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Customer Reviews (10)

One great story and a bunch of pointless fluff
Barth presents a collection of interrelated short stories about a gated community for the affluent elderly on Maryland's Eastern Shore.The best entry is "Toga Party" a very intense and thought-provoking tale of grief and loss and fear.Unfortunately, the rest of this collection is pretty weak.The opening "Peeping Tom" sets a light-hearted tone that the rest of the book doesn't maintain."Teardown", along with a number of other meta-fictional ramblings with multiple choice endings, is ultimately pointless.If a story doesn't have an ending, then what is it, really?There was a time we called such writers "Local Colorists" but that day is long past.And if there's anything more meaningful in this collection, this reviewer missed it.

It seems like Barth wrote that one really great short story and then decided to make a novel out of it, so he added a lot of fluff to fill out the rest of the book.His readers deserve better.Add half a star if you're dealing with Old Age issues in your own life.Or, if you can find "Toga Party" elsewhere, this book can be dispensed with altogether.

Hope I Die Before I Get Old
Don't read this book if you are depressed about getting older :).
Interwoven stories set on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where most of Barth's stories are set. Most concern various stages of aging, dealing with aging, along with Barth's surreal touches ("self-consuming metafiction").
Actually, I think this is one of the better of Barth's more recent books.

Sparkling Stories
Imaginative stories that focus on a demographic that doesn't get much airtime: Aging residents of a gated community on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The fact that most of the characters are over 60 delights readers who might not be aware that seasoned adults have rich and varied histories behind them, plump with events and philosophies and experiences. Barth deftly explores life, death, growing old, being in love, and looking back on the good and bad things that life brings to all of us.

I'm usually a fan of science fiction and of stories with things blowing up and people getting into gunfights, etc. "The Development" contains stories more or less about me and my husband and the life we have shared with all of its ups and downs. Every story rang true but had its own quirky twist that appealed to my appreciation of odd things.

Boring Barth ?!?
It beggars belief that John Barth could write a boring book.What's the line about all happy lives being happy in the same way, and not the stuff of literature?"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."The people in this book are all well off, essentially rich, retired people, mostly couples, with nothing to do except keep themselves amused with their money and their possessions.It's about as vacuous as it gets.The book is on a par with Norman Rockwell's paintings: tiptoeing along the edge of cloying cutsiness, and sometimes going over the line.This book would never have gone anywhere if it hadn't been written by someone known to sell; in that respect it's closer to the color-swath paintings made by deKooning in his senility.This is a sad end for the writer of The Sot-Weed Factor and The Floating Opera.

Sleeper Hit
This well-crafted collection of stories surrounding a suburban development is worth a close read. Barth's language is compelling and literary, but easy to digest. The narrative echoes the tone of "The Ice Storm." It's a joy to see the pieces fit together. ... Read more

Product Description
Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction.  Though many of the stories gathered here were published separately, there are several themes common to them all, giving them new meaning in the context of this collection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

I write therefore I am...
In his introduction to this collection of tales, John Barth warns that writing shorting stories isn't his strong suit; he'd rather write novels. Well, I thought, you don't have to read the goat entrails to see this isn't an auspicious augur since *reading* short stories isn't my mine; I prefer novels. Could it be worse? As writer and reader we were perfectly matched: that is, perfectly wrong for each other. What a surprise then! Turns out either writer and/or reader were both happily mistaken and/or correct yet fortuitously found the slim exception to the rule. *Lost in the Funhouse* is a remarkable book--a stunning sampling of erudition, wit, originality, and linguistic pyrotechnics of such deft complexity I dare you not to get lost at least half a dozen times and I double-dare you not to laugh out loud at least as many.

Be forewarned: these aren't the O Henry!type short stories of your grandpappy's day--the kind with clear-cut beginnings, waistlines, and back ends. They aren't cluttered with all those moth-ridden, mold-covered boxes of conceptual costumes from the prehistory of narrative: stuff like character, conflict, setting, dramatic progression, etc. If you're looking for Hemingway or Steinbeck, read Hemingway or Steinbeck. There are characters in Barth's fiction--"voices" properly speaking--but who are they, who are you, who is the author? There is a setting--but exactly where is it, where is anything, are we only *just* imagining it all? There is a story, of sorts--but it'sfractured, inconsistent, starts somewhere, progresses a while and could end, like life, like this sentence, at any time, anywhere.

The subjects of these stories are as wildly unlikely as the method of their telling, including: a sperm's journey; Menelaus and Helen after the Trojan War; a young boy's surrealistic experience in a decrepit funhouse by the shore. The stories are linked, so says their author, but only in the most oblique of ways, so says this reader. But it's not important--they each stand alone, linked most obviously by Barth's main concern: the difficulty--if not the sheer impossibility--of telling a simple story at all, of getting at the truth, or the fiction.

Many will be perplexed beyond all patience with *Lost in the Funhouse,* others will dismiss it as self-conscious postmodern prattle, but those who keep going through this maze of distorting mirrors, secret passages, creepy terrors, and ribald comedy will find themselves passing themselves in opposite directions, mystified, charmed, and not a little disconcerted. Barth tells a complex story by *not* telling a story better than most writers tell a story. He clearly knows his way around the conventions and uses them to illustrate how utterly inadequate the conventions are to describing our experience. Barth doesn't bring you to the end or even back to the beginning; he brings you back to the middle which is where you showed up in the first place, exactly where you were when you first realized you were lost.

You can't reader yourself out of this funhouse no more than Barth could write himself out of it and it's at that point you can begin to relax and enjoy the goofy, cheesy horror of it all.

the way we tell stories

Taken both separately and as an arranged series, these 14 stories explore the relationships between narrative, life, knowledge, creation, self and being. Like much of Barth's work, these texts wrestle with the profound implication that insight into the way we narrativize experience, into the way we make and tell stories, can actually help us understand how we perceive and live life. Deeply existential, yet also inventive and playful, Lost in the Funhouse twists and turns the established folds of form and meaning, trying to tease out something new. Where the stories succeed, they shimmer brilliantly.

In a few instances, however, the book sinks a little too far into post-modern self-referentiality, with stories about their own conception, about their own futility. While these concepts are intriguing, and Barth's examinations lively, several pages worth is often too much. Especially at first reading, such stories seem not only bewildering but also boorish, even annoying. Part of the problem is perhaps simply that such ideas are no longer new. But it's also true that some of the stories are rather obscure, so much so that the book now includes Barth's "Seven Additional Author's Notes," for needed clarification.

The stories in this slim volume, many of which are post-modern or metafictional experiments, seem inevitable, even necessary. Eventually someone was going to have to write them, and no one is perhaps more capable of exploring narrative and form in this way than John Barth. Some of the stories drag and feel a little tedious, which the reader should be prepared for, but overall, this is a challenging, rewarding and expansive book. Lost in the funhouse, indeed...

Confusing, Hilarious, Profound
Lost in the Funhouse can be a very bewildering and irritating collection if you aren't in the right mood for it.If you aren't well-versed in post-modern fiction (barthelme, calvino, etc are good reference points) you might want to start somewhere else first.Even Barth's novels are more immediately digestible.

With that said, though, this collection doesn't really operate on one consistent level.Perhaps this is because many of these stories were written by Barth much earlier in his career.The three stories concerning Ambrose's birth and development are very straightforward and enjoyable on a surface level until the whole series goes flying into left-field with the titular "Lost in the Funhouse" story (which Barth is probably most known for).From that point on, most of the stories are more about the process of writing and the relationship between the reader, writer, and the characters.Stories like "Title" and "Life-Story" work more as essays on the nature of fiction than actual works of fiction, and were (for me at least) a little tedious.The best moments occur when Barth combines his thoughful analysis on the nature of writing and art with a really good ground-situation, typically based on Greek mythology.The best of these are the utterly raunchy "Petitition" and the labyrinthine "Menelaiad".

Taken as a whole, though, Lost in the Funhouse is greatly satisfying, even if (like me) you really only understood about 20% of what Barth was talking about on your first read-through.It's the sort of book I'll go back to again and again to try and delve deeper into the mystery of the funhouse while appreciating all over the hilarious bawdy humor.

Oh, and make sure to read Barth's seven additional notes at the front of the book (though maybe only after you've read the story that is being discussed in each note, so as not to ruin the initial experience)-- they really help to clarify some of Barth's intentions.I can't even imagine appreciating a story like "Glossolalia" without having read the note concerning it.

Maybe not as bad as I originally thought
I reviewed this book in 1999, calling it "Self-Serving Drivel."I recently went back to re-read it, hoping that I had been naive and dumb at the time and that Barth's stories would improve with the reader's experience.No such luck.It's still self-serving drivel.

Maybe at the time it was published this brand of metafiction was revolutionary, but it has not held up well over the intevening years.Some modern metafiction has revealed important, enduring truths about the problems of reading and writing, but Barth's convoluted first steps into the genre read as needlessly complicated tellings of very simple stories.

His prose style is certainly unique and evocative, and some of his stories are amazingly inventive ("Ambrose His Mark" most notably) but as a whole this collection comes off very badly.When he launches off into syntax-less prose poetry he reveals all of his style's weaknesses in exchange for no noticeable strengths.All in all, not very good.

Stretching short stories
I will admit that there are plenty of classic masterpiece quality short stories out there, collections or otherwise.I'm just not an avid reader of them . . . maybe I just like big hefty books, maybe I don't like switching gears every twenty pages or so . . . who knows?But I do like Barth and this is pretty short so I figured, what the hey?Unlike most short story collections which generally just wait until an author has enough stories to fill a book before publishing, this book was originally conceived as a group of short stories that in some form or another share the same thematic elements and much like an album, is sequenced into a proper order and should be read that way.So he says.Barth admits in the foreword that he doesn't normally write short stories and this was his attempt at playing with the medium, which as you might suspect gives you all kinds of hit or miss stories . . . generally the quality is pretty high and for such an academic guy, Barth's pretty funny (he can respect and make fun of mythology at the same time without seeming smug or arch, which I think is hard to do) and if the humor's on, then for the most part that can carry the nuttier moments.Basically it's a "post-modern" sort of short story collection, so there aren't many compromises to things like form or structure or plot (one story is essentially a Moebius strip) which has the effect of making some stories feel like little more than academic exercises in form, rendering them a bit distant emotionally.Like looking at abstract art I guess, you can admire the technique even as you can't appreciate the emotion behind it.But when the collection works, it works great.The title story is my personal favorite, but the last one is the best of the mythology based ones (parts of this seem like a runthrough for Chimera) and overall if you're not looking for Joycean slice of life tales or knotted little tales of suspense, but instead an attempt to bend the rules a bit, then you'll probably like this.Not Barth's best work but it's short and the gems outweigh the duds by a good margin, so it could be worse. ... Read more

Product Description
This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece.  This modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting...to roam the world since Candide" (Time ). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

To the Greater Glory of Barth

The Sot-Weed Factor is Barth's attempt to mockingly simulate the so-called picaresque novel of the 18th century. There are several problems with the book. First, the books, he mocks such as Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Shamela (Penguin Classics) are far better than The Sot-Weed Factor. Barth's book is otiose, self-indulgent, and absurdly long. The reader gets the joke, and then gets again and again from Barth ad nauseam. The reader becomes stupefied and at some point Barth's self-indulgence becomes actively stupid. I read the book once in college and thought I'd give it a try again several decades later. (It is interesting to note that several reviewers recall what a wonderful book this was when they read it 40 years ago and rank it highly without having revisited it pages.) It could have been a very good book had someone - an editor? - limited Barth to about 250 pages instead of the 768 pages in the Anchor edition. No author ought to imagine they are beyond need of a good editor and no publisher should let them get away with it - both happened here. Take a pass and read the originals or, if you must, give Barth about 250 pages of your time and then move on to something else.

The Sot-Weed Factor-John Barth
In my mind there's no doubt 'The Sot-Weed Factor' is a work of genius. It is a pseudo-historical novel which could be read as a straight historical novel. The intricacies of politicalintrigue in 17th century Maryland form the framework on which the tale is built. I confess that the details of these plots and counter-plots became so involved in the course of the book that at a few places in the narrative I gave up trying to keep that aspect of the story straight.

The thing that fascinated me and kept me reading this 800-plus page book to the end was the clever manner in which this fictionalized account of the life of Ebenezer Cooke illustrates a metamorphosis from innocence to knowledge. Ebenezer begins his odyssey as a would-be poet of meager talent. He is full of high ideals about art as well as a high opinion of himself as a poet, and assumes that the world in general should conform itself to those ideals. In essence his innocence is composed of ignorance and arrogance.

As might be expected, the world conspires to deflower the stubbornly virginal poet of his innocence. Ebenezer proves to be one of the most steadfast champions of his own ignorance I have ever seen chronicled, so much so that he seems to be a universal embodiment of the type. During Ebenezer's many colorful escapades-sometimes humorous, sometimes life-threatening, sometimes both simultaneously-I found myself cringing with a vicarious embarrassment that he was such a perpetual doofus.

Actually, I began to think, as the tale progressed and Ebenezer persisted in his assumptions and preconceived ideas, that there is a good deal of Ebenezer in many of us. Perhaps the sustained and relentless portrayal of Ebenezer's follies triggers an insight of our own deficiencies. Perhaps. But I think there is also the danger that Ebenezer's monumental obtuseness might engender a glib sense of superiority in some. As I see it, the book calls for a broader view. Ebenezer's character reminds me much of Don Quixote, but 'The Sot-Weed Factor' is both bawdier and more philosophical than that book.

Ebenezer was more fortunate than most of us in one respect, in that he had a mentor who cared enough about him to try to save him from the disasters brought forth by his illusions, as well as to try and relieve him of his unfortunate innocence. The mercurial Henry Burlingame, though a benefactor, was also a shadowy, ambiguous character whose worldly knowledge and amoral philosophy inspired ever more trepidation in Ebenezer as he realized the extent of the conflict between his idealism and what he saw as Burlingame's diabolism.

During the course of Ebenezer's re-education by the world, we as readers are exposed to a heavy barrage of cynicism by Mr. Barth concerning the true nature of our forefathers in America, particularly their moral values. The book is unremittingly ribald, sometimes viciously so. It is also irreverent and will no doubt clash with the cherished ideals of many. But it can't be denied that it is also extremely witty, sometimes very funny, and has a tremendous amount of learning behind it.

too many torn pages
still reading, and the further i get into the book the more i find tears at the bottom of the pages. just 1/2 in. or so, but too many. also some staining on some of the pages.
would be a fair value if not for the defects, but they make it a poor purchase.

comic masterwork.
I've read a few of Barth's books and this one stands
out for sheer entertainment value and laughs.I think
Barth has an original satirical mind but you might
not agree.

The book is long - and I'm a little averse to long novels.
I dislike getting into a book and discovering that
I'm far from finishing and not enjoying it much - yet
still feeling somehow committed.I did not have this
problem with The Sot-Weed Factor.

Even right now I am reading an 800 page novel by one of
our great American writers... I'm halfway through it
and wondering if anything interesting is going to happen,
contemplating shelving the book and the writer can keep
his secrets!

You might find this book pompous and self-indulgent.I
didn't think on that too much.I just found it funny.

I've read a lot of less-entertaining and less thought-
provoking books.Chances are if you have a permissive,
indulgent sense of humor you'll get a kick out of this
one.

Tiresome and self-indulgent
Barth surely had great fun writing this book, but it is far too long and self-indulgent with all sorts of behind-the-hand snickering at the author's tricks and wiles.Not recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
The Floating Opera and The End of the Road are John Barth's first to novels. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on human emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Men areattracted to the bon mot, not the mot juste
In THE FLOATING OPERA the main character's name is Todd Andrews.The focus is on a day, June 21, 1937.Todd is 54 years old and six feet tall.The Floating Opera is the name of a showboat.Jane Mack is Todd's mistress.Harrison Mack, her husband, is Todd's excellent friend.The hero has a weak heart and as a consequence rents a room at his hotel by the day.The author describes a breakfast of Maryland beaten biscuits, doublers, Cambridge, and the Choptank River.As a boy Andrews labored on a dinghy when he wanted a schooner.In 1935 the narrator began building his second boat, systematically.Miss Clara Malloy is described as the Mary Pickford of the Chesapeake.She is part of the show Andrews sees.On the enumerated date Andrews is to commit suicide, but then changes his mind.

The main character of THE END OF THE ROAD is Jacob Horner.He seeks to obtain a position at a teachers college located on the Eastern Shore.He moves from Baltimore to Wicomico, deciding to reside there whether or not he is hired.He finds, to his surprise, a really perfect room to rent.He arrives at his interview 24 hours early.It had been rescheduled because one member of the panel was with the Boy Scouts at Camp Rodney.The recorded music he owns is all Mozart except for a manic Russian piece, Gliere.Both novels recount a single man's friendship with a married couple.The people are special, the kinds found in universities.They live their lives in programatic fashion. There is a willed quality to their marital existence.Jacob is being treated in a kind of therapy to make him conscious of his existence to overcome paralysis.He is afraid of violence and experiences self-contempt because he has been a deceiver.There is a pregnancy and tragedy ensues.

Both novels are entertaining and accomplished.Each is filled with the lure and the lore of Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Barth 101 & 102: An Introduction to the Master
John Barth's first novel will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary of publication in 2006 Should this almost 50 year-old book, whose protagonist was born in 1900, still be read in the 21st century, by people who may not have even been alive when Barth wrote it? Emphatically, positively, yes!

The Floating Opera serves as an excellent introduction to the body of work of one of the 20th century's greatest writers (time will tell), and also stands on its own as an engrossing, amusing, thought-provoking tale. It establishes many of Barth's common themes and settings: the flawed, cynical (yet also fun-loving) protagonist; impossible quests; the absurdities of society's structures and laws; philosophy and morality; coastal Maryland and boating on the Chesapeake. Barth's later works are longer and much more intricate, so TFO is very much like Beethoven's first symphony: a simpler work than his later masterpieces, but which still shows definite signs of genius, originality, and timelessness.

The storyline, like Barth's other works, is quirky and highly original. It describes the lead-up to an event that, because of the way the book was written (in the first person), the reader knows cannot have taken place. Barth openly explains the disjointed nature of the book's structure (which is just one way that the floating opera of the title is important to the story), and everything holds together in the end.

TFO's protagonist, Todd Andrews, is a lawyer who has developed a detached, cynical view of the world. His mentality is perfect for his profession, and he wins his cases by crafting intricate technical loopholes that reduce his cases to absurdities. Thirty-five years before the Johnnie Cochran's poetic words in the O.J. Simpson trial, Barth prophetically describes a similar situation of the "bon mot" winning out over the "mot juste". But this is just one of the amusing vignettes in TFO. Barth also describes the challenges of an open love triangle, different ways to approach old age and death, the drawbacks of various outlooks on life, and an intense father-son relationship. Comic relief is never too far away, especially when the various crusty old men in the book are speaking.

"The End of the Road" shares a central plot element (a love triangle) with "The Floating Opera", but in TEOTR the relationship is about as far from consensual as can be, and as a result TEOTR is a very different, even more powerful story.Barth crams a lot of substance into TEOTR, and it succeeds on multiple levels: as a compelling story with much for the reader to ponder, as a political statement (John Irving appears to me to have been inspired by the ending of TEOTR in his acclaimed "Cider House Rules"), and as applied philosophy, with religious undertones.

"In a sense, I am Jacob Horner," states Jacob Horner, the Barthian hero/anti-hero of TEOTR, at the very beginning of the story, but who is Jacob Horner (or whom does he represent)?Jacob Horner may represent the ultimate modern man, a person who rejects objective, absolute truths in favor of relativism, and who is so imbued with knowledge that he can see all sides of any argument, contradiction or paradox.At times Horner is completely paralyzed from acting, and at almost all other times his actions are timid to the extreme, such that he relies on "the Doctor", who prescribes nonsensical therapies to get Horner to take action, any action.Horner's thought process has many parallels in today's society, especially leaders who can't make up their minds and waffle on the issues.Horner suggests he may be the devil, but his logical thought process (his ability to see and accept opposite qualities in others, as in a love/hate relationship) suggests the "shades of gray", fuzzy logic thinking prevalent at all levels of modern society.

Joe Morgan, Horner's colleague, also believes only in relative values, and has even more formal education than Horner, but he has devised a philosophy which he believes tells him how to act in all situations.Morgan, whom Horner suggests may be God, is the "black and white" thinker in contrast to Horner's gray, but his philosophy has holes that become obvious to all but him at the end.

TEOTR, while not Barth's greatest work, is everything a great piece of literature should be.Barth creates fascinating characters drawn from the fabric of modern society, puts them through episodes of high drama, and produces outcomes that provide the fodder for debate about just what it all means.

One of the great American comic novels--with a twist!!
I discovered this book by happy accident more years ago than I like to remember, but I read it once about every six months and EVERY TIME I find a new pun or joke that I hadn't noticed before. Incidentally, the start-and-stop narrative style isn't as influenced by Joyce as it is by the novel Epitaph of a Small Winner by Joachim Machado de Assis, which is out of print...Also, check out The Sot-Weed Factor by Barth, which is absolutely one of the greatest, funniest and deepest novels ever written by an
American! Read ALL his books--they're fantastic!!!

The Satire of a Genius
...John Barth is, without a doubt, a brilliant, witty, creative and original writer.Sometimes he is just toobrilliant and original for most of the book buying public.Happily, this isn't the case with his first two books, The Floating Opera and The End of the Road.

Both The Floating Opera and The End of the Road concern love triangles of sorts, but each is developed in quite a different manner.While The Floating Opera is funny and rather light, The End of the Road is black comedy of the highest order, and in my opinion at least, it is the far superior book.I think it showcases Barth's genius in marvelous ways, with characterization and dialogue being two of the best.In both books, however, Barth is so dead-on with his artifice and eccentricity that we have to laugh at our own recognition of ourselves, reflected in his twisted characters and their strange goings-on.

In both books, Barth's characters seem to be searching for something, though what they are searching for is not made exactly clear.It could be good vs. evil, love vs. hate, war vs. peace, yet ultimately, after each character becomes ensnared in a mesh of confusion and confabulation from which he or she seems unable to extricate himself, the search is narrowed to the simple meaning of existence (or non-existence as the case may be).There are no absolutes in either book, making them all the more confusing for some, but all the more enjoyable for others.

Barth, himself, seems to be an author whose message is simple--the world is going straight to hell and we are going with it, so why not have a laugh on ourselves now and then?There really isn't much else to do.

I am afraid this review has not done The Floating Opera and The End of the Road justice, but how does an ordinary reader do justice to genius such as Barth's?I recommend all intelligent readers to buy this book, read it, enjoy it, savor it.Laugh at yourself as you laugh at Barth's characters.Just sit back and enjoy the ride.After all, there isn't much else to do.

Two takes on the same grim story
Of these two novels I believe The End of the Road is the superior. Shorter and with a clearer narrative thrust, Barth manages to achieve a real classical tragedy using only the common material of immature domesticconflict. More 'serious writing' has gone into The Floating Opera but theemotional impact is blunted, one suspects, because of that. Perhaps moreediting and rewriting and less demonstration of the 'writer's art' wouldhave made it as powerful a novel as The End of the Road.

The End of theRoad is one tough little book. It is a simple story that could have beenpure empty soap opera but instead manages to rise above its material andcarries quite a punch. Much more deserving of being read than most ofBarth's later work. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Barth Through and Through
Where Three Roads Meet will appeal to the most ardent Barth fans. If you love deconstructing a story more than reading one, you'll love this one. Actually, it's 3 stories, each more stripped of narrative structure than the last, and all meeting each other, of course. Barth is clearly having fun with the reader as much as he is with his characters. And his constants, of course--the Mid-Atlantic, college and academia, the middle class, the Cold War, etc.

More of a lit theory companion piece than anything else, Where Three Roads Meet has the author in command of a genre he himself has more or less created. Barth is like a magician performing old tricks with more dexterity than ever to a familiar audience. Full of puns, wordplay, and none-too-abstruse symbolism, the book strolls along with flirtatious self-analyzing flourishes and self-congratulatory élan.

The Return Of The Master
Few readers are indifferent to the works of John Barth. Most either love or hate them. For myself, I freely admit to being a Barth lover. The best of his books--"Chimera", "Giles Goat-Boy", "Lost In The Funhouse" and one or two others--are joys to read. True, he has let us down a bit lately, but in "Where 3 Roads Meet" the old master has come roaring back.

I will not try to describe the plot. The Publishers Weekly review (above) has has done that very nicely. I will say that the book is a Barthean mixture of puns, word-play, down-to-earth bawdiness and scholarly erudition that never failed to entertain even as it delved into such serious matters as the heroic cycle and the mysteries of story creation.

It isn't often that a serious literary work can also be good (sometimes not so clean) fun. But this book has pulled it off.

Barth surfaces with excellent mettle this time
John Barth inspires in me the classic kind of love-hate relationship.I have read every one of his books and berate him mercilessly when I think his efforts are misguided or redundant (_Sabbatical_, _Letters_, _The Book of Ten Nights and a Night_), but praise his best works and consider the best of his best among the annals that the future will look at when assessing the art of our present writing (_Chimera_, _The Sot-Weed Factor_, _The Tidewater Tales_, _Lost in the Funhouse_). He is on my suggested reading list for only the brightest of my students, and next to the writer whose name is an extension of his (Barthelme) will be known as one of those who not only changed the expectation of fiction, but extended our literary heritage in the best way, connecting us solidly to Homer and Twain while being truly contemporary.

This book is a harking back to the spirited Barth, the Barth who last reared his godhead in _The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor_, but had to subsist a while on a few middling efforts (_Once Upon a Time_, _On With the Story_ and _Coming Soon!_) until this latest go._Where Three Roads Meet_ is full of unapologetic bawd and classic pun-istry, but while his lukewarm efforts feel just that (style covering over an inadequate tale), this new book is back to digging into the art of storytelling and finding its latest incarnation, an incarnation that is fresh and new and reflecting on the impossibility of storytelling in the face of life.

At first glance, this may seem to be an attempt to recapture the glory days of _Chimera_, as that stunning book too was of three novellas, but while also Greekmythed in nature, _Where Three Roads Meet_ poses more modern characters than the mythical heroes retold in the earlier National Book Award winner.We meet a jazz trio in post-WWII collegiate life, three aged ex-prostitutes-cum-Fates, and a setting as SamuelBeckettian as Sammy ever cared to reveal, with a Muse, his Author and a Reader puttering along in the jalopy of Storytelling.The links are more thematic than forced, but this book makes for a fine read and worthy of being put on the shelf among his better works.
... Read more

Product Description
In this outrageously farcical adventure, hero  George Giles sets out to conquer the terrible  Wescac computer system that threatens to  destroy his community in this brilliant  "fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex" (Time). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Thumbs Down to Life
Wars are riots.The Nikolyan Revolution led to the rise of the Bonifacists.Enos Enoch gave the Seminar-on-the-Hill and threw the Business Administration concessionaires out of Founder's Hall.The Siegfrieders killed the Moishians (the Chosen Class).Giles must descend into the belly of WESCAC and change its "AIM" programming.He is the Grand Tutor, he thinks, as do some others.

A recurring concept and concern of this book is the question: does what Christ says indicate that the is the Christ or is whatever Christ says the truth because he is the Christ?In other words, is the yardstick a correct measure because it matches our concepts of inches and feet, or do we assign authority to the yardstick and follow its caprice?

I know many people find Barth great fun, and a lark, but to me he is not funny.His message is bleak and amounts to giving a thumbs down to life.

PASS this Farcical Epic!
I hardly know where to begin when reviewing Giles Goat-Boy.The book started out with a bang for this reader with the author's narrative of the goat boy and his behavior with the other goats.Barth seems to capture goat behavior to a "tee" and its not only interesting but downright hilarious at times (I seldom laugh out loud when reading but in this case it was a frequent occurrence).

Apparently based on the mythological adventure genre, Giles undertakes a journey to discover his origins and his purpose in life on a background of grand scale.The allusions to "University life" and its trappings and terminology are incredibly clever and amusing - for some reason I kept picturing UC Berkeley as I read it.

Gosh - the only way I could describe this book is a cross between Ayn Rand and Hunter S. Thompson with its mix of allegorical socio-political issues and outright chaos.At times I felt as if I were on an LSD trip.Many of the scenes are incredibly larger than life and the characters come alive; albeit very very strange characters!

I found the book started to lag a bit after about 500 pages or so but nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it.

A Review by Dr. Joseph Suglia
With his imposing fourth novel, Giles Goat-Boy: or, The Revised New Syllabus (1966), John Barth stopped writing stories and started writing stories-about-stories and stories-inside-of-stories. The "meta-fictional" dimensions of the novel are apparent from its first page onward. A "Publisher's Note" informs its readers that Giles Goat-Boy is rumored to have been generated by WESCAC, a super-computer that-as one learns later in the text-has "commenced a life of its own" [86] and taken over a mythical Super-University. According to the logic of Giles Goat-Boy, the horizons of the University are the horizons of the universe, the "microcosm" stands for the "macrocosm" (a conceit derived from Joseph Campbell); it stands to reason, then, that WESCAC, having completely taken over the universal University, would have produced the very text that we are reading. This clever "meta-fictional" device displaces the individual voice of the author, of course, but also reflects the sources that make its writing possible. If the author wanted to write a work that refers ceaselessly to the conditions of its production, he succeeded. A sprawling epic about mythological heroism in an age of all-consuming computerization, Giles Goat-Boy resembles the infinitely self-referring spreadsheet of a constantly self-renovating and self-activating linguistic super-computer.

Giles Goat-Boy is many things. It is a Bildungsroman that charts the gradual socialization of an individual subject. Raised by goats, messianic savage George Giles strives to become the new "Grand Tutor" of the University and reprogram WESCAC. In fact, it is George who is reprogrammed. Following the classical form of the Bildungsroman, the novel ends with the disappearance of the hero's identity insofar as he is absorbed into the computer's complex machinery. Deep within Axis Mundi, the belly of the computer, George submits to WESCAC his student identification card. In doing so, he loses his name and remerges as "The Founder." Like Wilhelm Meister, George's character is stamped by an external authority that grants him his socially reconstituted selfhood and, thereby, his validity.

Giles Goat-Boy is also a complex theological and political allegory. The University is a stage upon which various world-historical conflicts are dramatized and enacted. "The Quiet Riot" allegorizes the Cold War. The Campus Riots are the world wars. The Bonifascists represent the National Socialists; the Moishians represent the Jews. The West Campus represents the West; the East Campus represents the East in general and the Soviet Union in particular. WESCAC is the atomic bomb. "New Tammany College" represents America. Getting "flunked" is equivalent to damnation; passing is equivalent to salvation. The "Dean O'Flunks" refers to Satan; the "Old Founder" refers to Jehovah. Each of the oppositions mentioned above is dialectically synthesized at the novel's close.

Most importantly, however, Giles Goat-Boy is an extraordinarily elaborate practical joke. As with most postmodernist works, the reader doesn't quite know whether to take any of its meanings seriously, but suspects that one shouldn't. Allegory, for instance, is merely one of GGB's many language games. Perhaps one should take "J.B." at his word when he says-or is alleged to have said-that "language is the matter of his books, as much as anything else, and for that reason ought to be `splendrously musicked out'" [xvi]. Nonetheless, one of its reputed authors maintains that the book should not be dismissed as `a work of fiction': "Excepting a few `necessary basic artifices'" Stoker maintains, GGB is "neither fable nor fictionalized history, but literal truth" [xi]. This is also doubtful. "Literal truth" may not refer to a truth on the other side of language, but rather, a linguistic elaboration or fabrication of truth. "Literal truth," in this context, would be a truth that is composed of letters.

Giles Goat Boy is a world of veils and yet these veils do not mask deeper verities. As authoritative as it might appear, GGB abdicates its own presumptions of authority. The "Publisher's Disclaimer" disclaims-or, at least, problematizes-all of the book's claims. According to the "Disclaimer," the alleged author, "J.B." renounced his authorship. He claimed that he is merely the editor of the manuscript in question, which was tailored by one "Giles Stoker" or "Stoker Giles." The latter claimed, in turn, that he is the editor of the manuscript, which was manufactured by the automatic computer, WESCAC. The computer also renounces the book's authorship. GGB's authorship, it would seem, is infinitely regressive. No one wants to admit having written the thing.

Barth's future meta-narratives (Lost in the Funhouse, Chimera, Letters) will become increasingly more involuted, vine-like, and entangling, increasingly more extravagant, bombastic, and bloated, and increasingly more irritating, self-fascinated, and densely imbricated. Some readers, overwhelmed by Barth's verbiage, will bow to his self-indulgent pretentiousness. Others will remember, wistfully and nostalgically, Barthes' real masterpiece, The End of the Road-a sour and cruel novel, to be sure, but also an infinitely more powerful and engaging one than Giles Goat-Boy. Whereas The End of the Road comes about like the shock of a physical hammer-blow, reading Giles Goat-Boy is a bit like having one's mind EAT-en by an all-embracing cybernetic parasite.

Dr. Joseph Suglia

only up to a point
John Barth is as good a prose stylist as the US has produced, and this book shows it. In the first third or so of the book Barth makes the language cavort, caper, dance, sing. And it is very funny. But unfortunately the joke gets old fairly quickly. The allegory, amusing enough when its underlying conceits are introduced, gets stretched thinner and thinner, to the point where it finally gets agonizing. All through at least the second half of the book I was just waiting for it to end. On the whole, I found two of Barth's other novels, The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, much more rewarding reading, although the prose doesn't quite scintillate the way it does in the early pages of this book. Give it a try, but if at some point you find it getting a bit grating and wonder if it might get better, lay it aside and get something else to read, because it will only get worse.

Awakening the Graduate Within

Giles Goat Boy is prefaced by 25 pages of introduction, including a disclaimer of sorts by "The Editors," who seek to warn readers that the book they're about to begin is decidedly bawdy, disturbing, irreverent, flabbergasting and probably without literary merit. Though lengthy, these introductions are great fun, and only serve to entice and encourage the already adventurous reader. This is particularly important because the first 100 pages of the book are actually fairly uneventful, a long slow pastoral unfolding of the early episodes in the Goat Boy's life and world. Without the introduction's promises of the mischievous burlesque to come, I might not have kept reading. And that would have been a mistake.

The narrative finds its stride when our would-be hero embarks on his inevitable journey, and what had in the early pages been a somewhat awkward and anachronistic style becomes a mythic mode for masterful storytelling. Giles Goat Boy is allegorical epic in which the "the University" serves as a microcosm of the universe, and where "Graduation" or "Commencement" represents some notion of enlightenment, liberation, earthly salvation. Though colored by lively historical satire and heroic farce, the book's themes are ultimately existential, even spiritual.

Each of the principal characters seeks to "Graduate," to discover modes of perception and behavior that will enable them to transcend their narcissistic limitations and become fully self-actualized. Their bungling, over-analyzed attempts to untangle repressions and overcome obsessions makes up much of this baffling, hilarious, ribald and psychologically complex tale. The book often reflects the preoccupations of the decade when it was written, and Barth's approach is mostly intellectual. All the while, the pages are littered with surprising insights, delightful mishaps and a certain uncommon wisdom.

At its heart, Giles Goat Boy is a zany and uniquely engaging adventure story, one that's playfully aware of it's own symbolism, subtexts and archetypes. In fact Barth seems incapable of leaving any aspect unexamined, and the narrative does get a bit carried away with itself sometimes. In a 2001 Bookworm Interview, Barth admitted that the book is longer than he wishes it was. His undertaking is so provocative and ambitious, however, that like the struggles of its multifaceted characters, the book is remarkable in both its successes and its failures. A Plus!
... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
From the National Book Award Winner and author of The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor comes a novel about a middle-aged writer setting off on a voyage with a sole crewmate--his lover, friend, and wife. Reprint. NYT. PW. 15,000 first printing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A MEMORABLE STORY RELATED IN FLAWLESS PROSE

It begins with program notes, holds an overture, three acts, arias, and concludes with an episong.It is an opera of sorts - best of all, it is from supreme storyteller John Barth, National Book Award winner for "Chimera."

A sixty-some writer of fiction and his wife embark on a late season cruise on Chesapeake Bay.Suddenly a tropical storm hurls them into tidal marshes and our protagonist's past.In the mystic strata in which he now finds himself, our writer meets his twin sister and friend and "other self.," Jerome Schrieber, who takes him on a biographical sail re-exploring his life.

As always, Barth is a superb companion on any voyage, writing as only one of the most accomplished authors of his generation could.His mastery of technique and the written word make this a novel that is thoroughly enjoyed and will be long remembered.

- Gail Cooke

Like the tide, Barth's stories cleanse and refresh our life

I suppose it is inevitable that, as the post-war boomers approach the big six-zero over the next decade,we will see a tidal flood of tender, soul-searching narratives.Boomers want to understand rather than simply experience life,and most have been frustrated by life's refusal to obey our expectations.

John Barth seems to have made such soul searching his life work,and I seem to have followed him book for book, life experience by life experience over the years. A clever "academic" writer (read: "he writes like a dream but his wit sometimes overwhelms the story"),Barth has addressed boomer experience and frailty .

Seeming to be five to ten years ahead of boomers,his books have ranged from the tragedy resulting from a terribly botched abortion (long before we openly spoke of this horror),through the visionary and usually misguided quest of the idealist (Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goatboy),the terrible pain of realizing one is an adult (the clever but exhausting Letters),to more leisurely and accessible mid-life reassessment as protagonists take "voyages" on the emotional seascape of middle age (Sabbatical,Tidewater Tales,Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor,Once upon a Time...).

Each five years or so,I eagerly await his newest offering,devour it,and then feel frustrated when his literary games seem to detract from his story.

But,then,each time I realize (as if for the first time),the essential nature of his writing.Like the age-old games from which his writings spring (the quest/redemption stories of the Iliad and Oddessy,the "doomed" prophet stories of the Old and New Testaments,the mistaken identity games of Shakespeare and thousands of authors since,and the metaphor of story as voyage and voyage as growth from Chaucer,1001 Nights, etc),Barth plays his games to remind us that the act of story telling *is* the experience,it *is* the reason we read: the experience of hearing ghost stories around the camp fire remains with us long long after we have forgotten the actual story.

And then I remember that, as a reader,I have no more "right" to expect neatness and closure in a Barth story than I have the right to expect neatness and closure in my own life.Try as we might,our own work,our own story is always in progress.And like Barth's beloved Tidewater,the ebb and flow of our own story defies our attempt to capture to master it.

In the end,life and Barth's stories remain as delightfully cleansing as the tide itself.

KRHwww.umeais.maine.edu/~hayward ... Read more

Product Description
A landmark of postmodern American fiction, LETTERS is (as the subtitle genially informs us) "an old time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls & dreamers each of which imagines himself factual." Seven characters (including the Author himself) exchange a novel's worth of letters during a 7-month period in 1969, a time of revolution that recalls the U.S.'s first revolution in the 18th century--the heyday of the epistolary novel. Recapitulating American history as well as the plots of his first six novels, Barth's seventh novel is a witty and profound exploration of the nature of revolution and renewal, rebellion and reenactment, at both the private and public levels. It is also an ingenious meditation on the genre of the novel itself, recycling an older form to explore new directions, new possibilities for the novel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

It's chock-full of words
Letter writing is, for the most part, a lost art.In these days of e-mail and text messaging and instant messaging and cell phones, all communication has sped up to the point where we're just dashing off spurts of words to each other, dashing off the thoughts and leaving before we really have any time to ponder over what we wrote.This isn't a new thing, as technology has improved over the years, it's not necessary any more to put pen to paper to share your thoughts with someone.And yet, at the same time, it's fundamentally different than any other form of communication that we have.It's not so much the method as the process, the act of sitting there in front of the blank sheet of paper and organizing yourself, getting down everything you need to say and saying it just so, because you're not going to get an instant response.And then getting the response and poring over it, figuring out how to reply and add and expand.In this fast paced world, we don't really take the time anymore and being born after the heyday of letter writing (whenever that was, I know it's not now), I miss that.There's an intimacy to it that other forms don't have, that's different somehow.
John Barth, being a writer, understands that, and in this novel he brings back that art for a brief time, with fictional characters.Basically, he takes several people from his early novels and has them all starting to write to each other, and to him, their letters and experiences directing the plot.And what starts out as what could be a too-cute literary trick winds up being extremely revealing, as the characters pour themselves into the letters, regardless of whom they're writing to, as the plot skips and slips through time.On one level it acts as a sequel to those early novels, continuing their stories and although it's not really required to read those books, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't help.The best thing to do would be to read those old novels in one block and then move onto this . . . I read them some years ago so I was a little fuzzy on the finer points.But I picked it up.But Barth captures the voices of his old characters well and even if you didn't know who was writing what letter, you could tell.And thus they tell the recepient, and us, about their hopes and fears, they mingle together, they lie, they come unglued, and by the end you sort of get a tapestry of their thoughts.There's a plot weaving through here but sometimes it becomes hard to connect it with six different people discussing different angles of it with you, but I just went with it and enjoyed the writing for what it was.Some of the writers are better than others (Germaine's are uniformly good, Bray's are funny and nuts, especially how it keeps resetting, Andrews, written to his dead father, as strangely touching . . . only Burlingame's left me cold, with the long history lessons) and for the life of me I can't figure out why this book is seven hundred pages.But there's a definite sense of closure at the end and a further sense that there will be other letters, we just won't see them.Which Barth knows is true, that as dying as letter writing may be, no matter how communication changes, there will always be a place in this world for two people, separated by distance, to try and imbue a bit of themselves into a piece of paper, to soak themselves into the words and try to get that essence somehow across the gap.

One book you really got to work your way up to.
I never heard of any epistelary novels until I read this one.Imagine a book consisting of letters amongst the diverse characters from the author's other novels.Technically, we are advised, it is not essential to have read these other books in advance, but for all intents it would seem a moderately strong expectation.
It helps that the books that one must read, Barth's early masterpieces, are of such genius as to take up a whole corner of the best of modern literature showcase.And if you are lucky enough to have stumbled onto Letters after already working through all the rest, than you can bask in the glow of the misconception that you are amongst some lucky few whose devotion to the writer has earned unexpected reward.
For this is a truely stunning piece of work, more elaborate than Vlad's Pale Fire, and more satisfying than anything this side of Pynchon. At his best, Barth had few peers.

Like the tide, Barth's stories cleanse and refresh our life

I suppose it is inevitable that, as the post-war boomers approach the big six-zero over the next decade,we will see a tidal flood of tender, soul-searching narratives.Boomers want to understand rather than simply experience life,and most have been frustrated by life's refusal to obey our expectations.

John Barth seems to have made such soul searching his life work,and I seem to have followed him book for book, life experience by life experience over the years. A clever "academic" writer (read: "he writes like a dream but his wit sometimes overwhelms the story"),Barth has addressed boomer experience and frailty .

Seeming to be five to ten years ahead of boomers,his books have ranged from the tragedy resulting from a terribly botched abortion (long before we openly spoke of this horror),through the visionary and usually misguided quest of the idealist (Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goatboy),the terrible pain of realizing one is an adult (the clever but exhausting Letters),to more leisurely and accessible mid-life reassessment as protagonists take "voyages" on the emotional seascape of middle age (Sabbatical,Tidewater Tales,Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor,Once upon a Time...).

Each five years or so,I eagerly await his newest offering,devour it,and then feel frustrated when his literary games seem to detract from his story.

But,then,each time I realize (as if for the first time),the essential nature of his writing.Like the age-old games from which his writings spring (the quest/redemption stories of the Iliad and Oddessy,the "doomed" prophet stories of the Old and New Testaments,the mistaken identity games of Shakespeare and thousands of authors since,and the metaphor of story as voyage and voyage as growth from Chaucer,1001 Nights, etc),Barth plays his games to remind us that the act of story telling *is* the experience,it *is* the reason we read: the experience of hearing ghost stories around the camp fire remains with us long long after we have forgotten the actual story.

And then I remember that, as a reader,I have no more "right" to expect neatness and closure in a Barth story than I have the right to expect neatness and closure in my own life.Try as we might,our own work,our own story is always in progress.And like Barth's beloved Tidewater,the ebb and flow of our own story defies our attempt to capture to master it.

In the end,life and Barth's stories remain as delightfully cleansing as the tide itself.

KRHwww.umeais.maine.edu/~hayward ... Read more

Product Description
This acclaimed collection of interwoven tales marks John Barth's first return to the short story form in nearly thirty years -- and resoundingly reaffirms his status as "the reigning master of postmodernist fiction" (Kirkus Reviews). A middle-aged couple, vacationing at their "last resort", swap a series of twelve bedtime stories. Counting down toward a revelatory finale, these elegant tales -- which touch on the idea of love and the love of ideas, quantum physics and physical pleasures, running jokes and running out of time -- offer a playful, provocative, and emotionally resonant excursion through life and art.Amazon.com Review
John Barth has the paradoxical ability to turn literature on its headin a post-modern sense at the same time he employs a tour-de-force oftraditional literary devices. In On with the Story, he tells a storywithin a story within a collection of short stories. To wit, an affluent andsophisticated retirement age couple is on vacation when the woman receivesterrible news about her husband. Is he dying of cancer? Or is that anotherstory? Have they faced death or have they not? With Barth, only the reader cansay for sure, having engaged in an experience as unique as it is fascinating. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Barthward my review
In an era when men try hard to understand the popular prose of nuclear physicists, here is a book of stories that women can barth on. Whereas most authors have a thesaurus of words, Barth has a thesaurus of thoughts, which he uses ad nauseam, like he's trying to enact Heisenberg's uncertainty theory. Can't leave a sentence alone for the life of him. A real collection of string theories, he actually seems to know what the word ontological means. But it doesn't help in the least. Barthward to barthwords. Promising at first sight, (I was never a fan, actually chucked "Sot-Weed Factor" out the door of a Huey when I was in Nam--my contribution to spreading American propaganda), though did read some early barthwords in college, a form of writing called metafiction, cantilevered by a tricky opening that promised barthing out a breakthrough in the way we think, the anchor is nothing more than a story within a story, old as the hills idea. An author narrating a story of himself meeting a flirt on a plane reading a story he had written in an in-flight mag. Barth's prowess makes the reader think there's something more profound than that, but there's not. Women take heart. Your man reading quantum mechanics doesn't have a clue either.

On With the Story
Book arrived safely and in good condition. Shipping was rapid, perhaps supernaturally so. I'm amazed and humbled.

The risk of mood crash
"Check-in"--dinner is more pensive than festive.The couple chooses the buffet restaurant.In "The End" the narrator must continue the introduction until the guest speaker, a female poet, delayed by security measures, appears.It is the innauguration of the Last Lecture Series, endowed by someone who died rather quickly afterwards, and is an end of sorts for the narrator who is retiring from his professorial position.

History is a Mandelbrot set, infinitely divisible.The story of our life is a story, not our life.Elizabeth's father died in the corridor of the county hospital while she was on a book tour.In the draft of a letter to an old friend Elizabeth writes that since time out of mind she had been absorbing stories.Her father was a born story-teller.Elizabeth, in her forties, develops into one of the memorable voices of her generation.

Alice is in flight crossing the Mississippi River.She wonders where the money had come from in those "Leave It to Beaver" years, the 1960's and 1970's when she grew up.In a story Alice is reading the malaise is called the Boomer Syndrome.Alice thinks of the Uncertainty Principle holding that the more we know about a particle's position the less we know about its momentum.It turns out Alice's seat companion is the author of the story Alice is reading.

Do people think of their lives as stories from birth to death?Mimi assumes a supporting role when her husband Rob is found to have AIDS.One of the characters believes that not enough hasbeen written about happy marriages.

amazing storytelling
the intricate intertwining of these short stories was so good that after finishing I didn't just recommend it to everyone, I bought 25 copies to force on friends so they almost HAD to read it.lots of literary games going on, but not at the expense of the story in general.the main story focus of a married couple, their struggles, and exactly what's wrong withthe health of one of them gives these stories a dark edge.

fact or ...?
This collection of stories is really a collection of ingenious essays -- on narrative, fiction writing, and stories themselves -- masquerading asfiction. Witty and inventive. Great fun for grad-student aspiringfictioneers. ... Read more

Product Description
In CHIMERAJohn Barth injects his signature wit into the tales of Scheherezade of the Thousand and One Nights, Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, and Bellerophon, who tamed the winged horse Pegasus. In a book that the Washington Post called "stylishly maned, tragically songful, and serpentinely elegant," Barth retells these tales from varying perspectives, examining the myths" relationship to reality and their resonance with the contemporary world. A winner of the National Book Award, this feisty, witty, sometimes bawdy book provoked Playboy to comment, "There"s every chance in the world that John Barth is a genius." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Enormity Matched by Enormousness
Three novella thematically linked."Dunyazadiad," the best, retells the framework for 1001 Arabian Nights."Perseid" tells what happened after Perseus killed Medusa and married Andromeda.The "Bellerophoniad" retells Bellerophon's story, combining it with the "Dunyazadiad" and confusing it beyond belief with all manner of mythological and deconstructional and metafictional interruptions.The enormity of this book is matched by the enormousness of its detail.The book is amusing in parts, but in the end is itself a Chimera.

a collection of three stories
I suppose this is a good book.It is a collection of three stories: 'Dunyazadiad'; 'Perseid'; Bellerophoniad'.It gets quite weird in the last story.The other stories are strange too, but more straight forward.
'Dunyazadiad' tells Scheherazade and her one thousand and one (1,001) nights telling stories to the king.Her sister, Dunyazadiad, gets to watch the sex and storytelling.Eventually she gets taken to the kingdom of the first king's brother for his enjoyment.The story develops and ends well enough: everyone lives happily ever after.You get an explanation of where Amazons came from, though it is not true, it is part of this story.
The next story tells of Perseus and how he came to be a part of the night sky, famous for a meteor shower every August.It gets to be a bit convoluted and you have to start wondering who is telling the story or recording it or what is happening.I am sure the author knew what he was doing andthought he did it well, but I got lost some, though not as badly as I did in the last story.
Perseus wakes up in some sort of temple with amnesia, so a temple helper teaches him about where he has been and where he is to go.He ends up immortal in the stars at night.
Bellerophon is more of the same and even more confusing.The myths are interpreted and developed into some semblance of reality as it may have been.But Mr. Barth starts to shift years, by fiat, from prehistoric times to the present and back, and developing some scenarios that are strange and different, but understandable, and nothing seems to be coming to a conclusion.

Barth as "Ebenezum" or "A multitude of Enchantments"
Authors do not write novels with the purpose of having them labelled. Critics label novels and authors because they like to put things and people in their places.

John Barth writes novels, long or short, because he likes to. he writes them in specific styles and ways because that is what he enjoys and that is how he thinks, and that is how he writes.

The three short novels in Chimera are different in subject matter from Barth's other novels. The style is sometimes easy, sometimes cryptic and sometimes full of intellectual vanity. But that is what makes Barth.

One reads this type of work if one likes this type of work. And if the reader gets even more than he hoped to get out of reading the book, then the reader recommends it to others and sometimes writes a review.

If you like Barth, or this type of literary writing, but do not know much Greek mythology, you must read this book for fun and to expand your cultural horizons.

If you like Greek mythology, you should read this book for the perspective, the depth and the whimsy. And, who knows, you may start looking at more recent history in a different way.

If you like Gore Vidal's "histories", you may well like this book.

Finally, if you enjoyed Craig Shaw Gardner's books, maybe you will enjoy Chimera, but for different reasons.

These are not writer comparisons but reader idiosyncrasies.

Post Modern Dreck
John Barth is considered the high priest of post-modern literature, and he engages in all the tricks of the trade of this variety of literature in Chimera.The novel is deeply aware of itself as a text, with authorial intrusions, reminders of page number and previous references in the book, a hyper-awareness of the limits of the novel, of its marginality, of the sense "that it has all been done before" so what is left is only a sense of play with words stripped of any meaningful representation with the world.Language is an inadequate vessel to express meaning.Words are essentially divorced from real world references.Barth gives us little rotten plums like this "I can do it.Assuredly I can do it. That I can do it, I cannot doubt.That I cannot do it; that I can begin to imagine that I cannot do it; that I can begin to wonder whether perhaps after all I can do it; that I can begin to begin to firmly believe that I cannot do it; I cannot begin to image, I cannot begin to wonder, I cannot begin to begin.Beyond question.I can do it. Can I do it? I cannot do it."And on and on and on.This novel, written in 1970, represents, I hope, a type of novelistic style which is dead and buried.If there is no meaning to be found innovel writing, if writing itself is a kind of clever game, without deep significance, than why WRITE novels.And more importantly for us, why READ such novels?After Barth, the novel should have died.But it is rosy and pink and very much alive.

Postmodern Mythology
Though somewhat uneven throughout, John Barth's Chimera is an enjoyable and complex read, particularly for those with an interest in Ancient Mythology and Post Modern fiction.This "novel," written sometime after Giles Goat-Boy and Lost in the Funhouse, is comprised of three very loosely connected novellas, all taking post-modern slants on classic mythological stories.

"Dunyaziad" is a brief recounting of the 1001 Arabian Nights and the plight that Princess Scheherazade and her sister faced after recounting those 1001 stories to their tyrannical husbands.Don't worry if you've never read the real 1001 Nights: Barth provides enough context that you'll quickly figure out what's going on.You'll probably want to go out and read the original tales after you're done, because he does a great job of making these tales seem mysterious and intriguing.

"Perseiad" is tale of Perseus and his mid-life crisis after slaying Medusa and separating from his wife.This is definitely the best tale of the three and is very similar to Barth's earlier tales "Menelaiad" and "Anonymiad" from Lost in the Funhouse.The digressions are minimal, the plot perfectly formed (spiralic if you will), and the sense of impotency, confusion, and frustration very tangible.

"Bellerophoniad" is a self-conscious imitation of "Persiad" and probably the most difficult story of the three.It definitely has its good parts, but some of the post-modern digressions (particularly the lengthy account of characters originally found in Giles Goat-Boy, and notes from a lecture delivered on Barth's fiction itself) can really be tedious.

Once again, don't be frightened off by the copious references to mythological characters and events, even if you aren't previously familiar with them.Barth goes out of his way to bring you up to speed, even citing a passage from Robert Graves' The Greek Myths to give you a very literal account of Bellerophon's myth.All of Barth's trademark wit and complexity are here, and there is plenty of sex, violence, and humor (sometimes all three at once) to keep you entertained.If you are a new reader to Barth, you are much better off reading The Sot-Weed Factor or Lost in the Funhouse, but to those who already consider themselves devoted fans, this is a must-read.
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"Whether discussing modernism, postmodernism, semiotics, Homer, Cervantes, Borges, blue crabs or osprey nests, Barth demonstrates an enthusiasm for the life of the mind, a joy in thinking (and in expressing those thoughts) that becomes contagious... A reader leaves The Friday Book feeling intellectually fuller, verbally more adept, mentally stimulated, with algebra and fire of his own."--Washington Post

Barth's first work of nonfiction is what he calls "an arrangement of essays and occasional lectures, some previously published, most not, most on matters literary, some not, accumulated over thirty years or so of writing, teaching, and teaching writing." With the full measure of playfulness and erudition that he brings to his novels, Barth glances into his crystal ball to speculate on the future of literature and the literature of the future. He also looks back upon historical fiction and fictitious history and discusses prose, poetry, and all manner of letters: "Real letters, forged letters, doctored letters... and of course alphabetical letters, the atoms of which the universe of print is made."

"The pieces brought together in The Friday Book reflect Mr. Barth's witty, playful, and engaging personality... They are lively, sometimes casual, and often whimsical--a delight to the reader, to whom Mr. Barth seems to be writing or speaking as a learned friend."--Kansas City Star

"No less than Barth's fiction these pieces are performances, agile, dexterous, robust, offering the cerebral delights of playful lucidity."--Richmond News Leader

Customer Reviews (1)

A literary master lets us into his head.
So you're a writer worried about the future of your art? Or you're a reader wondering if you're the last of your breed? Well, here's a book to comfort your soul (and give you a good idea of where to go next). In this, his 1st collection of non-fiction, John Barth, long-considered a master-practitioner of fiction, gives us several dozen essays that should be on the syllabus of any class dealing with the art & craft of writing. As strong a philosopher as he is a storyteller, Barth shows us how his outlook on all things literary has affected his output, especially in the 2 strongest pieces: "The Literature of Exhaustion" & "The Literature of Replenishment." But singling out these 2 essays is like focusing on "Hamlet" and "King Lear" while ignoring the rest of Shakespeare. Like the Bard himself, John Barth is a man whose idea of play is more rigorous & demanding than most people's idea of a career (and what a career he's had!). Here's a book that will make better readers & writers out of all who read it. Oh, and it's funny as hell as well. ... Read more

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Written by experts but designed for the novice, the Armchair series provides accurate, concise, and witty overviews of some of the most profound moments and theologians in Christian history. These books are essential supplements for first-time encounters with primary texts, lucid refreshers for scholars and clergy, and enjoyable reads for the theologically curious.

This volume introduces readers to the life and thought of Karl Barth (1886–1968), one of the most important theologians since the Reformation era. Featuring the Armchair series’ characteristic whimsical illustrations, Barth for Armchair Theologians surveys Barth’s theology as it emerges and culminates in his monumental Church Dogmatics as well as how his theology continues to be interpreted in the present day. ... Read more

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Barth for ArmChair Theologians
a great over view of one of Barth's CDs before you tackle the volume yourself, but really Webster's intro book is the best

Readable, informative and fun!
Who would ever describe a book about a theologian as fun?Yet that is just what this is.The drawings by Ron Hill are delightful and thought provoking.Just looking at them and trying to understand the artist's intentions was a delight.

This is a fine introduction to Barth's life and thought.Dr. Franke traces Barth's life and maps out his journey as one of the premier theologians of modern times.Franke's introduction to Church Dogmatics is a very helpful guide to that massive work.

I am a pastor who tries to read broadly.These little concise "Armchair" books have proven to be a welcome half-way point between deep study and reading for entertainment.They take on deep and solemn subjects but are so well written and easily grasped as to give one an evening of truly relaxing and enjoyable reading.You can finish and have had the pleasure of a good book and feel also that you have been "working," by studying theology!A great combination!

I need to pass these books along to the laity of the church and see how easy they are to digest for those without a formal theological education.About this series I say, "Keep them coming!"

Fantastic and Entertaining!
Karl Barth is probably among the three most important theologians in Protestant history (along with John Calvin and Friedrich Schleiermacher).His insightful and monstrous Church Dogmatics is a daunting task for any reader (I'm just started on it myself), and he certainly has his own method of organizing and talking about theology.

John Franke, with an engaging and lucid style, tells the interesting story of the life of Karl Barth while explaining his theological development into liberalism and out of it.He concludes with a large chapter on the outline of the Church Dogmatics (which includes tips on how to approach the colossal work) and a chapter on the present and future prospects for engagement with Barth's unique "dialectical" theology.

I highly recommend this book to all those interested in 20th century theology and especially to those like myself interested in reading and understanding Barth.

Daunted by Barth? Here's Help.
Reading Karl Barth's work can be a daunting task.With this work Dr. Franke has provided interested learners with a both a framework for understanding and a introduction to the thinking of a theologian widely recognized as one of the leading Christian theologians in Church history.That Franke could do so in a mere 166 pages is impressive.

The book itself is part biography, part historical (Barth's) theology.Franke demonstrates how Barth's theologizing developed under the influence of his personal and world events.From Barth's early family life and academic training to his pastoral and educational work, his maturing thought is illuminated and comprehended as an interaction with culture, life events, and especially his increasing reliance on the Word of God.

Discussion of Barth's magnum opus, Church Dogmatics (CD), does not take up the majority of this book, though it is covered in the longest chapter.Personally, I would have liked to have had two to three times the material discussing CD that Dr. Franke gives.However, what is presented is sufficient to assist the reader in entering into useful dialogue with Barth.I found the insight of making conscious use of the divisions (paragraphs and subsections) of CD most welcome.

Dr. Franke's work also described important works by other Barth scholars; his synopsis of George Hunsinger's & Bruce McCormack's works provide frames of reference and mindset that are crucial, I believe (I've read those works cited), to accurately comprehended Barth's writings. ... Read more

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This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages. Inside John Barth is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by William W. Stuart is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of William W. Stuart then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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This historically significant volume collects Karl Barth's lectures on John Calvin, delivered at the University of Gottingen in 1922. The main body of the work consists of a sympathetic account of Calvin's life up to his recall to Geneva and an examination and evaluation of Calvin's early theological writings. ... Read more

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Calvin's theology, and much more
The Theology of John Calvin does in fact deliver what the title promises - a good analysis/summary of Calvin's theology - but it also delivers much more.

One of the best things about The Theology of John Calvin is Barth's overview of the medieval church preceding the material on Calvin himself. It lays a great foundation for the discussion of the life and theology of John Calvin by showing you where he stood in history, what he was reacting to, and the underlying ideological issues at work in the reformation. It also gives a more sympathetic, understanding portrait of the medieval church than is often drawn for us. Barth then provides a lengthy analysis of the other superstars of the Protestant Reformation -- Luther and Zwingly -- and compares the three. Barth does a masterful job of always keeping the broad, historical picture in view, yet at the same time paints a very detailed and human portrait of Calvin as a man. ... Read more

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In this novelistic romp that is by turns hilarious and brilliant, John Barth spoofs his own place in the pantheon of contemporary fiction and the generation of writers who have followed his literary trailblazing. Coming Soon!!! is the tale of two writers: an older, retiring novelist setting out to write his last work and a young, aspiring writer of hypertext intent on toppling his master. In the heat of their rivalry, the writers navigate, and sometimes stumble over, the cultural fault lines between print and electronic fiction, mentor and mentee, postmodernism and modernism. ... Read more

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Barth's Hate Note to All Readers
First off, John Barth is one of the most creative and impressive writers of the last century; what his mind can do is stunning to behold. Creating a hilarious, enormous allegory on the Cold War by way of a goat-boy's journey to the universe of the University, writing maybe the best and bawdiest American historical novel in The Sot-Weed Factor, and in several other books, Barth's shown that he's at least a genius. He's a wordsmith, merrymaker, and decades-ahead-of-his-time experimentalist, a philosopher with the sense of humor of a six-year-old, and he's executed masterfully what few other authors have even attempted.

Unfortunately, in his later years, Barth's also shown that he's a great prankster whose pranks have steadily alienated everyone until they've become entirely for him by him. Coming Soon!!! is the culmination of this worst impulse, and finds Barth at his orneriest, most difficult, and most totally unreadable.

Because this book cannot be read. Barth makes damn sure of that. You can look at the funny fonts and charts and pages full of abbreviations, but you're a masochist to attempt to read this nightmare. If you slog through the first section, there's the second, and then the third, each one more maddening, needless, parenthetical, prolix, migraine-inducing, and endless. There's Barth, grinning fiendishly from the back flap of the dust jacket, a literary villain who wrote this middle finger to all readers and dares them to try it. The level of horrible this book is IS funny, and that may be the biggest prank of all, that he's created the least readable thing since Finnegans Wake. Maybe that's the ultimate metafictional """joke.""" For all that's worth, though, Barth is best left to his early years.

Much ado about not enough...

Generally speaking, you know you're in dangerous territory when an author, ((especially one who breaks narrative illusion and addresses the reader directly)), takes up the theme of writer's block. Lots of times it really does mean that a writer has nothing to write about. That said, novels about writing novels--or not writing them--are usually only of interest to other novelists. So *Coming Soon* was of some interest to me. But for the most part *Coming Soon* reads like a novel written by an author who never quite did get over his writer's block--but managed to turn out 400 pages all the same.

Don't get me wrong. I wanted to like this book--there being all too few "literary," not to mention experimental, authors getting widespread publishing opportunities in the current American publishing scene. And I am quite a fan of Barth's *Lost in the Funhouse*--see my review for details. So *Coming Soon* was a great disappointment to me. It's certainly not--in the oft-used phrased--a novel by a master at the height of his powers.

Barth employs a favorite postmodern device in *Coming Soon* --the story within the story within the story. But when the core story isn't all that interesting it's only four time less interesting to have it told on four different levels. The plot, in short, is this: An old writer approaching the millennial year 2000, John Barth himself, and a young aspiring writer who reminds the old Barth of a young Barth find themselves racing each other--and the millennium--to write a novel that takes up the theme of old Barth's first novel as a young writer, *The Floating Opera.* At the same time, a local Chesapeake theater troupe mounts a musical about the old days of the showboat which was the basis for Barth's first novel and now, ironically, his last. So it is that Barth at the same time parodies and comments upon postmodernism and its tendency to loot the past and make a pastiche of the present, forming an intricate web of references and cross-references that in themselves seem to mean something...but what? The fact that Barth is looting his own past--both fictional and nonfictional--only adds to the irony, significance, brilliance, confusion?

Well, that all depends. In the case of *Coming Soon* the result is what I found to be rather a lot of unwelcome detail about the showboats that plied the Chesapeake in days-gone-by, as well as the history behind the novel-turned-Broadway hit-turned Hollywood film that originally celebrated these showboats--Showboat!--and that inspired Barth's first--and now his last--novel, *The Floating Opera.* There's a purposely over-obvious and ironically ham-handed Biblical link between the showboat and Noah's Ark, Y2K and Revelation, but its no less over-obvious and ham-handed just because it's supposed to be. There's a lot of doubling of characters and conflicts of past and present, of young Barth and old Barth, all of it way too inextricably tangled to untangle, the typical postmodern Moebius strip type of storytelling that can be so enchanting if its about anything you remotely care about. Here it isn't.

The overall Ur-theme of *Coming Soon* is the dying of the old--showboats, live theater, novels, celebrated novelists--and the morphing of the new forms--TV, internet, electronic fiction, brash new literary provocateurs. Old Barth and his print novel vs. Young Barth and his e-fiction. This is a potentially fruitful subject, but here it's so blighted by interminable discussions of sailing, of the history of the showboat, of matters so tangential and of so little interest or necessity that it's as if Barth were doing a kind of authorial version of pacing to and fro while waiting for ideas to come, as if, for instance, in the middle of this review I started to describe in minute detail the chair I was sitting upon while writing this review as if by doing so I were making my point. There are huge barren stretches of *Coming Soon* that read in exactly this way.

There was a moment at around page 350 when I actually thought, okay give it another star, Barth is going to pull tight all the loose strings of this story and really make something powerful out of it, but then his grip faltered and it all sort of unraveled again into the same rather rambling mess it was before.

Barth is at his best when he writes wistfully of his own mortality--he's turning 70 in *Coming Soon* --but then he's back to his "rollicking" plot and the tedium practically crushes the interest out of you. Oh there are some sparkling moments, a few laughs, but, for the most part, the hallmark clever wordplay and literary jokes are flaccid and fall flat. *Coming Soon*? I'd say, that like the Y2K apocalypse, it never quite arrived.

Fermata
It seems like this was to be M. Barth's last book, and it does indeed have that Bethovenesque coda quality to it.The Author is a character in the book, and retires near the beginning.Coming Soon! a Narrative also revisits the topic of his first novel, and has a young author in it which is ostensibly writing perhaps the novel you are reading and is referencing that Show Barge novel.This book is full of quirky little self-referencial games, and seems also to revel in their unfolding.Obviously, M. Barth is still enjoying the game he helped to create in the world of fiction.
But the redeeming part of Comng Soon! is the story, which is rich in substance and full of twists.Barth also tells it with an almost mystical edge, seeing his Chesapeake stomping grounds as grounds for a quasi-fairytale.Also the distinction between the two main voices of the novel are quite fun, and Barth is impressive in pulling off not only the youthful exuberence of the Hopkins narrator, but also his literary inexperience and decadence.A thoroughly enjoyable book.

Coming Soon!!!
Coming Soon!!! (Or End Time, or The New Show) is a joyous post-modern romp, a witty, intelligent mash of ideas hovering around the central conceit of a showboat, an author, and another author.

The plot is difficult to explain. John Barth - the author - wrote, as his first book, The Floating Opera, a novel that was loosely about The Original Floating Opera, a showboat on the Chesapeake. Johns Hopkins Johnson is an aspiring young author, and for his master's writing thesis, he wishes to create a sequel to The Floating Opera, a sequel that involves Johns writing his version of the sequel, and John Barth - the fictional character - writing another at the same time, in a competition. John Barth (A) reads this thesis submission and is intrigued, deciding that he would like to write the same novel, in a competition as well. So. We have the real author writing a story where the author 'John Barth' is writing a sequel to his previous novel while a young wannabe author attempts it as well, and while this is happening, a young wannabe author is writing a sequel to John Barth's novel while a character of John Barth is doing the same. Confusing.

But it isn't, really. Barth manages to handle this story-within-a-story gimmick quite well, and in fact he does it in a few other ways on top of that. At the beginning of the real, physical novel, we are assuming that we are reading the Novel Emeritus' - the real John Barth - version, but by the end of the novel, there have been enough scattered hints to suggest that maybe Johns Hopkins Johnson won the challenge, and we are actually reading his novel. Maybe it is both? The question is never conclusively answered, and couldn't be, really, as the answer would lie in the universe outside the novel.

Post-modern plot aside, Barth absolutely revels in playing with the English language. He capitalises words to add emphasis, combines words, rambles on, inserts commentary about his own personal life, et ceteras, abbreviates and just has fun: 'Detour now, is it, O Opter of the Options, Clicker of the Clicker, Mastress of the Might Mouse? Detour it is, then, even as Mlle Sherry Singer directed back there in (my) Chap. 1, 'Commencement' - Where last we saw your Novelist Aspirant & Apprentice narrator hip-hopping south and east and south again on wings of desire,...' and so on and so on. There are puns: On the The Original Floating Opera II, there is a character, the Phantom. Phantom of the Opera. Get it? Hilarious. Well, it is, in the narrative structure that Barth has created. He throws in the the elements for a joke, then, several paragraphs later, puts it all together. If you can catch it before he does, you win, if not, you get to giggle at his cleverness.

The plot largely focuses on The Original Floating Opera II, with expositionary detours of what the Novelist Emeritus (Barth) is doing over the five years of the story, and then the Novelist Aspirant (Hopkins) gets a turn, introducing us to his love, Sherry, his parents, his ideas and dreams, and of course, the showboat. They both write the same chapters, a '1995.1' and a '1995.2', but there are little 'off-story' sections as well, including a Cast of Several, which explains all of the characters and their roles. 47 pages into the novel.

The novel can be a difficult read. Barth is very, very clever, and he knows enough of the English language and grammatical structure that he can mix it up and mess it about with ease. And he does. If rambling, largely irrelevant plots coupled with trickery for trickery's sake and a penchant for look-at-me cleverness is not your idea of a rip-roaring novelistic experience, then pass by the pastiche of witticisms. If it is, then settle down and enjoy the work of a master at the top of his game.

Wow!
As always, I'm blown away and inspired when I read Barth.If I can ever do anything half as well as he can write, I'll be a success!I was sad at the end to think that this might be his final offering (although you can spend a lifetime re-reading his work), but now that the collection 10 Nights and a Night is out I'm over the heartbreak.I think my next readerly Voyage will be back to The End of the Road and On With the Story (again)! ... Read more

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Karl Barth has been called the most important Protestanttheologian since Schleiermacher.His lifetime of work produced a hugeand complex body of writings.This posthumous publication of much ofhis work has invited fresh and attentive interpretations of histhought.

The book draws together these readings to provide a clear andauthoritative introduction to the main themes of Barth's theology.The closing chapter with its focus on Barth's relationship tomodernity, postmodernity, and the tasks of theology will be especiallyuseful to students. ... Read more

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Every Friday for many years, John Barth has exchanged his weekday fiction muse for a nonfiction one. He first collected the fruits of these labors in the critically acclaimed Friday Book and now, in Further Fridays, treats readers to a brilliant encore. This collection features a variety of reflections and ruminations that range as far as Barth's curiosity takes him. Each is a journey, but never quite the one expected one. ... Read more

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Intellectual Wanderings with a Friend
Think post-modernism is something for stuffy literature professors?Think again.Among the more than twenty essays that John Barth tackles, none is more enlightening than his exhoneration of the most maligned literary term of the decade.Barth addresses his essay to a well-read audience and convinces us that regular-guy readers can enjoy post-modern literature as surely as Persians enjoy "The Arabian Nights."He takes the postition that the label of post-modernism is just that, a label, and that it's practitioners (himself among the vanguard) are members of a generation that can no longer pressume their audiences are naive--twentieth century readers know archetypes and plot devices when they see them.Barth does not, however, try to convince the reader to embrace post-modernism; rather, he simply explains it as he understands it. With a similarly laid-back, take-me-as-I-am tone, Barth tells of how he met his wife, how he learned to write, what he thinks imagination is, and what the virtues and vices of short stories are, among numerous other topics.Also included in this, his second volume of "Friday" essays (named for the day of the week in which he takes a sabatical from teaching), are the prefaces to four of his most popular works. This is an enjoyable intellectual feast for anyone interested in the writer's art--even if you didn't major in English. ... Read more

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Signed by the author in an edition limited to 400 copies ... Read more