Word: montezuma
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Both chronologically and geographically, the cases she will consider are widespread: the Trojan decision to knock down their walls to admit the wooden horse. Montezuma's refusal to send his vast armies against Cortes. Napoleon's fated invasion of Russia, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the American involvement in Vietnam...
...else could it respond to a nation whose chief executive once toasted Mexico's President with a reference to Montezuma's revenge? A country whose leader once billed his energy program as the "moral equivalent of war"--only to realize later that his phrase formed the acronym "meow"? Jimmy Carter could very easily wind up alongside the Franklin Pierces, Millard Fill mores and Herbert Hoovers who dwell uncelebrated in the sewers of history...
There is no arguing about this message, or about Barthelme's delivery. After all these years of rehearsal, he ought to have his act together. "Cortés and Montezuma are walking, down by the docks. Little green flies fill the air. Corées and Montezuma are holding hands; from time to time one of them disengages a hand to brush away a fly." No byline is needed; the spooky confluence of matter-of-fact observation (those green flies) and dreamlike lunacy (the handholding strollers) identify the paragraph as Barthelme...
...unmistakable, however, is often to be predictable. Barthelme seems to stage the same kind of illusion every time he writes. No, he does not write about Cortés and Montezuma in every story; in fact, he is not writing about them in the sketch quoted above. There is in fact no subject matter to his pieces. Characters and situations are used the way a hypnotist employs a pocket watch swinging at the end of a chain. It is the hypnosis that is important, not the swing of the watch. A short piece called The Party begins, "I went...
...Montezuma's Revenge...