Word: barthes
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...weaving of different stories occurs more through curious echoes and cross-references than through comprehensible relations. Barth once again has his own defense ready in the words of Lady Amherst...
...might have trouble filling out the whole of this miniature allegory, but that's undoubtedly Barth in the corner, playing with his toy trains. The great conservative, the practitioner of a lost art, the bearer of the torch--so Barth justifies his extravagances...
...associations in Letters, however, come too thick, and it's a matter of chance which one your brain happens to pick out at any moment. As sheaves of pages pass by, Barth concentrates these associations in several arbitrary subjects: the War of 1812, which somehow prefigures a Second American Revolution; the decline of the profession of letters; the Maryland shore, scene of most of the action; the waning of the Indian tribes; others too numerous to mention. Except for the fleeting pleasure of realizing Barth is up to something, these associations offer the attentive reader nothing but work...
...real promise Barth holds for the patient reader is not this lie about meaningful associations but the endless cleverness he applies to the stuff of language, his individual words and sentences. At times this connoisseur of puns and multiple entendres can be seen doing proud headstands behind his latest verbal tricks. Without straining too hard or setting his sights on the outrageous, he usually finds just the odd phrasing, the curious reference to spark laughter. He describes Reg Prinz, a movie director filming one of Barth's novels during Letters...
More often than not, however, these nuggets of well-proportioned wit are isolated, self-contained, and have no need for the monstrous superstructure around them. Barth could have--and has--written wonderful short stories or brief novels with such material...