Download or read book The Floating Opera written by John Barth and published by American Literature. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written when John Barth was 24 years old, The Floating Opera is his first novel, published in 1957. It is a first-person reminiscence of the day Todd Andrews decided to commit suicide. Having picked up some sense of the French Existentialist writers from the postwar Zeitgeist, this novel questions life's value through the eyes of a 37-year-old man.
Download or read book The Floating Opera and The End of the Road written by John Barth and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1997-03-11 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama. Together they illustrate the beginnings of an illustrious career.
Download or read book Space Opera written by Catherynne M. Valente and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 HUGO AWARD FINALIST, BEST NOVEL The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets the joy and glamour of Eurovision in bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente's science fiction spectacle, where sentient races compete for glory in a galactic musical contest…and the stakes are as high as the fate of planet Earth. A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented—something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding. Once every cycle, the great galactic civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Species far and wide compete in feats of song, dance and/or whatever facsimile of these can be performed by various creatures who may or may not possess, in the traditional sense, feet, mouths, larynxes, or faces. And if a new species should wish to be counted among the high and the mighty, if a new planet has produced some savage group of animals, machines, or algae that claim to be, against all odds, sentient? Well, then they will have to compete. And if they fail? Sudden extermination for their entire species. This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick, and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny—they must sing. Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have been chosen to represent their planet on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of Earth lies in their ability to rock.
Download or read book Chimera written by John Barth and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In CHIMERAJohn Barth injects his signature wit into the tales of Scheherezade of the Thousand and One Nights, Perseus, the slayer of Medusa, and Bellerophon, who tamed the winged horse Pegasus. In a book that the Washington Post called "stylishly maned, tragically songful, and serpentinely elegant,” Barth retells these tales from varying perspectives, examining the myths’ relationship to reality and their resonance with the contemporary world. A winner of the National Book Award, this feisty, witty, sometimes bawdy book provoked Playboy to comment, "There’s every chance in the world that John Barth is a genius.”
Download or read book The Sot Weed Factor written by John Barth and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece. This modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting...to roam the world since Candide." "A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded) this satire of the 18th-century picaresque novel-think Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy -is also an earnest picture of the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it makes its unsteady way in the world. It's the late 17th century and Ebenezer Cooke is a poet, dutiful son and determined virgin who travels from England to Maryland to take possession of his father's tobacco (or "sot weed") plantation. He is also eventually given to believe that he has been commissioned by the third Lord Baltimore to write an epic poem, The Marylandiad. But things are not always what they seem. Actually, things are almost never what they seem. Not since Candide has a steadfast soul witnessed so many strange scenes or faced so many perils. Pirates, Indians, shrewd prostitutes, armed insurrectionists - Cooke endures them all, plus assaults on his virginity from both women and men. Barth's language is impossibly rich, a wickedly funny take on old English rhetoric and American self-appraisals. For good measure he throws in stories within stories, including the funniest retelling of the Pocahontas tale -revealed to us in the "secret" journals of Capt. John Smith - that anyone has ever dared to tell." —Time Magazine
Download or read book John Barth written by David Morrell and published by David Morrell. This book was released on 2015-12-16 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, while David Morrell was writing First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created, he also wrote his doctoral dissertation about acclaimed author, John Barth. In it, Morrell analyses Barth’s early fiction, using interviews with Barth, his agent, and his editors as well as several of Barth’s unpublished essays and letters to tell what Morrell calls “the story behind the stories, a biography of Barth’s fiction.” Over the years, scholars have found John Barth: An Introduction invaluable for its lengthy biographical sections, which Barth himself approved. Fans of Morrell’s fiction will find this book enlightening in terms of what Barth taught him about writing. CRITICAL REACTION “David Morrell’s not just a fine writer; he’s also a great and generous teacher.” —New York Times bestselling author Lawrence Block “Morrell has written an interesting and informative book which reads occasionally like a biography. His prose is eminently clear and straightforward. His book has something for everyone. There is no doubt that it will become a necessity for serious students of Barth, and that, coincidentally, it is a genuinely interesting book.” —Journal of Modern Literature “Morrell’s study tells the story of Barth’s storytelling, how he got his ideas, and then how the publishers and reviewers dealt with them. He includes detailed biographical information [and] writes with great economy and clarity.” —Modern Fiction Studies “Morrell gives the reader the benefit of his familiarity with Barth and his manuscripts to plot the career of each work, from plans and, in some cases, research through revision, publisher-agent reactions, sales, and post-publication revisions. The whole enterprise is carried off with appealing confidence and informality that add up to an eminently readable book.” —World Literature Today
Download or read book The Friday Book written by John Barth and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "...The Friday Book was the first work of nonfiction by novelist John Barth, author of The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and Chimera. Taking its title from the day of the week Barth would devote to nonfiction, the three dozen essays discuss a wide range of topics from the blue crabs of Barth's beloved Chesapeake Bay to weighty literary subjects such as Borges, Homer, and semiotics..."--www.amazon.com.
Download or read book Coming Soon written by John Barth and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this novelistic romp that is by turns hilarious and brilliant, John Barth spoofs his own place in the pantheon of contemporary fiction and the generation of writers who have followed his literary trailblazing. Coming Soon!!! is the tale of two writers: an older, retiring novelist setting out to write his last work and a young, aspiring writer of hypertext intent on toppling his master. In the heat of their rivalry, the writers navigate, and sometimes stumble over, the cultural fault lines between print and electronic fiction, mentor and mentee, postmodernism and modernism.
Download or read book Floating Worlds written by Cecelia Holland and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the far future, an Earth-born woman must negotiate with a fearsome mutant race: “On a par with Ursula LeGuin or Arthur C. Clarke” (Chicago Tribune). Two thousand years into the future, runaway pollution has made the earth uninhabitable except in giant biodomes. The society is an anarchy, with disputes mediated through the Machiavellian Committee for the Revolution. Mars, Venus, and the moon support flourishing colonies of various political stripes. On the fringes of the solar system, in the gas planets, a strange, new, violent kind of human has evolved. In this unstable system, the anarchist Paula Mendoza, an agent of the Committee, works to make peace and ultimately protect her people in a catastrophic clash of worlds that destroys the order she knows.
Download or read book Letters written by John Barth and published by Putnam Publishing Group. This book was released on 1979 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark of postmodern American fiction, Letters is (as the subtitle genially informs us) "an old time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls and dreamers each of which imagines himself factual". Seven characters (including the Author himself) exchange a novel's worth of letters during a 7-month period in 1969, a time of revolution that recalls the U.S.'s first revolution in the 18th century - the heyday of the epistolary novel. Recapitulating American history as well as the plots of his first six novels, Barth's seventh novel is a witty and profound exploration of the nature of revolution and renewal, rebellion and reenactment, at both the private and public levels. It is also an ingenious meditation on the genre of the novel itself, recycling an older form to explore new directions, new possibilities for the novel.
Download or read book Lost in the Funhouse written by John Barth and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-06-25 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • John Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction exploring themes of purpose and the meaning of existence. "[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times From its opening story, "Frame-Tale"--printed sideways and designed to be cut out by the reader and twisted into a never-ending Mobius strip--to the much-anthologized "Life-Story," whose details are left to the reader to "fill in the blank," Barth's acclaimed collection challenges our ideas of what fiction can do. Highlights include the Homerian story-wthin-a-story-within-a-story (times seven) of "Menalaiad,' and "Night-Sea Journey," a first-person account of a confused human sperm on its way to fertilize an egg. All of the characters in Lost in the Funhouse are searching, in one way or another, for their purpose and the meaning of their existence. Together, their stories form a kaleidescope of exuberant metafictional inventiveness.
Download or read book The Philosophical Reflection of Man in Literature written by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Collected Stories written by John Barth and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 1015 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse appeared in 1968, American fiction was turned on its head. Barth’s writing was not a response to the realistic fiction that characterized American literature at the time; it beckoned back to the founders of the novel: Cervantes, Rabelais, and Sterne, echoing their playfulness and reflecting the freedom inherent in the writing of fiction. This collection of Barth’s short fiction is a landmark event, bringing all of his previous collections together in one volume for the first time. Its occasion helps readers assess a remarkable lifetime’s work and represents an important chapter in the history of American literature. Dalkey Archive will reissue a number of Barth’s novels over the next few years, preserving his work for generations to come.
Download or read book The Book of Ten Nights and a Night written by John Barth and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2005 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Ten Nights and a Night offers both a keen introduction to the genius of John Barth and a deeply human argument for the enduring value of literature. Gathering stories written throughout this postmodern master's long career, the collection spans his entire range of styles, from straightforward narrative to experimental metafiction. In the time immediately following September 11, 2001, the veteran writer Graybard spends eleven nights with a nubile muse named WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). The two lovers debate the meaning and relevance of writing and storytelling in the wake of disaster, telling a new tale each night in the tradition of Scheherazade. The Book of Ten Nights and a Night exhibits the thrilling blend of playfulness and illuminating insight that have marked Barth as one of America's most distinguished writers.
Download or read book Understanding John Barth written by Stanley Fogel and published by Columbia : University of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main aim of this work is to provide a comprehensive guide to the major writings of John Barth - the author of The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, Chimera, The Tidewater Tales: A Novel and other works. With roots in the 20-century existential tradition, Barth sees human beings stripped of their beliefs in universal values and systems of belief - in God, tradition, reason or literary formulations. He is concerned about the kinds of choices that fulfill human and artistic potential and those that lead to failure, and he is equally concerned about how those choices affect the environment. Art, to him, shapes an awareness not only of literature itself but of self, culture and history, so he tries to review these areas against the grain.
Download or read book The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor written by John Barth and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A National Book Award winner offers his most inventive novel to date. Journalist Simon Behler finds himself in the house of Sinbad the Sailor after being washed ashore during a sea-going adventure. Over the course of six evenings, the two take turns recounting their voyages in a brilliantly entertaining weave of stories within stories. "Filled with white nights and golden days . . . lyrical, fresh and sprightly."--Washington Post.
Download or read book The Art of Fiction written by David Lodge and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.
