“When I was hired they showed me my desk, an old beat-up scarred wooden desk, and they told me that it had been O. Henry’s desk when O. Henry worked for the paper, as he had at one time. And I readily believed it. I could see the place where O. Henry had savagely stabbed the desk with his pen in pursuit of a slimy adjective just out of reach, and a kind of bashed-in-looking place where O. Henry had beaten his poor genius head on the desk in frustration over not being able to capture the noun leaping like a fawn just out of reach… So I sat down at the desk and I too began to chase those devils, the dancy nouns and come-hither adjectives, what joy.”

—  Donald Barthelme

“Return”, p. 55.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)

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Donald Barthelme 67
American writer, editor, and professor 1931–1989

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