You can also read responses to his essay by Colum McCann, A.L. Kennedy, Andrew Miller, Edmund White and John Banville, here.
Photograph by Pumiceous
John Barth discusses discovering William Faulkner and Lawrence Sterne as a student, the parallels between writing and arranging music, what happened to postmodernism and waiting for the muse to call.
You can also read responses to his essay by Colum McCann, A.L. Kennedy, Andrew Miller, Edmund White and John Banville, here.
Photograph by Pumiceous
‘The flirtations of insects and plants are furtive, hidden and often so brief that if you literally blink you might miss what exactly is going on.’
Dino J. Martins on moths and orchids, from Granta 153: Second Nature.
‘The origin of the dysfunctional family: spores. / Friend or foe? True fern or ally?’
Poems by Sylvia Legris, author of Garden Physic.
‘And the trees were safely tucked in. Their roots were rallying in the soil, in this coil. Would the woman also take a turn for the better in her last decade?’
Three stories by Diane Williams.
‘walking alone down a country road – / distracted by the slightly annoying and toxic / first green of spring, eyes overflowing’
A poem by Emily Skillings.
‘Whatever the aftermath, you won’t see the city again except through the agency of absence, recalling this semi-emptiness, this viral uncertainty.’
From 2020: China Miéville on the UK government’s response to coronavirus.
John Barth’s fiction has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a professor emeritus in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. His novels include The Floating Opera (1956), The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) and The Tidewater Tales (1987). His collections of short stories include Lost in the Funhouse (1968) and On with the Story (1996). His most recent novel is Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons (2011).
More about the author →'I suggest he put aside all his writing rituals and that he give away all his money – that way he might find his talent will be rebooted.'
‘What do you do when your daily routine comes to a halt, when your latest achievement just might be your last?’
‘Everything we do in art is likely to turn out to be either prophecy or exorcism, whatever its other intentions.’
‘What had formerly been a sedative, a tranquilizing soporific, had morphed into a facilitator of reflection, contemplation, deliberation, even inspiration.’
In the latest Granta Podcast, John Barth – one of the pioneers of American literature...
‘Naples had always been high on the list of places I wanted to visit‘.
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