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Lost in the Funhouse Author Biography

John Simmons Barth was born on May, 27, 1930, to John Jacob and Georgia Barth in Cambridge, Mary-land. After graduating from public high school in 1947, he enrolled in the prestigious Julliard School of music with dreams of becoming an arranger, or orchestrator. He soon shifted his interest, however, and enrolled in Johns Hopkins University in Balti-more and began his lifelong involvement with literature and writing. By the time he had received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins in 1951, he was married and the father of a daughter.

Barth continued at Johns Hopkins and received his M.A. in creative writing in 1952. After the birth of his second child, he was forced for financial reasons to discontinue his doctoral work and accept a teaching position at Pennsylvania State University. After his first novel, The Floating Opera, was nominated for the National Book Award, he was promoted to the rank...
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