article.
Connors begins his research by advertising in The Village Voice. From the many responses he learns that many people have great-grandfathers or great-grandmothers who were struck by lightning in 1910. (Variations on this factual detail, as on others, will recur later in the story.)
Before the interviews begin, the reader learns of Connors's past, especially his earlier jobs. He was "a reporter for ten years and a freelancer for five, with six years in between as a PR man for Topsy Oil in Midland-Odessa." As a reporter, he covered business news, so his moving on to public relations with an oil firm was a logical change (urged on him by his wife, for financial reasons). He had been "in love with his work" as a reporter. The PR job paid three times as much but was dull, so when his wife left him for a racquetball pro at a country club, he left Topsy Oil and Texas for New York City and freelance work: "To each assignment he brought a good brain, a good eye, a tenacious thoroughness, gusto."
The first man interviewed, Burch, reports that being struck by lightning was the best thing that ever happened to him. After the event he became a Jehovah's Witness, and he describes his life since then as "Serene. Truly serene." Connors is impressed. The next interviewee, a woman named MacGregor, reports that being struck led to "some important changes" in her life: She married the man she had been seeing and quit her job, which had necessitated tiring commuting.
Still seeking a feature subject for his article, Connors then arranges to interview Edwina Rawson. She is reluctant but consents, and she turns out to be young, black, lovely, and charming, "not only slightly wonderful but also mildly superb." The reader watches Connors fall in love with her. The reader also learns much about her life, including her two-year-old son Zachary and her departed husband Marty, who gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when she was struck by lightning. (She connects his ability to do so with "his cautious, be-prepared, white-folks' attitude toward life.")
Edwina is unsure about the effect of being struck by lightning. When Connors, who has fallen for her, asks if it changed her life, she says, "yes and no." It removed her eyebrows and "got rid of Marty," she says. Now she models to support Zachary and herself.
Hearing her story, Connors reacts unexpectedly. He thinks that the soul burns when struck by lightning, he connects lightning with music—"Lightning an attempt at music on the part of God?"—and he wishes that he had a song to sing to Edwina. Having none, he tells her odd facts about armadillos, facts more and more fanciful. Calling him "sentimental" and "crazy," Edwina goes to the movies with him.
The story shifts abruptly to Connors's next interviewee, a man named Stupple, who after being struck by lightning joined the American Nazi Party in Newark, New Jersey, and who passes on to Connors "pages of viciousness having to do with the Protocols of Zion and the alleged genetic inferiority of blacks."
Returning from that interview, turned down by Edwina for a dinner date, and "vexed by his inability to get a handle on the story," Connors talks to Penfield, the editor. He tells Penfield that he does not yet understand how being struck by lightning changes people. Penfield is not interested, but he is pleased to hear that Edwina is beautiful and will provide him with a good illustration for the cover of Folks.
The next day Connors interviews a Trappist monk in Piffard, New York, who received a Sony Walkman tape player from his community after he was struck and who listens to rock music on it. Connors is moved by the monk's happiness. Dining with Edwina and Zachary that night, Connors raises yet another question about the experience: "What effects the change . . . ?" Edwina is not interested, but she offers to give him a back rub. The last paragraph of the story summarizes Connors's interviews with five more people. One of them, dumb from birth, speaks perfect French after being struck. Connors's finished article is reported as containing a passage on the religious quality of the experience, which Penfield properly deleted, and as having devoted extra space to Edwina, who looked "approximately fantastic."
Bibliography
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Gordon, Lois. Donald Barthelme. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Hudgens, Michael Thomas. Donald Barthelme: Postmodernist American Writer. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. Donald Barthelme: An Exhibition. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991.
McCaffery, Larry. The Metafictional Muse: The Works of Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, and William H. Gass. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982.
Molesworth, Charles. Donald Barthelme's Fiction: The Ironist Saved from Drowning. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982.
Olsen, Lance, ed. Review of Contemporary Fiction 11 (Summer, 1991).
Patteson, Richard F., ed. Critical Essays on Donald Barthelme. New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.
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Waxman, Robert. "Apollo and Dionysus: Donald Barthelme's Dance of Life." Studies in Short Fiction 33 (Spring, 1996): 229-243.