The Modern Novel

Biography

For a long time, John Barth was the post-modernism poster boy. He messed around with history in The Sot-Weed Factor, he messed around with computers and sci-fi in Giles Goat-Boy or the Revised New Syllabus, he messed around with the epistolary novel and conspiracy theories in LETTERS, he messed around on the Chesapeake in Sabbatical: A Romance but, most of all, he messed around with myth and story-telling and the novel-seen-from-the professor’s-point-of-view. All of this garnered him great praise and fame and learned articles in learned journals. Yet now, he suddenly seems less relevant. His literary games are, well, just that, games. Lost in the Funhouse, which academics seem to see as the pinnacle of his work, is absolutely unreadable. Giles Goat-Boy or the Revised New Syllabus, fun though it is, is almost as dated as his earlier works. His later works are entirely self-indulgent – humorous, pleasant reading but essentially lightweight. Critisd on Barth, have given high praise to LETTERS and, I must say, I am in full agreement with them on this. While many of the big novels of the 60s and 70s are looking decidedly cumbersome, LETTERS remains not just a big novel but a fun big novel. If it’s fun you want, Barth’s pastiche of the 18th century novel and early America – The Sot-Weed Factor – is even more fun. So, forget the pomo poster boy act and just read these two because they are fun.

Barth was born in 1930 in Cambridge, Maryland, where some of his novels are set. He has a twin sister, Jill, and the theme of twins appears in his novels now and again. Most of his career has been spent as a teacher of literature, primarily at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he did his undergraduate degree (in journalism). He died in 2024.

Other links

John Barth
John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barth
Featured Author: John Barth (from the New York Times – reviews of most of his books and articles by Barth)
The Literature of Exhaustion
Virtuality By John Barth
Of Words and Water Literature and the Bay (on literature and the Chesapeake Bay; mentions Barth)
Proguing Through Literary Waters John Barth Reads from Unpublished Novel
Interview
Click (story by Barth)