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
‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
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...
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