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LETTERS by John Barth; Putnam; 772 pages...
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...
Classed as a black humorist in the '50s, Barth was hailed as a fabulist in the '60s. He was actually becoming a school of one. Following hints in his own work and examples out of Beckett, Borges and Nabokov, he evolved assumptions that increasingly governed his fiction. Among them: the number of stories to tell is finite and dwindling; print has been rendered passe by film and electronics; realism is an irrational goal for the writer (What is real? Whose reality is it?); art rehashes art. Barth's response was to exalt artifice and make telling...
...Barth's career is germane not only because it is one of the most interesting in contemporary letters but also because it literally dictated Letters. The subject of the book, some ten years in the writing, is the body of Barth's previous fiction. Letters is a vast hall of mirrors, endlessly reflecting earlier reflections. After two decades of preparation, Barth has finally lost himself in his own funhouse...
First Period: Jack Hughes (Mike Watson, John Cochrane), 0:25; H--Bob McDonald (John Dunderdale, Jim Trainor), 11:30; H--Jon Garrity (Randy Millen, Steve Andrews) 16:20. Second Period: H--George Hughes (J. Hughes, Trainor) 7:22; H--G. Hughes (David Burke, Jackie Burke), 9:26; NH--Frank Barth (Ralph Cox, Frank Roy), 13:59; H--G. Hughes (J. Hughes), 14:12; H--G. Hughes (J. Burke, D. Burke), 18:55. Third Period: NH--Bob Gould (Bruce Crowder, Terry Flanagan), 0:25; H--D. Burke (Trainor, J. Burke), 4:40; NH--Roy (Barth, Coady), 17:18; NH--Gould (Crowder...