The Phantom of the Opera's Friend

Any friend of the Phantom of the Opera is a friend of mine.

People may have different reactions reading Donald Barthelme's "The Phantom of the Opera's Friend" (the story is linked below). 

Some may say, "Gee, I didn't even know he had any friends." Such people show little aptitude for language arts and should perhaps consider a career in property management.

Others may reach for highbrow books of literary criticism to brush up on terms such as postmodern deconstruction and structural irony–how Barthelme (here) turns a classic gothic horror tale into a riff on contemporary angst (the story was first published in 1970); how he downshifts the Phantom from villainous fiend to a just another guy in need of better meds; how he dismisses any notion of bloodcurdling climax; or how he gives us a monster just one good cosmetic surgeon away from normal life.

Why, Barthelme himself even interrupts the story with a trademark metafictional interlude, where Gaston Leroux, the original author, grows tired of his horror tale and puts it away to start a new novel instead. "I can always work on The Phantom of the Opera later," he says, "in the fall, perhaps." Even the romance of writing is reduced to something as bourgeois as banking.

I mean, the approach works. One could write an essay on any one of these themes, score an easy A-minus, and, who knows, go from there to graduate school, and a respectable career writing book reviews for Goodreads.

I prefer reading Barthelme without asking what it is he's "trying to say". He puts things in the blender, pushes the button, and makes bewitching smoothies. Can you taste banana in it? Yes. But is it about a banana? No. It's not about anything. It's a smoothie. (For the record, pastiche and literary collage are the favored descriptions of Barthelme's technique, but why mix metaphors?)

I don't remember the first Barthelme story I ever read, but whatever it was, I was hooked. He seemed suitably amused, tickled by the absurd, tiptoeing through the tullips of heartbreak. I read him for his sentences. Even when I don't understand exactly what's going on, I relish reading the sentences. They're musical. They're like steams of bubbles. I can read them over and over again, gleefully, a fresh pop of delight every time.

"The Phantom of the Opera's Friend" is about the friend's frustration trying to coax the Phantom back to the real world ("He must decide whether to risk life aboveground or to remain forever in hiding, in the cellars of the Opera"). The Phantom is first indecisive, then agrees, and in the end stands the friend up. 

This suggests another possible reaction, the reaction of those who can relate. These readers, like the Phantom, may also have infrequent accents of joy issuing from beneath their 'masks'. They, too, may feel cowed by the towering presence of practical affairs. They may even agree that remaining forever in hiding across the dark lake might not sound so bad after all. And when the Phantom's friend asks, "Is one man entitled to fix himself at the center of a cosmos of hatred, and remain there?" such a reader might put his hand to his chin and say, "Hmm..."

To these readers, I can only suggest that they go to the end of the story, take a seat on the curb next to the Phantom's friend outside the Opera, and relax. Relax "until the hot meat of romance is cooled by the dull gravy of common sense once more."

As promised, here's a link to the story: "The Phantom of the Opera's Friend"