Word: authored
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Author John Barth, 49, began his career in the guise of a realist with a somewhat spooky sense of humor. The Floating Opera (1956) and The End of the Road (1958) appeared as slim companion pieces; they pivoted on the same philosophical question, i.e., how to impose values on a neutral universe; and both dwelt on despair as a source of grim comedy. But they were also set in a recognizable version of Maryland's Eastern Shore and populated with conventional characters. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) changed course. An encyclopedic parody of 18th century English picaresque fiction...
...possible to respect and admire the tenacity that drove the author to this pass. It is possible to state that no student of fiction will be able to ignore the existence of Letters. But it is almost impossible to read the book. Pore over, dip into, muse about, trace patterns through, yes. Follow it willingly and comfortably from beginning...
Letter from the author of Letters...
...this third novel (after Last Night at the Brain Thieves' Ball and Preservation Hall) Spencer builds a model of emergent love pursued to its obsessive extreme. The author constructs his tale around an apposite metaphor, catastrophic fire. Seventeen-year-old David Axelrod sets some newspapers alight on the porch of his beloved Jade's house after her parents have forbidden him to see her for 30 days. He wishes to attract attention and instead nearly incinerates Jade, her brothers and parents...
...professor of applied mechanics and biology at Harvard. Nine years ago. he wrote Principles of American Nuclear Chemistry: A Novel. It told of a teen-age boy growing up among the scientists at Los Alamos. N. Mex., as they calculated their way toward the atomic bomb. Here the author sets his sights backward by 100 years to spoof the pre-Darwinian notion of nature as the beneficent servant...