David Louis EdelmanJohn Barth, author of THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, GILES GOAT-BOY, and LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE, postmodern icon, fellow Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars grad, subject of my long-running fan website, and personal icon who gave a young student journalist his first author interview in 1991, died yesterday. #JohnBarth #postmodernism (1/4)
His work was erudite, thought-provoking, intense, and linguistically sophisticated. But it was also witty, playful, full of puns, and self-deprecating. Nobody writes glorious, elaborate sentences anymore like Barth. And postmodernism kind of went out of style when David Foster Wallace died. (2/4)
If you're curious about Barth, I'd advise starting with CHIMERA, a National Book Award-winning trio of novellas about mythical figures that features all of the hallmarks of his style and is rather easy to digest. (3/4)
I noticed that the co-author of his New York Times obituary actually died in 2010. Which is a very absurd Barthian touch, to have the subject of an obituary outlive the author of the obituary. I think he would have liked that. (4/4)