A Shower of Gold by Donald Barthelme
"A Shower of Gold" is a short story by Donald Barthelme that explores themes of absurdity, alienation, and the search for identity in contemporary society. The protagonist, Peterson, is a struggling minor artist whose welded sculptures are not selling. In a desperate attempt to gain attention and funds, he becomes a contestant on a television game show called "Who Am I?" The show, which is characterized by its probing into the futility of modern life, becomes a backdrop for Peterson's existential dilemmas and absurd encounters.
Throughout the narrative, Peterson grapples with feelings of disillusionment as he experiences strange and surreal events, including interactions with a character resembling the President and a bizarre cat-piano player. These encounters force him to confront the absurdity of his existence and the pressures of societal expectations. Ultimately, Peterson’s journey leads him to a moment of self-affirmation, where he acknowledges the absurdity of life but also suggests that there are possibilities for renewal and optimism, encouraging both himself and the audience to seek meaning beyond the confines of television reality. The story serves as a commentary on the absurdities of life and the human condition, inviting readers to reflect on their own experiences of identity and existence.
On this Page
A Shower of Gold by Donald Barthelme
First published: 1962
Type of plot: Antistory
Time of work: The 1960's
Locale: New York City
Principal Characters:
Peterson , a sculptorMiss Arbor , a television game-show employeeJean-Claude , the dealer for Peterson's sculpturesKitchen , Peterson's barber and a self-styled philosopherThe President , Peterson's buddy
The Story
Desperate for cash, Peterson, a self-declared minor artist whose welded sculptures are not selling, signs on as a contestant for the television game show Who Am I? The title of the program is apt, for its producers purport to entertain their audience with probes into the futility, alienation, anonymity, and despair of modern life. Interviewing with Miss Arbor to become a Who Am I? contestant, Peterson counters her dedication to absurdity with his own doubts that absurdity even exists. When Miss Arbor asks if he encounters his own existence as gratuitous, he replies that he has an enlarged liver. This exchange confirms Peterson's dilemma: In Miss Arbor's words, Peterson may not be interested in absurdity, but absurdity is interested in Peterson.
As if in punishment for his disbelief, absurd things begin to happen. Peterson visits the gallery where he has consigned his sculptures for sale. His dealer, Jean-Claude, tries to convince him that his works would sell better if they were cut into smaller pieces. Peterson refuses, and the source of his swollen liver is identified as the rage and hatred he feels when he sees that not one of his works is displayed.
Peterson returns to his loft, drinks beer (apparently a second source of his liver complaint), and ponders money and the President. He is running out of money to buy beer for himself and milk for his kitten. Even worse, he feels he may be letting his buddy, the President, down by selling himself to television.
He begins to weld a new sculpture titled Season's Greetings from three old auto radiators and a discarded telephone switchboard. Suddenly, the door bursts open and the President rushes in, swinging a sixteen-pound sledge hammer. He sets to work on Season's Greetings, breaking it in half. Peterson protests, dejected that his friend, the President, would act against him in such a way. For his trouble, he is bitten on the neck by a Secret Service agent. The President then says, "Your liver is diseased. That's a good sign. You're making progress. You're thinking."
Peterson later discusses his disillusionment with Kitchen, his barber. Kitchen responds with a quote from Blaise Pascal: "The natural misfortune of our mortal and feeble condition is so wretched that when we consider it closely, nothing can console us." Kitchen then warns that Who Am I? really does a job on its contestants.
That night, a tall, foreign-looking man armed with a switchblade arrives at Peterson's loft and identifies himself as a cat-piano player. He describes the instrument as a keyboard of eight cats—the octave—encased in a cabinet so that only the cats' heads, tails, and paws protrude. Pulling tails and pressing paws produces various notes from the cats. Peterson's kitten weeps, and the hideous music begins.
The next day, Sherry, Ann, and Louise, three California girls in blue jeans and heavy sweaters, appear at Peterson's loft. They move in over Peterson's protests, and repeat Kitchen's depressing quote from Pascal.
Peterson views all these absurdities as punishment for even thinking about going on Who Am I? and begs Miss Arbor to replace him, to no avail. On the program, two other contestants answer questions about their lives and are rebuked by the audience when a polygraph reveals them to be liars and fools. Peterson, unwilling to accept humiliation at the hands of the media, mounts an offensive as his best defense: "I was wrong, Peterson thought, the world is absurd. The absurdity is punishing me for not believing in it. I affirm the absurdity. On the other hand, absurdity is itself absurd." He then speaks to the cameras, adding to the list of absurdities that have nipped at his heels in recent days. Then he asserts: "In this kind of world, absurd if you will, possibilities nevertheless proliferate and escalate around us and there are opportunities for beginning again. . . . My mother was a royal virgin and my father a shower of gold." His declares that his youth was noble and rich, and that such nobility may be recaptured, both by himself and by his viewers, if only they will turn off their television sets, cash in their life insurance policies, and indulge in mindless optimism.
Bibliography
Barthelme, Helen Moore. Donald Barthelme: The Genesis of a Cool Sound. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001.
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.
Roe, Barbara L. Donald Barthelme: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1992.
Stengel, Wayne B. The Shape of Art in the Short Stories of Donald Barthelme. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.
Trachtenberg, Stanley. Understanding Donald Barthelme. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990.
Waxman, Robert. "Apollo and Dionysus: Donald Barthelme's Dance of Life." Studies in Short Fiction 33 (Spring, 1996): 229-243.