House Style

I think about Donald Barthelme’s story “Florence Green is 81” a lot—about twice a week, due to New York City’s parking regulations. The line “I begin to drive my tiny car in idiot circles in the street” aptly describes the indignity of moving a vehicle for street cleaning. The story’s narrator is a dinner guest of Florence Green, the rich and dotty hostess who nods off at the table, jolting awake to remind the party that she’d like to go away, that her upstairs bathroom leaks. “Florence I have decided is evading the life-issue,” observes the narrator. “She is proposing herself as more unhappy than she really is. She has in mind making herself more interesting. She is afraid of boring us. She is trying to establish her uniqueness. She does not really want to go away.”