John Barth (Author of The Sot-Weed Factor)

John Barth鈥檚 Followers (751)

John Barth

Born

in Cambridge, Maryland, The United States

May 27, 1930

Died

April 02, 2024

Website

Genre

Literary Fiction, Literary Criticism

Influences

Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Miguel de Cervantes, ...more

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John Barth briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, received a bachelor of arts in 1951 and composed The Shirt of Nessus , a thesis for a Magister Artium in 1952.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, John Barth briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, received a bachelor of arts in 1951 and composed The Shirt of Nessus , a thesis for a Magister Artium in 1952.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, distractions, stories, and lists, such as two prostitutes, who exchange lengthy insulting terms. The disillusioned fictional Ebenezer Cooke, repeatedly described as an innocent "poet and virgin" like Candide, sets out a heroic epic and ends up a biting satire.
He moved in 1965 to State University of New York at Buffalo. He visited as professor at Boston University in 1972. He served as professor from 1973 at Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1995.
The conceit of the university as universe based Giles Goat-Boy , a next speculative fiction of Barth comparable size. A half-goat discovers his humanity as a savior in a story, presented as a computer tape, given to Barth, who denies his work. In the course, Giles carries out all the tasks that Joseph Campbell prescribed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Barth meanwhile in the book kept a list of the tasks, taped to his wall.
The even more metafictional Lost in the Funhouse , the short story collection, and Chimera , the novella collection, than their two predecessors foreground the process and present achievements, such as seven nested quotations. In Letters , Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.
Barth meanwhile also pondered and discussed the theoretical problems of fiction, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion," first printed in the Atlantic in 1967, widely considered a statement of "the death of the novel" (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1979) a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment," to clarify the point.
Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterisation and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling. ...more

Combine Editions
John Barth鈥檚 books

Average rating: 3.88 · 32,609 ratings · 2,768 reviews · 59 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	The Sot-Weed Factor 4.11 avg rating — 7,555 ratings — published 1960 — 91 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Lost in the Funhouse 3.68 avg rating — 6,563 ratings — published 1968 — 55 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Floating Opera 3.87 avg rating — 2,991 ratings — published 1956 — 31 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Floating Opera / The End of the Road 4.04 avg rating — 2,156 ratings — published 1958 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Giles Goat-Boy 3.75 avg rating — 2,215 ratings — published 1966 — 50 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chimera 3.72 avg rating — 2,230 ratings — published 1972 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The End of the Road 3.83 avg rating — 2,122 ratings — published 1958 — 83 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor 3.88 avg rating — 687 ratings — published 1990 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tidewater Tales 4.02 avg rating — 454 ratings — published 1987 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Development: Nine Stories 3.47 avg rating — 430 ratings — published 2008 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by John Barth (?)

“In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.”
― John Barth

102 likes

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”
― John Barth

79 likes

“Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.”
― John Barth

tags: artist, creativity

52 likes

See all John Barth's quotes »

Polls

2019 3rd Quarter Long Read Poll

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie 1981, 647 pages

99 votes, 34.7%

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 1008, 1183 pages

59 votes, 20.7%

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne 1759, 735 pages

48 votes, 16.8%

Romola by George Eliot 1863, 831 pages

38 votes, 13.3%

Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor 1944, 972 pages

29 votes, 10.2%

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth 1960, 756 pages

12 votes, 4.2%

285 total votes

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