I read a couple of his books, including the Sot-Weed Factor, and I’m not sure if it was more I enjoyed him, or just that I admired what he was trying to do. But definitely an interesting mind on that guy.
RIP. I thought some of his earlier work was his best, like the Floating Opera.
He got a bit overcomplex and a bit too ‘postmodernist’ for my taste in later books?
I’ve only read Chimera, but thought that was excellent. I should get around to his other works sometime.
I started Barth with his collection of short stories, Lost in the Funhouse. It contains “Menalaiad,” which is famous because it contains seven layers of story. "He said that 'she said that "he said that 'she said that "he said that 'she said that “he said that the story says that ‘she said that “he said that ‘she said that “he said that ‘she said that “he said that ‘in that story’”’”’”’” If your brain hurt from reading that, imagine it stretched into a novella. Eleven typesetters and an entire squadron of copyeditors blew their brains out in the production of the book.
That was the sort of thing that blew my mind in college, so I read a lot of the so-called postmoderns (who I think of as neo-modernists if you go back and look at the modernists) and went on to his novels. Like pretty much everybody else I found that more was less and I gave up after Chimera.
Still, he was a prime example of “if you like that sort of thing” because he could really write beyond the trick playing.
One of my favorite authors. I often list The Sot-Weed Factor as my favorite novel of all time (which is odd because it’s made up of tropes I detest). I’ve read his first nine novels, plus Coming Soon!!!. I’m also a big fan of LETTERS; its structure is amazing.
I’ve been strongly influenced by him and have tried to emulate him in some of my own fiction.
As a smof and science fiction writer, I often use his quote in convention program books: “Science Fiction writers are not like you or me. They have more fun.”
It’s time to reread him.
Giles Goat-Boy struck me as being amazingly good.