Colby said he thought drinks would be nice but was worried about the expense. Magnus said he’d see to having the invitations printed, and wondered whether we should serve drinks. Colby Williams.” A handsome script was selected from a catalogue and we picked a cream-colored paper. We decided to refer to the event as “An Event Involving Mr. We agreed that the invitations would be worded in such a way that the person invited could not know for sure what he was being invited to. I said that although hanging Colby was almost certainly against the law, we had a perfect moral right to do so because he was our friend, belonged to us in various important senses, and he had after all gone too far. What if one of them fell into the hands of the authorities? Hanging Colby was doubtless against the law, and if the authorities learned in advance what the plan was they would very likely come in and try to mess everything up. Hugh was worried about the wording of the invitations. It’s a perfect parody of white-collar, red-tape committee nonsense.Īnd that’s quite a trick on Barthelme’s part.
It’s brilliantly executed (pardon the pun) here, with the narrator and his crew stumbling over attempts at teamwork. So this is gonna be a little strange.īarthelme is so good at creating that feeling of the mundane weird. “And now he’d gone too far, so we decided to hang him.” Ah, OK. Making most of the story realistic and mundane except one for one detail: everything Some Of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby by Donald Barthelme, 1973
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