John Barth

BARTH LATER

John Barth’s literary modus operandi was to challenge the established norms, summarising his approach in his essay The Literature of Exhaustion. His most influential works were The Sot-Weed Factor, which lampooned historical fiction on a colonial Maryland tobacco farm, and Giles Goat-Boy, featuring a part-caprine protagonist and condensing the Cold War into a college campus. He was 93 and picked by My Wife Left Me.

John Barth
27 May 1930 – 2 April 2024, aged 93
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