Word: barth
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Such jokes -- delivered, as all her slings are, with a great guileless smile -- fulfill the tradition of the defiant female wit, alive with innuendo, that stretches from the Wife of Bath to Belle Barth. They also tend to obscure Midler's unique talent. Yes, she coos bedroom ballads like Long John Blues; sure, her charts tease five decades of popular music with the wink of parody. But her laser-precise technique is no counterfeit of feeling. It is the art of the Method singer, who approaches a song as an actor does his text: finding the heft of a melodic...
Then one day a letter arrived from novelist John Barth asking her to come to Johns Hopkins and study with him, which she did. A friend, it turns out, had sent some of her work to him. "That was the first idea I had that my stories were of any interest. It was very exciting. I thought it was a mistake--this letter over what seemed to me journal, a girl's diary, and not conceivably of interest to anyone...
...rats of Parkinson's disease, a progressive and hitherto incurable neural disorder. In the U.S. and elsewhere, fetal-cell experiments with animals have shown promise of treatments for a host of other human disorders, ranging from blood diseases like thalassemia to paralysis caused by spinal-cord damage. Says Neurosurgeon Barth Green of the University of Miami: "This field isn't growing, it's exploding...
...seventh book in the series offers its share of insights and delights. John Barth claims that he became a writer by "passionate default." Edna O'Brien espouses chastity "except when one can no longer resist the temptation." Philip Roth, asked for the umpteenth time to compare himself to his "vividly transforming heroes," replies, "I am like somebody who is trying vividly to transform himself out of himself and into his vividly transforming heroes. I am very much like somebody who spends all day writing." Occasionally the interviewer gets the last word. When Malcolm Cowley attributes the phrase "a lost generation...
...when Paris Review editors send John Barth a check and additional questions to beef up a woefully brief interview, the author of the 800-page The Sot-Weed Factor returns the emolument with a curt note: "It doesn't displease me to hear that our interview will be perhaps the shortest one you've run. In fact, it's a bit shorter now than it was before (enclosed). Better not run it by me again...