Podcast | John Barth | Granta Magazine

John Barth | Podcast

John Barth

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.

In the latest Granta Podcast, John Barth – one of the pioneers of American literature – reads his essay ‘The End?’, from the current issue of the magazine, Exit Strategies, at a live event held at Books&Books in Miami on February 7. He also 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

In Conversation
The Online Edition
2nd March 2012
In Conversation
The Online Edition
2nd March 2012

John Barth

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 →

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Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition

The End?: Writers respond to John Barth

Various Contributors

'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.'

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The End?

John Barth

‘What do you do when your daily routine comes to a halt, when your latest achievement just might be your last?’

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John Barth | Interview

John Barth

‘Everything we do in art is likely to turn out to be either prophecy or exorcism, whatever its other intentions.’

Essays & Memoir | Issue 140 padlock

Out of the Cradle

John Barth

‘What had formerly been a sedative, a tranquilizing soporific, had morphed into a facilitator of reflection, contemplation, deliberation, even inspiration.’

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John Barth

In the latest Granta Podcast, John Barth – one of the pioneers of American literature...

In Conversation | The Online Edition

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Valeria Luiselli

‘Perhaps it is the way he’s able to delicately tap into the most disturbing layers of reality and turn our conception of what is normal inside out. Perhaps it’s because he’s always telling a deeper, sadder, more disquieting story while pretending to narrate another.’

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