John Barth Summary

John Barth has taken what he considers the moribund genre of the traditional novel and has revived it with a series of imaginative and inventive "fictions." Barth writes, "If I were a painter, I would... Read more

Critical Essay by John Hawkes [Barth's] awareness of the right word and manipulations of "voice" are brilliant and sometimes devastating. Barth's wit—his word-play,... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert Martin Adams The sequence in [Lost in the Funhouse] leads us from the meditations of a sperm through the boyhood adventures of Ambrose to the mythical life history of an anon... Read more

Critical Essay by Josephine Hendin John Barth has seen art as the world "elsewhere," the better world where nothing disappears. Letters is his billet doux to literature and his plea to ... Read more

Critical Essay by Joe Weixlmann and Sher Weixlmann [Barth's aesthetic] embodies a conscious attempt to go beyond Joyce—by going backwards. Like the protagonist of his "Perseid,&#... Read more

Critical Essay by Geoffrey Wolff [John Barth's] first novel since Giles Goat-Boy (1966) is, as publishers like to say, an event. Letters … is a big event, almost half a million words, 8... Read more

Critical Essay by Frank Mcconnell [In Letters, the] subplots, counterplots, and crossplots … exfoliate maddeningly and impinge even more maddeningly upon one another. Its language ranges from ... Read more

Critical Essay by Charles Trueheart Whether or not we are ever so rewarded, most of us believe we deserve a sabbatical, a time outside the scheme of our lives to rest and ruminate, to reckon how far ... Read more

Critical Essay by Michael Wood "We'll have to stick to the channel," John Barth wrote in his first novel, "The Floating Opera," and let the creeks and coves go by.&... Read more

Critical Essay by Charlotte Renner Asked by the editors of the New York Times Book Review … to explain how he became a writer, John Barth gave a surprising answer. "It is my fate and eq... Read more

Critical Essay by Doug Bolling In the no man's land of contemporary fiction, Barth has always been a willing occupier of the trenches, a writer concerned both to advance and defend, and this p... Read more