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Who was John Barth? All about novelist known for his postmodern and metafiction as he passes away at 93
John Barth, the humorously erudite writer whose intricate and darkly humorous books explored the art of literature and sparked many discussions about the craft of fiction, passed away on Tuesday.
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John Barth a postmodernist writer whose novels revolved around the art of literature died at 93
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John Barth also pursued jazz at the Juilliard School of Music in New York
TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains references to an individual's death.
John Barth passed away on Tuesday at the age of 93. His darkly humorous and intricate novels focused on the art of literature and sparked numerous discussions about the craft of fiction. Barth's passing was confirmed in a statement by Johns Hopkins University, where he held the position of emeritus professor of English and creative writing.
Barth was a writer's writer because of his love of literary theory and his creative yet challenging books. Barth claimed that writing was how he desperately tried to survive, much like Scheherazade in "The Thousand and One Nights." With his 1966 best-seller "Giles Goat-Boy," he produced a hero out of a figure who is half goat and transformed a college campus into a microcosm of a world endangered by the Cold War.
Who was John Barth?
John Barth was born on May 27, 1930, in Cambridge, Maryland, U.S. He played drums and wrote for the school newspaper at Cambridge High School, where he graduated in 1947. Before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952, he studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" for a short time at Juilliard. Drawing from his experiences at Johns Hopkins, he wrote his thesis novel, The Shirt of Nessus.
In 1950, on January 11, Barth married Harriet Anne Strickland. During that same year, he had two stories published, one in The Hopkins Review and one in the student literary magazine at Johns Hopkins. The summer of 1951 saw the birth of his daughter, Christine Ann. The next year, he welcomed his son, John Strickland.
John's postmodern and metafictional works are his greatest-known works. While teaching at Pennsylvania State University from 1953 to 1965, Barth met Shelly Rosenberg, his second wife. Daniel Stephen, his third child, was born in 1954. He relocated to the State University of New York in Buffalo in 1965, where he worked as a professor until 1973.
Literary work
The Floating Opera, his debut book, received a National Book Award nomination. His 1968 book of short stories, Lost in the Funhouse, earned him another nomination. The Sot-Weed Factor, a 1960 spoof of historical fiction with numerous plot twists and comical antics, was his breakout work. In addition to challenging literary conventions, Barth included himself as a character in his 1979 epistolary novel Letters, which featured letters between characters from his first six works.
He penned The Literature of Exhaustion in 1967, an essay that was initially published in The Atlantic and is regarded by some as a manifesto of postmodernism. It was very influential and controversial. It presents literary realism as a "used-up" tradition. Barth describes his work as "novels which imitate the form of a novel, by an author who imitates the role of author," which many believe to be a fundamental characteristic of postmodernism.
Know more about John Barth
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