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John Barth, novelist who orchestrated literary fantasies, dies at 93
Hat tip, hüskerdont, at ARLnow
John Barth, novelist who orchestrated literary fantasies, dies at 93
His comic novels and metafictional stories made him a giant of postmodernism
By Harrison Smith
April 2, 2024 at 9:53 p.m. EDT
Novelist John Barth. (Corbis via Getty Images) (Peter Jones/Corbis via Getty Images)
John Barth, a novelist who crafted labyrinthine, fantastical tales that were at once bawdy and philosophical, placing him on the cutting edge of the postmodern literary movement, died April 2. He was 93. ... His death was announced in a statement by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he was a longtime faculty member. The statement did not say where or how he died.
Mr. Barth was the author of about 20 books, among them the short-story collection “Lost in the Funhouse” (1968), a landmark of experimental fiction, and the comic novels “The Sot-Weed Factor” (1960) and “Giles Goat-Boy” (1966).
The former was included on Time magazine’s 2010 list of the 100 greatest English-language novels, and in 1973 Mr. Barth won a National Book Award for “Chimera,” a collection of three interrelated novellas that retold the mythical stories of Perseus, Bellerophon and Scheherazade. (Mr. Barth, not for the last time, appeared as a character in the work, making a cameo as a smiling genie who offers Scheherazade, or “Sherry,” fresh material for the stories she tells each night.)
{snip}
Despite such acclaim, Mr. Barth’s books were sometimes criticized by peers as academic, pretentious and willfully obtuse. Where novelist John Updike offered praise, favorably comparing the marital dramas of “Chimera” to his own work about domestic discontent, writer Gore Vidal offered a scathing assessment: Mr. Barth’s books, he said, were “written to be taught, not to be read.”
{snip}
By Harrison Smith
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago. Twitter https://twitter.com/harrisondsmith
His comic novels and metafictional stories made him a giant of postmodernism
By Harrison Smith
April 2, 2024 at 9:53 p.m. EDT
Novelist John Barth. (Corbis via Getty Images) (Peter Jones/Corbis via Getty Images)
John Barth, a novelist who crafted labyrinthine, fantastical tales that were at once bawdy and philosophical, placing him on the cutting edge of the postmodern literary movement, died April 2. He was 93. ... His death was announced in a statement by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he was a longtime faculty member. The statement did not say where or how he died.
Mr. Barth was the author of about 20 books, among them the short-story collection “Lost in the Funhouse” (1968), a landmark of experimental fiction, and the comic novels “The Sot-Weed Factor” (1960) and “Giles Goat-Boy” (1966).
The former was included on Time magazine’s 2010 list of the 100 greatest English-language novels, and in 1973 Mr. Barth won a National Book Award for “Chimera,” a collection of three interrelated novellas that retold the mythical stories of Perseus, Bellerophon and Scheherazade. (Mr. Barth, not for the last time, appeared as a character in the work, making a cameo as a smiling genie who offers Scheherazade, or “Sherry,” fresh material for the stories she tells each night.)
{snip}
Despite such acclaim, Mr. Barth’s books were sometimes criticized by peers as academic, pretentious and willfully obtuse. Where novelist John Updike offered praise, favorably comparing the marital dramas of “Chimera” to his own work about domestic discontent, writer Gore Vidal offered a scathing assessment: Mr. Barth’s books, he said, were “written to be taught, not to be read.”
{snip}
By Harrison Smith
Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post's obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions. He sometimes covers the living as well, and previously co-founded the South Side Weekly, a community newspaper in Chicago. Twitter https://twitter.com/harrisondsmith
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Opinion | With John Barth’s death, the Chesapeake has lost its poet
(Getty Images)
By Christopher Tilghman
April 14, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Christopher Tilghman is a writer who lives part-time on the Eastern Shore. His new novel is “On the Tobacco Coast.”
When John Barth, son of Cambridge, Md., and the Eastern Shore, died April 2 at age 93, the American literary scene lost a dazzling stylist, a provocative theorist, a beloved teacher and a most generous yet humble mentor to any writer who had the good luck to cross his path. Something less noticed was also gone: The Chesapeake Bay had lost its poet.
Although best known as a postmodernist — I once asked Jack what the word “postmodern” meant and he answered without irony that he had no idea — it’s worth recalling that his earliest works, “The Floating Opera” and “The Sot-Weed Factor,” are novels of the Eastern Shore. “The Floating Opera” is a mordant and slightly hysterical tale of a Cambridge lawyer planning to commit suicide by blowing up — with himself onboard — a showboat moored in the Choptank River; in “The Sot-Weed Factor,” we get Jack’s wild take on the 17th century colony through the adventures of Ebenezer Cooke, the sot-weed factor — which is to say, the tobacco broker — of the title.
Jack’s subsequent work took off from there into the funhouse of narrative invention, but in his novels he returned to the bay again and again, usually on a sailboat, a sort of grounding, if that’s the right word, for his imagination. In “The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor,” for example, tales of Scheherazade and Sinbad the Sailor share space with a couple on a sailboat cruising the Chesapeake.
{snip}
(Getty Images)
By Christopher Tilghman
April 14, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Christopher Tilghman is a writer who lives part-time on the Eastern Shore. His new novel is “On the Tobacco Coast.”
When John Barth, son of Cambridge, Md., and the Eastern Shore, died April 2 at age 93, the American literary scene lost a dazzling stylist, a provocative theorist, a beloved teacher and a most generous yet humble mentor to any writer who had the good luck to cross his path. Something less noticed was also gone: The Chesapeake Bay had lost its poet.
Although best known as a postmodernist — I once asked Jack what the word “postmodern” meant and he answered without irony that he had no idea — it’s worth recalling that his earliest works, “The Floating Opera” and “The Sot-Weed Factor,” are novels of the Eastern Shore. “The Floating Opera” is a mordant and slightly hysterical tale of a Cambridge lawyer planning to commit suicide by blowing up — with himself onboard — a showboat moored in the Choptank River; in “The Sot-Weed Factor,” we get Jack’s wild take on the 17th century colony through the adventures of Ebenezer Cooke, the sot-weed factor — which is to say, the tobacco broker — of the title.
Jack’s subsequent work took off from there into the funhouse of narrative invention, but in his novels he returned to the bay again and again, usually on a sailboat, a sort of grounding, if that’s the right word, for his imagination. In “The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor,” for example, tales of Scheherazade and Sinbad the Sailor share space with a couple on a sailboat cruising the Chesapeake.
{snip}