"[I]t is sometimes pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we may admire him."
John Simmons Barth was an American writer best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include The Sot-Weed Factor, a whimsical retelling of Maryland's colonial history; Giles Goat-Boy, a satirical fantasy in which a university is a microcosm of the Cold War world; and Lost in the Funhouse, a self-referenti
"One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in the 1960s, put me onto Borges, and I remember another mentioning Flann OBriens At Swim Two-Birds in the same way."
John Barth"Women thought me charmingly shy, and sometimes stopped at nothing to “penetrate the disdainful shell of my fear,” as one of their number put it. Often as not, it was they who got penetrated."
John Barth"[T]here is no will-o-the-wisp so elusive as the cause of any human act."
John Barth"More historys made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations."
John Barth"Tis eer the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and oerlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer."
John Barth"The night-sea journey may be absurd, but here we swim, will-we nill-we, against the flood, onward and upward, toward a Shore that may not exist and couldnt be reached if it did."
John Barth