I was introduced to Donald Barthelme in college, in a writing workshop with the novelist Robert Cohen. We read “City of Churches” and “The School,” and for a week or so afterwards, I walked around in alternating states of elation and depression. On the one hand, after what seemed (at the time) like a long lifetime full of reading, I had suddenly found something I had never seen before. These stories seemed like magic; they tugged on the throat and stomach, while also being funny, while also arching a brow, by which I mean to say they were (and are) my perfect emotional cocktail. On the other hand, I despaired, because obviously I was never going to be a writer, because obviously I could never do what Barthleme had done, holy shit, how had he done this, I had better throw in the towel now!
While I would eventually read most of Barthelme’s stories, “City of Churches” and “The School” are still my favorites. And also “Rebecca,” which I would find later. “Rebecca” is incredible. You need “Rebecca” in your life. Go now, to “Rebecca.” I say all of this up front as a way of admitting something you and I both know anyway: that literary taste is subjective, and related to one’s experiences, particular proclivities, and personal interests, and that no one short story can actually be deemed by any reliable metric to be objectively the Best. I understand this fully. Still: this story is the best short story. I say this because I know it to be true. You may have your own best short story. But here is why “The School” is mine.
“The School” was originally published in The New Yorker on June 17, 1974. It is very brief, just over 1,200 words, which is rare for a story this affecting, but not particularly rare for Barthelme. The format is instantly recognizable: it’s an escalation story. If you’ve been in an introductory workshop (certainly one taught by me) you’ve heard of those. Something bad happens; something worse happens; something even worse than that happens next. This is also the format of many jokes. In his essay “Rise, Baby, Rise!“, George Saunders places it “roughly in a lineage of ‘pattern stories,'” including Chekhov’s “The Darling,” Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” and “A Christmas Carol.” In this case the thing that happens—the pattern—is that things at the narrator’s school die.