my objective has been to attempt to assimilate as well as I can the twentieth century aspects of my medium, to invent some myself, and, at the same time ... to preserve the appeal that narrative has always had to the imagination: the simple appeals of suspense, of
story, with which I've been in love since the beginning.
John Simmons Barth, Jr., was born 27 May 1930 in Cambridge, Maryland, to John Jacob Barth and Georgia Simmons. He was born with a twin sister named Jill. The Barth family was deeply rooted in this rural southern corner of the Old Line State. Barth's grandfather, a stone-carver by trade, also dealt in real estate, selling marshland to his fellow German immigrants. The boy's father, known as "Whitey," was the proprietor of a combination candy store/restaurant. In addition, he was chief judge of the Orphan's Court in Cambridge, a small port on the Choptank River.
Barth's childhood and adolescence in Cambridge were quiet and uneventful. John Jacob Barth saw no early evidence of literary genius in his son: "This talent must have come later," he commented in 1966, "I didn't notice it when he was younger." Barth's twin sister had similar recollections; she remembered her brother as "more serious than outgoing" and recalled that "he got a lot of things without trying very hard at school." Barth's older brother, William, echoed his father and sister: "Looking back I'd never have expected him to be a writer."
Barth attended Cambridge High School where he played the drums in the band and wrote a column for the school paper under the name "Ashcan Pete." His freshman English teacher remembered that "He had depth of understanding of human nature for someone that age.
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