John Simmons Barth was an American novelist and short-story writer, renowned for the postmodern and metafictional quality of his work. His narratives often explore the boundaries of storytelling, playfully disrupting conventions and engaging readers in a complex interplay of form and content. Barth delved into themes of authorial self-awareness, the nature of fiction itself, and the concept of literary exhaustion. His innovative approach to writing, masterfully balancing intellectual wordplay with compelling plotting, has left an indelible mark on contemporary literature.
Exploring themes of existentialism and the nature of thought, the narrative follows a character reintroduced from Barth's earlier work, delving into the intricacies of life, memory, and the passage of time. The story weaves a rich tapestry of introspection and philosophical musings, characteristic of Barth's unique style, while offering new insights and connections to his broader literary universe.
From one of our most celebrated masters, a touching, comic, deeply humane collection of linked stories about surprising developments in a gated community ?I find myself inclined to set down for whomever, before my memory goes kaput altogether, some account of our little community, in particular of what Margie and I consider to have been its most interesting hour: the summer of the Peeping Tom.” Something has disturbed the comfortably retired denizens of a pristine Florida-style gated community in Chesapeake Bay country. In the dawn of the new millennium and the evening of their lives, these empty nesters discover that their tidy enclave can be as colorful, shocking, and surreal as any of John Barth's fictional locales. From the high jinks of a toga party to marital infidelities, a baffling suicide pact, and the sudden, apocalyptic destruction of the short-lived development, Barth brings mordant humor and compassion to the lives of characters we all know well. From ?one of the most prodigally gifted comic novelists writing in English today” (Newsweek), The Development is John Barth at his most accessible and sympathetic best.
A National Book Award winner offers his most inventive novel to date. Journalist Simon Behler finds himself in the house of Sinbad the Sailor after being washed ashore during a sea-going adventure. Over the course of six evenings, the two take turns recounting their voyages in a brilliantly entertaining weave of stories within stories. "Filled with white nights and golden days . . . lyrical, fresh and sprightly."--Washington Post.
Considered by critics to be Barth's masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business & to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates & Indians; the loss of his father's estate to roguish impostors; love for a farmer prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he's almost determined to protect; & an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. A hilarious, bawdy tribute to all the most insidious human vices, The Sot-Weed Factor has lasting relevance for all readers.
The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama. Together they illustrate the beginnings of an illustrious career.
Proving himself yet again a master of every form, Barth conquers in his latest the ruminative short essay—“jeux d’esprits,” as Barth describes them. These mostly one-page tidbits pay homage to Barth’s literary influences while retaining his trademark self-consciousness and willingness to play.
As they cruise around Chesapeake Bay aboard their sailboat, Peter Sagamore and his very pregnant wife, Katherine, reveal the stories of their past and present.
Set in 2045, a newspaper columnist embarks on a perilous assignment to investigate Northland, a segregated city in the U.S. with a "White Christians Only" policy. Tasked with uncovering its secrets, David Cohen navigates the complexities of a society that has evaded the law to maintain its exclusivity. As he interviews the city's inhabitants and leaders, he grapples with his growing feelings for his assistant, Connie, all while racing against time to gather evidence that could expose Northland's true agenda.
Exploring the themes of heroism, sex, and death, a trio of novellas includes "Tell Me," about a young undergraduate's initiation into the mysteries of love, life, and the heroic cycle.
A landmark of postmodern American fiction, Letters is (as the subtitle genially informs us) "an old time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls & dreamers each of which imagines himself factual." Seven characters (including the Author himself) exchange a novel's worth of letters during a 7-month period in 1969, a time of revolution that recalls the U.S.'s first revolution in the 18th century - the heyday of the epistolary novel. Recapitulating American history as well as the plots of his first six novels, Barth's seventh novel is a witty and profound exploration of the nature of revolution and renewal, rebellion and reenactment, at both the private and public levels. It is also an ingenious meditation on the genre of the novel itself, recycling an older form to explore new directions, new possibilities for the novel.
