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Letters
A landmark of postmodern American fiction, Letters is (as the subtitle genially informs us) "an old time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls & dreamers each of which imagines himself factual." Seven characters (including the Author himself) exchange a novel's worth of letters during a 7-month period in 1969, a time of revolution that recalls the U.S.'s first revolution in the 18th century - the heyday of the epistolary novel. Recapitulating American history as well as the plots of his first six novels, Barth's seventh novel is a witty and profound exploration of the nature of revolution and renewal, rebellion and reenactment, at both the private and public levels. It is also an ingenious meditation on the genre of the novel itself, recycling an older form to explore new directions, new possibilities for the novel.
772 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
12 people are currently reading
887 people want to read
About the author
John Barth
76 books792 followersJohn Barth briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, received a bachelor of arts in 1951 and composed
The Shirt of Nessus
, a thesis for a Magister Artium in 1952.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, distractions, stories, and lists, such as two prostitutes, who exchange lengthy insulting terms. The disillusioned fictional Ebenezer Cooke, repeatedly described as an innocent "poet and virgin" like Candide, sets out a heroic epic and ends up a biting satire.
He moved in 1965 to State University of New York at Buffalo. He visited as professor at Boston University in 1972. He served as professor from 1973 at Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1995.
The conceit of the university as universe based Giles Goat-Boy , a next speculative fiction of Barth comparable size. A half-goat discovers his humanity as a savior in a story, presented as a computer tape, given to Barth, who denies his work. In the course, Giles carries out all the tasks that Joseph Campbell prescribed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Barth meanwhile in the book kept a list of the tasks, taped to his wall.
The even more metafictional Lost in the Funhouse , the short story collection, and Chimera , the novella collection, than their two predecessors foreground the process and present achievements, such as seven nested quotations. In Letters , Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.
Barth meanwhile also pondered and discussed the theoretical problems of fiction, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion," first printed in the Atlantic in 1967, widely considered a statement of "the death of the novel" (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1979) a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment," to clarify the point.
Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterisation and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, distractions, stories, and lists, such as two prostitutes, who exchange lengthy insulting terms. The disillusioned fictional Ebenezer Cooke, repeatedly described as an innocent "poet and virgin" like Candide, sets out a heroic epic and ends up a biting satire.
He moved in 1965 to State University of New York at Buffalo. He visited as professor at Boston University in 1972. He served as professor from 1973 at Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1995.
The conceit of the university as universe based Giles Goat-Boy , a next speculative fiction of Barth comparable size. A half-goat discovers his humanity as a savior in a story, presented as a computer tape, given to Barth, who denies his work. In the course, Giles carries out all the tasks that Joseph Campbell prescribed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Barth meanwhile in the book kept a list of the tasks, taped to his wall.
The even more metafictional Lost in the Funhouse , the short story collection, and Chimera , the novella collection, than their two predecessors foreground the process and present achievements, such as seven nested quotations. In Letters , Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.
Barth meanwhile also pondered and discussed the theoretical problems of fiction, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion," first printed in the Atlantic in 1967, widely considered a statement of "the death of the novel" (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1979) a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment," to clarify the point.
Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterisation and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling.
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February 22, 2022
Epistolary novel – doesn’t it belong to the long gone days of yore? – not at all if the quill is in John Barth’s hand, in the hand of the author who can boldly turn any dubious fable into a postmodernistic tour de force.
Letters, where the personages send unbelievable missives to their author, serves as a gorgeous frametale to all the previous stories by John Barth – like a skillful magician he manages to combine the incompatible and to merge the immiscible, winning over the laws of space and time.
In our heads, anything can happen.
Yet, as a connoisseur of paradoxes, he understands to the bone that one of St. Augustine’s concerning time: that while the Present does not exist (it being the merely conceptual razor’s edge between the Past and the Future), at the same time it’s all there is: the Everlasting Now between a Past existing only in memory and a Future existing only in anticipation.
Letters, where the personages send unbelievable missives to their author, serves as a gorgeous frametale to all the previous stories by John Barth – like a skillful magician he manages to combine the incompatible and to merge the immiscible, winning over the laws of space and time.
In our heads, anything can happen.
September 2, 2018
MERE CRANKERY, INGENUOUS MIMICRIES AND ASININE LETTERS
This randy Maryland campus novel is obliged to carry an over-sexed excess of relentlessly juvenile meta-fictional baggage and correspondence towards its mock-revolutionary destination, thus making fools as well as knaves of its characters and readers alike.
Of all the many post-modernist works that I've read, this is undoubtedly the least rewarding of either effort or acumen.
It's a narrative of no consequence about characters of no interest
Dead Letter Office
To appropriate the words of Vladimir Nabokov, this novel is "second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up, mediocre, bogus, trite."
To appropriate the words of John Gardner, Barth is "well-meaning but trivial."
To appropriate the words of Karl Marx, this novel "made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part."
A LITTLE SOMETHING TO RELIEVE THE TEDIOCRITY:
A Tale of Two Fallen Men Interred
[After Andrew Burlingame Cook VI]
(Apologies to an Unknown Limericist)
Though some think I should be deterred,
Let me recall this Roman lore
To which you might not be privy
(Even if you know your Livy):
Two men fell through a toilet floor
And were found side by side interred.
The Agitation of One Ambrose Mensch
[Suggested by the Words of the Author]
Bearded hipsters with shirts of starchless denim,
They nag Marxists with squirts of pomo venom,
This coterie assembles its daisy chains
In which nobody challenges or complains,
So that each successive member can facilitate
An instalment of their divine ejaculate.
A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM A READER:
"JB", "Author"
"Dear" "Sir"
I write so that you cannot pretend not to know me, one of your readers, if not an obsequious one. On 26 May, 2018, it came to my attention that you had written a REVOLUTIONARY NOVEL in order to establish a new and sounder base of empire, what's more, in pursuit of your audacious plan to become emperor of a world of your own creation. What is wanted to instigate the empire of your novel is nothing less than a Revolution, an adventure in which I at first considered myself well-suited by temperament at least to participate. By means which I will not here disclose (but which must bear some resemblance to the manner in which various other readers have obtained a copy of your NOVEL, notwithstanding that they might not yet have gone to the pains of reading it), I acquired a copy of your NOVEL and embarked upon the task of reading it on the date heretofore mentioned as closely and attentively as a college professor. Indeed, "dear" "sir", I must admit I embarked upon this task on no less than two occasions. For I learned soon after each respective embarkation that your NOVEL was a desolated rock upon which I might maroon myself, if I had not already done so. No sooner had my journey commenced than I wished that it might end. Yet it appeared from the weight that I held in my right hand that there was no ready end to my journey in sight. Nevertheless, I imagined that because my journey was both temporary (as I then thought) and as it were voluntary (if misguided), that I should persevere until its completion on, dare I say it, page 772 (which I confess is not the longest book I have had the pleasure of reading, albeit it might be the longest displeasure, if I am to be frank). Let me be the first to confess that I am no syntactical analyst, let alone a prescriptive grammarian. Yet I should be remiss not to admit that I soon enough came to sympathise with your propositions that the truth of fiction is that Fact is fantasy; that the made-up story is a model of the world. My principal complaint, and where perhaps we might have parted company, aye, there's the rub, regards the implication that it is the duty of the Revolutionary Novelist to create a model of the world in infinite detail and verisimilitude (as far as is permitted by the means of language). Since the author first published his Revolutionary Novel on the margins of the academic as well as the literary establishment (some many years before this reader commenced to peruse it), the reader has acquainted himself with certain other novels created, evidently, on the foundation of the author's propositions, you could say on the footers of those same false stones, only to find that the second or subsequent writer did not necessarily have the author's knowledge or skill to replicate his achievement (as I presume it must be, you claiming with some justification to be by temperament a fabricator, drawn to wholesale invention, not a drawer-from-life). Not everything that every so-called writer writes is worthy of writing, publication or, for that matter, reading and reviewing. These other writings (composed by young writers whose then ambition it was to render the entire quotidian into prose) filled me full, without fulfilling me, being little more than a visual orchestration of the author's Weltanschauung. Indeed, they seemed to do all in their power to mock your avant-garde contraptions and contrivances, your passion for everything, your literary career, your committee work, your apparently abundant sex life, and your legacy, by virtue of not being the exemplary fictions they represented themselves as being, but ciphered replies to various paternal or god-like academics and critics who like this kind of thing, and therefore practise the dark arts of Ad-mi-ra-ti-on, De-cla-ra-ti-on, Ex-hor-ta-ti-on. Perhaps now the author might understand why the reader was at first apprehensive and hesitant to read his NOVEL. That is if you are who you say you are, or the author is who the author in the book says he or she is. Surely it is enough that one author mimic the prose styles of other writers, without other writers in turn mimicing that author's prose style (the second an imitation of the first, the third a parody of the second)? That surely must be the task of the reader? The strategy would be madness if it were anyone else's; may be madness even so. To which speculation I will add only these few words, by way of completion of the author's own project. Wool of bat and tongue of dog.
A Reader
ON THE STRUCTURE OF "LETTERS"
Six Characters in Search of An Author
Barth (or one of his characters) explains "LETTERS" on page 654 of this 772 page contrivance:
This is about all you need to know about the meta-fictional strategy of the novel (it's a half page base for a 772 page superstructure), except for how the letters are arranged on the page.
Writer's Calendar Block
There is a block of text above the title of the novel that assembles the letters of the word "LETTERS" on individual pages of a calendar block (rotated 90 degrees). Each letter of the title consists of individual letters placed on the date of the month upon which a letter in the text is supposed to have been posted. Read from left to right, the block of text constitutes the subtitle of the novel.
The reader is supposed to infer that the mathematical or numerical basis of the calendar block might have dictated the text as a whole. However, I suspect that the letters were simply placed in the appropriate place to spell the word "LETTERS". Thus, the actual dates could be fortuitous and of no literary consequence, except that the letters were written and responded to in a feasible sequence. The block appears to be merely cosmetic. So much for aesthetic theory.
Abstract Possibilities of Form
Barth intertwines a concern with revolution, recycling, recurrence, repetition (compulsion), resetting, and re-enactment throughout the text.
There is nothing remotely political, let alone dialectical or materialistic, in the embrace of revolution. It is purely aesthetic, and only philosophical in a German Idealistic sense. One of Barth's alter egos scorns "one of your high-society lefties..." Another declares:
This stage of Barth's fiction (like the coterie of readers it attracts) is nevertheless trapped in an abstract literary world, where all that counts is the imaginary universe that has been fabricated by the (an[y]) author ("the written universe"), not to mention the boggy marshlands and semen-stained sheets of the author's fantasies.
Foiled by His Own Folly
The novel purports to be revolutionary in its methods, but is really only an appropriation of an exhausted form, the epistolary novel. It falls down in the execution, being just as exhausting and exhausted as its literary forbears and historical sources . It engenders the same feeling in its readers, no matter how attentive and patient:
"I feel I could write on, write on to the end of time!"
The Farcical View of History
It brings to mind a comment by Karl Marx (from "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon") that:
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
This is certainly true of "LETTERS".
An Uphill Climb
If nothing else, it is a farce from beginning to end, if not, regrettably, an entertainment.
Ironically, George Steiner (the champion of the Tragic View) described "LETTERS" as prolix, narcissistic, and "a more or less indigestible classroom soufflé". One might well ask whether for every Narcissus there must be an Echo. One might also ask, as did Paul Keating, whether this soufflé could rise twice (that is, assuming it ever rose at least once).
He should have thrown all of these letters onto the fire.
Tidewater Island
[Apologies to "Gilligan's Island"]
So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long, long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.
SOUNDTRACK:
This randy Maryland campus novel is obliged to carry an over-sexed excess of relentlessly juvenile meta-fictional baggage and correspondence towards its mock-revolutionary destination, thus making fools as well as knaves of its characters and readers alike.
Of all the many post-modernist works that I've read, this is undoubtedly the least rewarding of either effort or acumen.
It's a narrative of no consequence about characters of no interest
Dead Letter Office
To appropriate the words of Vladimir Nabokov, this novel is "second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up, mediocre, bogus, trite."
To appropriate the words of John Gardner, Barth is "well-meaning but trivial."
To appropriate the words of Karl Marx, this novel "made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part."
A LITTLE SOMETHING TO RELIEVE THE TEDIOCRITY:
A Tale of Two Fallen Men Interred
[After Andrew Burlingame Cook VI]
(Apologies to an Unknown Limericist)
Though some think I should be deterred,
Let me recall this Roman lore
To which you might not be privy
(Even if you know your Livy):
Two men fell through a toilet floor
And were found side by side interred.
The Agitation of One Ambrose Mensch
[Suggested by the Words of the Author]
Bearded hipsters with shirts of starchless denim,
They nag Marxists with squirts of pomo venom,
This coterie assembles its daisy chains
In which nobody challenges or complains,
So that each successive member can facilitate
An instalment of their divine ejaculate.
A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM A READER:
"JB", "Author"
"Dear" "Sir"
I write so that you cannot pretend not to know me, one of your readers, if not an obsequious one. On 26 May, 2018, it came to my attention that you had written a REVOLUTIONARY NOVEL in order to establish a new and sounder base of empire, what's more, in pursuit of your audacious plan to become emperor of a world of your own creation. What is wanted to instigate the empire of your novel is nothing less than a Revolution, an adventure in which I at first considered myself well-suited by temperament at least to participate. By means which I will not here disclose (but which must bear some resemblance to the manner in which various other readers have obtained a copy of your NOVEL, notwithstanding that they might not yet have gone to the pains of reading it), I acquired a copy of your NOVEL and embarked upon the task of reading it on the date heretofore mentioned as closely and attentively as a college professor. Indeed, "dear" "sir", I must admit I embarked upon this task on no less than two occasions. For I learned soon after each respective embarkation that your NOVEL was a desolated rock upon which I might maroon myself, if I had not already done so. No sooner had my journey commenced than I wished that it might end. Yet it appeared from the weight that I held in my right hand that there was no ready end to my journey in sight. Nevertheless, I imagined that because my journey was both temporary (as I then thought) and as it were voluntary (if misguided), that I should persevere until its completion on, dare I say it, page 772 (which I confess is not the longest book I have had the pleasure of reading, albeit it might be the longest displeasure, if I am to be frank). Let me be the first to confess that I am no syntactical analyst, let alone a prescriptive grammarian. Yet I should be remiss not to admit that I soon enough came to sympathise with your propositions that the truth of fiction is that Fact is fantasy; that the made-up story is a model of the world. My principal complaint, and where perhaps we might have parted company, aye, there's the rub, regards the implication that it is the duty of the Revolutionary Novelist to create a model of the world in infinite detail and verisimilitude (as far as is permitted by the means of language). Since the author first published his Revolutionary Novel on the margins of the academic as well as the literary establishment (some many years before this reader commenced to peruse it), the reader has acquainted himself with certain other novels created, evidently, on the foundation of the author's propositions, you could say on the footers of those same false stones, only to find that the second or subsequent writer did not necessarily have the author's knowledge or skill to replicate his achievement (as I presume it must be, you claiming with some justification to be by temperament a fabricator, drawn to wholesale invention, not a drawer-from-life). Not everything that every so-called writer writes is worthy of writing, publication or, for that matter, reading and reviewing. These other writings (composed by young writers whose then ambition it was to render the entire quotidian into prose) filled me full, without fulfilling me, being little more than a visual orchestration of the author's Weltanschauung. Indeed, they seemed to do all in their power to mock your avant-garde contraptions and contrivances, your passion for everything, your literary career, your committee work, your apparently abundant sex life, and your legacy, by virtue of not being the exemplary fictions they represented themselves as being, but ciphered replies to various paternal or god-like academics and critics who like this kind of thing, and therefore practise the dark arts of Ad-mi-ra-ti-on, De-cla-ra-ti-on, Ex-hor-ta-ti-on. Perhaps now the author might understand why the reader was at first apprehensive and hesitant to read his NOVEL. That is if you are who you say you are, or the author is who the author in the book says he or she is. Surely it is enough that one author mimic the prose styles of other writers, without other writers in turn mimicing that author's prose style (the second an imitation of the first, the third a parody of the second)? That surely must be the task of the reader? The strategy would be madness if it were anyone else's; may be madness even so. To which speculation I will add only these few words, by way of completion of the author's own project. Wool of bat and tongue of dog.
A Reader
ON THE STRUCTURE OF "LETTERS"
Six Characters in Search of An Author
Barth (or one of his characters) explains "LETTERS" on page 654 of this 772 page contrivance:
"I am smitten with that earliest-exhausted of English novel-forms, the epistolary novel, already worked to death by the end of the 18th Century. Like yourself an official honorary Doctor of Letters, I take it as among my functions to administer artificial resuscitation to the apparently dead.
"It will consist of letters (like this, but with a plot) between several correspondents, the capital-A Author perhaps included, and preoccupy itself with among other things, the role of epistles - real letters, forged and doctored letters - in the history of History.
"It will also be concerned with, and of course constituted of, alphabetical letters: the atoms of which the written universe is made.
"Finally, to a small extent the book is addressed to the phenomenon of literature itself; the third main sense of our word letters: Literature, which a certain film nut is quoted as calling 'that moderately interesting historical phenomenon, of no present importance.
"LETTERS is a seven-letter word; the letters in LETTERS are to be from seven correspondents, some recruited from my earlier stories (a sure sign, such recycling, that an author approached 40). They'll be dated over the seven months from March through September 1969, though they may also involve the upcoming U.S. Bicentennial (a certain number of years hence), the War of 1812, the American Revolution, revolutions and recyclings generally. I've even determined how many letters will be required (88, arranged and distributed in a certain way: a modest total)...but I'm not yet ready to declare what the book's about!"
This is about all you need to know about the meta-fictional strategy of the novel (it's a half page base for a 772 page superstructure), except for how the letters are arranged on the page.
Writer's Calendar Block
There is a block of text above the title of the novel that assembles the letters of the word "LETTERS" on individual pages of a calendar block (rotated 90 degrees). Each letter of the title consists of individual letters placed on the date of the month upon which a letter in the text is supposed to have been posted. Read from left to right, the block of text constitutes the subtitle of the novel.
The reader is supposed to infer that the mathematical or numerical basis of the calendar block might have dictated the text as a whole. However, I suspect that the letters were simply placed in the appropriate place to spell the word "LETTERS". Thus, the actual dates could be fortuitous and of no literary consequence, except that the letters were written and responded to in a feasible sequence. The block appears to be merely cosmetic. So much for aesthetic theory.
Abstract Possibilities of Form
Barth intertwines a concern with revolution, recycling, recurrence, repetition (compulsion), resetting, and re-enactment throughout the text.
There is nothing remotely political, let alone dialectical or materialistic, in the embrace of revolution. It is purely aesthetic, and only philosophical in a German Idealistic sense. One of Barth's alter egos scorns "one of your high-society lefties..." Another declares:
"If one imagines an artist less enamoured of the world than of the language we signify it with, yet less enamoured of the language than of the signifying narration, and yet less enamoured of the narration than its formal arrangement, one need not necessarily imagine that artist therefore forsaking the world for language, language for the processes of narration, and those processes for the abstract possibilities of form."
This stage of Barth's fiction (like the coterie of readers it attracts) is nevertheless trapped in an abstract literary world, where all that counts is the imaginary universe that has been fabricated by the (an[y]) author ("the written universe"), not to mention the boggy marshlands and semen-stained sheets of the author's fantasies.
Foiled by His Own Folly
The novel purports to be revolutionary in its methods, but is really only an appropriation of an exhausted form, the epistolary novel. It falls down in the execution, being just as exhausting and exhausted as its literary forbears and historical sources . It engenders the same feeling in its readers, no matter how attentive and patient:
"I feel I could write on, write on to the end of time!"
The Farcical View of History
It brings to mind a comment by Karl Marx (from "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon") that:
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
This is certainly true of "LETTERS".
An Uphill Climb
If nothing else, it is a farce from beginning to end, if not, regrettably, an entertainment.
Ironically, George Steiner (the champion of the Tragic View) described "LETTERS" as prolix, narcissistic, and "a more or less indigestible classroom soufflé". One might well ask whether for every Narcissus there must be an Echo. One might also ask, as did Paul Keating, whether this soufflé could rise twice (that is, assuming it ever rose at least once).
He should have thrown all of these letters onto the fire.
Tidewater Island
[Apologies to "Gilligan's Island"]
So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long, long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.
SOUNDTRACK:
Read
May 7, 2016Sot-Weed and Giles are both really excellent and simply boat=loads of fun. But could you imagine if The Recognitions or Gravity's Rainbow had only 158 ratings & 9 reviews ; you'd be stumbling around bruising yourself in total discombobulation of incredulity. So is the case with LETTERS: An Old Time Epistolary Novel By Seven Fictitious Drolls & Dreamers Each of Which Imagines Himself Factual.
Also, it's another instance (cf, Sot-Weed, Mason&Dixon, Seven Dreams, Gravities Rainbow, etc etc) which showcases the central importance of politics and history (ie, "real life") to the so=called "pomo novel" as such. It's not only Federman who cares about this stuff.
______________
Yes. Read this. But first read Barth's previous books -- The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, Lost in the Funhouse, and Chimera. Characters from Barth's previous novels are recycled for a chance to interact, via LETTERS, with their author/creator. Plus a new voice or two. Genius.
_______________
Reviewed by Thomas R. Edwards in The New York Times,
"A Novel of Correspondences"
"Works of genius are often annoying, intimidating, full of difficulties that need to be thought about quietly long after one has read them. I'm sure that I don't fully understand this quirky, wasteful, fascinating thing Barth has done; I suspect that it may not be "understandable" in any ordinary sense. But I'm convinced that it is a work of genius whether one likes it or not. These negotiations between belief and doubt, sanity and madness, living in the present and living in all of the past that one can know or invent, are not just bravura performances by a master illusionist, though Barth indeed is one, but a picture, both frightening and enlivening, of how it is that we live. "The End of the Road" and "The Sot-Weed Factor" remain for me Barth's most satisfying novels, the ones in which ends and means are most harmoniously adjusted. But "LETTERS" comes as a rather unwelcome but needed reminder that satisfaction is not the highest end of art."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/21...
[thnks Friend Jonathan for the link]
Also, it's another instance (cf, Sot-Weed, Mason&Dixon, Seven Dreams, Gravities Rainbow, etc etc) which showcases the central importance of politics and history (ie, "real life") to the so=called "pomo novel" as such. It's not only Federman who cares about this stuff.
______________
Yes. Read this. But first read Barth's previous books -- The Floating Opera, The End of the Road, The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, Lost in the Funhouse, and Chimera. Characters from Barth's previous novels are recycled for a chance to interact, via LETTERS, with their author/creator. Plus a new voice or two. Genius.
_______________
Reviewed by Thomas R. Edwards in The New York Times,
"A Novel of Correspondences"
"Works of genius are often annoying, intimidating, full of difficulties that need to be thought about quietly long after one has read them. I'm sure that I don't fully understand this quirky, wasteful, fascinating thing Barth has done; I suspect that it may not be "understandable" in any ordinary sense. But I'm convinced that it is a work of genius whether one likes it or not. These negotiations between belief and doubt, sanity and madness, living in the present and living in all of the past that one can know or invent, are not just bravura performances by a master illusionist, though Barth indeed is one, but a picture, both frightening and enlivening, of how it is that we live. "The End of the Road" and "The Sot-Weed Factor" remain for me Barth's most satisfying novels, the ones in which ends and means are most harmoniously adjusted. But "LETTERS" comes as a rather unwelcome but needed reminder that satisfaction is not the highest end of art."
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/21...
[thnks Friend Jonathan for the link]
December 15, 2010
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I remember how excited I was when Letters was published in '79, I was a longtime Barth admirer and looked forward to it. However, I couldn't even understand the reviews. Puzzled by what critics had to say about Letters, I was intimidated and didn't attempt it for several years. As it turned out, I had no trouble with it; I liked it immensely and was very much impressed by what Barth had done. After all these years I'm still impressed and think it one of the great novels of our time because it's such an energetic and all-encompassing spectacle of fiction. To say it's encyclopedic or a symphony is only to approach describng what it is. It's so huge and complex it can hardly be held in the mind. It's writing as big as its settings of Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes and everything in between. What's it about? Letters is an epistolary novel made up of letters written by the Author and 6 of the characters from his first 6 works of fiction braided together in a plot running from spring to summer of 1969 but including as well many events of the American Revolution and the War of 1812. As all of Barth's novels, the focus is on story and stories within stories, and there are many here involving not only the historical settings but the maneuverings of present-day campus politics and the filming of one of Barth's novels. So these characters from Barth's previous fictions make another appearance, but the main characters of the novel are language, the alphabet, and numbers. As you might expect, Letters is about those 26 individuals we use to form language. And more, it's about the nature of history itself, revolution, the patterns of lives, mid-life crisis, recyclings of all sorts, what makes up images, the nature of literature, and myth. It's about everything. And because it is, we--or I, at least--can never grasp the whole of it and know I'll never be finished with it. Because like Finnegans Wake or Against the Day it's a Mariana Trench of a novel, I'll always be able to dive deep into it and feel the currents of language and be amazed at the wonders found there, but I won't be able to find the bottom. Letters is a breathtaking novel.
August 15, 2019
Some notes on architecture and the number seven re: Letters, (the which have been liberally culled from reviews around the web, encyclopediae, etc. although I've thrown in perhaps half a dash of my own observations.)
John Barth is said to be twin, and twinning is a theme not only in his individual fictions, but in the oeuvre he was building in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
His first two novels are short, realist novels of similar length, so let's think of those as twins.
His next two books, and arguably his most famous: The Sot Weed Factor & Giles Goat-Boy, these novels, unlike their predecessors, are mammoths, of comparable scope, and constitute a second set of twins.
For books five and six we see a scaling back to short-story collections, so twins again! Lost in the Funhouse contains a striking story, The Menelaiad, where the number seven first appears in the form of a conversation that is nested seven layers deep, replete with attendant punctuation marks. (which demonstrate, in a sense, how the text is impossible to capture properly in an audio recording) Is this seven some mystical fictive limit we are moving toward?
At last we come to Barth's seventh book, LETTERS, in which the characters of his six previous novels interact. The title is seven letters long. The book is divided into seven parts. LETTERS itself by its construction can be thought of as a further twinning of the previous six novels, giving us a work of uber-fiction spanning a total of twelve units. This twelve brings to mind among other things the number of books in The Aeneid, which is mentioned frequently in the text.
I find this architecture very imaginative (unless I am only imagining it? but no, I think it is there) but also pleasant, ambitious, and inspiring. I'm amazed how one person over the course of three decades could have pulled off such a thing. But is it possible that Mr. Barth did not, in fact, pull it off? Is it possible that he only wrote, say, the even books, and his twin wrote the odd?
John Barth is said to be twin, and twinning is a theme not only in his individual fictions, but in the oeuvre he was building in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
His first two novels are short, realist novels of similar length, so let's think of those as twins.
His next two books, and arguably his most famous: The Sot Weed Factor & Giles Goat-Boy, these novels, unlike their predecessors, are mammoths, of comparable scope, and constitute a second set of twins.
For books five and six we see a scaling back to short-story collections, so twins again! Lost in the Funhouse contains a striking story, The Menelaiad, where the number seven first appears in the form of a conversation that is nested seven layers deep, replete with attendant punctuation marks. (which demonstrate, in a sense, how the text is impossible to capture properly in an audio recording) Is this seven some mystical fictive limit we are moving toward?
At last we come to Barth's seventh book, LETTERS, in which the characters of his six previous novels interact. The title is seven letters long. The book is divided into seven parts. LETTERS itself by its construction can be thought of as a further twinning of the previous six novels, giving us a work of uber-fiction spanning a total of twelve units. This twelve brings to mind among other things the number of books in The Aeneid, which is mentioned frequently in the text.
I find this architecture very imaginative (unless I am only imagining it? but no, I think it is there) but also pleasant, ambitious, and inspiring. I'm amazed how one person over the course of three decades could have pulled off such a thing. But is it possible that Mr. Barth did not, in fact, pull it off? Is it possible that he only wrote, say, the even books, and his twin wrote the odd?
June 11, 2015
This has been my first Barth, so I didn't really know what to expect - and definitely didn't expect the book to be as absolutely gorgeous as this. With the fear of making the novel sound bland, I don't know when I've last read a book so joyful and filled with love of life, the world and not least writing. And bland the book never is, quite the opposite, sharply intelligent and playfully mischievous in the way the central themes (very broadly speaking - the novel is dense with plot!) of revolutions, the passage into adulthood, and the nature of re-enactments mirror and double in an intricate structure of letters commenting on and sometimes contradicting each other and slowly disclosing connections between seemingly unrelated characters and narrative strands. Also: It is perfectly written, very entertaining, often quite funny, sometimes surprisingly touching, a few places uncomfortably dark, and containing an impressive amount of sex too. What more could you want? Big recommendation!
March 4, 2017
Dear John,
Your "interminable masterpiece" has been perused with undaunted relish. My especial thanks to you for preserving as much of the difficulty of authorship as possible for the readership: unblemished exquisiteness comes only with patience, labor, and suffering. Every concession to ease falsifies the claims of the result. Out of respect for our intelligence, you didn't dumb it down. By soliciting us to draw ever closer to what we could be you refused to cater to the narcissistic malformations of what we are. In giving everything, you asked that we give a little in return, and for every little bit we are willing to give your rewards are disproportionately gratuitous, just giving and giving. The lengths to which true kindness, pleasure, and passion must go seem cruel to those conditioned on effortless quickies, shallow arousal whose facile placation is as immediate as its oblivion and replacement. It's all well and good to talk about the ocean from the shore, but if one can't get in over their head don't bitch about how everything seems so flat. Turn back before the breakers and prate in the tidepools about what's deeply moving, heart-something, sumptuous slices of snooze, and sundry other bookclub blurbtalk that exhausts equally its material and readers in the span of the back flap. LETTERS is a ponderous missive from a forgotten past to a potential future world of sense now impossibly remote, so it's no surprise its fate is to be savagely ignored. As long as life continues to lack and spurn the dignity of literature I for one will all the more vehemently cherish the countervailing word. Between this world and LETTERS I'll choose the latter and we'll sink into surly obsolescence together.
The question is not, "Is LETTERS good?"--it's "Are you?" For so voluminous an inquiry into Everything; for so staunch an example of the binding power of language against the pulverizing force of Existence; for preserving the futile hope of a Someday better than Today, no one is more awed and humbled than
Your devoted Reader,
____________
P.S. I truncate this already prolix reply not because there's no more to say but because there is so much more to read. I can't go on, I'll go on with the story.
Your "interminable masterpiece" has been perused with undaunted relish. My especial thanks to you for preserving as much of the difficulty of authorship as possible for the readership: unblemished exquisiteness comes only with patience, labor, and suffering. Every concession to ease falsifies the claims of the result. Out of respect for our intelligence, you didn't dumb it down. By soliciting us to draw ever closer to what we could be you refused to cater to the narcissistic malformations of what we are. In giving everything, you asked that we give a little in return, and for every little bit we are willing to give your rewards are disproportionately gratuitous, just giving and giving. The lengths to which true kindness, pleasure, and passion must go seem cruel to those conditioned on effortless quickies, shallow arousal whose facile placation is as immediate as its oblivion and replacement. It's all well and good to talk about the ocean from the shore, but if one can't get in over their head don't bitch about how everything seems so flat. Turn back before the breakers and prate in the tidepools about what's deeply moving, heart-something, sumptuous slices of snooze, and sundry other bookclub blurbtalk that exhausts equally its material and readers in the span of the back flap. LETTERS is a ponderous missive from a forgotten past to a potential future world of sense now impossibly remote, so it's no surprise its fate is to be savagely ignored. As long as life continues to lack and spurn the dignity of literature I for one will all the more vehemently cherish the countervailing word. Between this world and LETTERS I'll choose the latter and we'll sink into surly obsolescence together.
The question is not, "Is LETTERS good?"--it's "Are you?" For so voluminous an inquiry into Everything; for so staunch an example of the binding power of language against the pulverizing force of Existence; for preserving the futile hope of a Someday better than Today, no one is more awed and humbled than
Your devoted Reader,
____________
P.S. I truncate this already prolix reply not because there's no more to say but because there is so much more to read. I can't go on, I'll go on with the story.
March 8, 2008
With magisterial swagger and invention, this novel takes on all of American history. In particular, it considers the little-known "second Revolution," the War of 1812, while also embracing an immigrant story of the mid-20th Century, and spending a lot of time among the Further freaks of the 1960s. Yet for all its human drama, LETTERS may bedazzle more with its formal innovation. This is the only novel I know that bases its form on the alphabet -- and brings off, nonetheless, a richly peopled and emotionally satisfying story. Barth's accomplishment is far more complex and engaging, in other words, than Abish's in ALPHABETICAL AFRICA or Sorrentino's in SPLENDIDE-HOTEL. The book's insights into love, for instance, or into the attempts at redemption that come on in middle age, are the stuff of great spirits, not just aesthetes. Under-read, well-nigh unknown, this superb novel is still waiting for its time.
July 21, 2018
Letters is John Barth’s most controversial work. Supporters hail it as a postmodern masterpiece, detractors deride it as self-indulgent to the point of unreadability. I think both characterizations are overstated; Letters is ambitious and sporadically brilliant, but also fails more than it succeeds.
Letters tells six or seven interweaving stories in epistolary form, through letters narrated by several different characters, most of whom are reclaimed from earlier Barth works. The stories include a romance, a family history, a shooting of a post-verbal film, a retelling of American post-revolutionary history through a conspiracy lens, a crazed psychotic’s plot, the happenings at a bizarre sanatorium, and the struggles of an older man to find meaning in life. Plus, there are several subplots and interludes relating to the social upheavals of the late 1960s. The stories loosely interrelate, and the characters move in and out of each other’s stories. In typical Barth form, most of the book takes place in and around the Chesapeake Bay in the late 1960s.
At its best, it’s a marvelous work. When describing growing up in mid-century small-town Maryland, or the wild plot to rescue Napoleon, it’s just a delight to read. The late-middle of the book is really fun and pulls together the many plot-strands in an interesting way. The overall postmodern structure is complex yet well-balanced. And the character of Germaine St. Pitt is one of Barth’s most winning creations; the reader always looks forward to hearing her voice.
At its worst, however, it’s unengaging and sometimes plodding. Some of the plots are chores to read, others are just overly wacky without being funny. Some of the interconnections between the segments feel overly forced. The sexual content is overplayed and turns darker for no apparent reason. There’s too much repetition of historical fact paragraphs and too many similar voices among characters whose voices should read dissimilarly. And like most massive postmodern novels, it finishes with a tried-and-true-but-no-less-annoying-for-all-that abrupt-ending-just-before-the-conclusion-of-most-of-the-character’s-arcs.
Nonetheless, in the arc of Barth’s career, I think Letters is a valuable turning point. It closes the chapter on his earlier works, launching the next phase of his writing. I don’t think his next few wonderful novels could have been written without it.
Having now read all of Barth’s major works, and most of his minor ones, I’ll share my three favorites: The Sot-Weed Factor, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, and The Tidewater Tales. Those are the ones I’d recommend to friends as representing the best of his work.
Letters tells six or seven interweaving stories in epistolary form, through letters narrated by several different characters, most of whom are reclaimed from earlier Barth works. The stories include a romance, a family history, a shooting of a post-verbal film, a retelling of American post-revolutionary history through a conspiracy lens, a crazed psychotic’s plot, the happenings at a bizarre sanatorium, and the struggles of an older man to find meaning in life. Plus, there are several subplots and interludes relating to the social upheavals of the late 1960s. The stories loosely interrelate, and the characters move in and out of each other’s stories. In typical Barth form, most of the book takes place in and around the Chesapeake Bay in the late 1960s.
At its best, it’s a marvelous work. When describing growing up in mid-century small-town Maryland, or the wild plot to rescue Napoleon, it’s just a delight to read. The late-middle of the book is really fun and pulls together the many plot-strands in an interesting way. The overall postmodern structure is complex yet well-balanced. And the character of Germaine St. Pitt is one of Barth’s most winning creations; the reader always looks forward to hearing her voice.
At its worst, however, it’s unengaging and sometimes plodding. Some of the plots are chores to read, others are just overly wacky without being funny. Some of the interconnections between the segments feel overly forced. The sexual content is overplayed and turns darker for no apparent reason. There’s too much repetition of historical fact paragraphs and too many similar voices among characters whose voices should read dissimilarly. And like most massive postmodern novels, it finishes with a tried-and-true-but-no-less-annoying-for-all-that abrupt-ending-just-before-the-conclusion-of-most-of-the-character’s-arcs.
Nonetheless, in the arc of Barth’s career, I think Letters is a valuable turning point. It closes the chapter on his earlier works, launching the next phase of his writing. I don’t think his next few wonderful novels could have been written without it.
Having now read all of Barth’s major works, and most of his minor ones, I’ll share my three favorites: The Sot-Weed Factor, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, and The Tidewater Tales. Those are the ones I’d recommend to friends as representing the best of his work.
July 15, 2024
Closed-circuit history is for compulsives; Perseus and I are into spirals, presumably outbound.
Having read The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and now LETTERS, I’m beginning to suspect all of Barth’s novels are the same; a mathematician with more skill and zeal than I could draw up a nifty isomorphism between them, and were Barth still with us he’d no doubt appreciate it. The superficial elements vary wildly but within them beat very similar hearts. It's the big joke at the heart of LETTERS- that everything is recycled, iterates on itself and its predecessors whether aware or not.
The more Barth you've read going into this, the better; at the very least read Sot-Weed first, as its the most vital to the setting (and also is his most significant book, worth reading for its own sake and for its influence on other writers). Like other big 20th-century "postmodernist" volumes this book has a little of everything; parts are sad or gross or frightening, parts are comfy or downright joyous, but Barth's signature playfulness and humor pervade, as in his others. Its writing was a serious undertaking, and within these pages are a solid decade's worth of a good brain's distillation. If there's a weakness it's a relative lack of style in the prose, but Barth makes up for this with the aforementioned humor, the dizzying complexity of the "plot", and like the aforementioned mathematician an effort to simplify what can be simplified such that that complexity can be properly beheld.
R.I.P. J.B.
Having read The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy, and now LETTERS, I’m beginning to suspect all of Barth’s novels are the same; a mathematician with more skill and zeal than I could draw up a nifty isomorphism between them, and were Barth still with us he’d no doubt appreciate it. The superficial elements vary wildly but within them beat very similar hearts. It's the big joke at the heart of LETTERS- that everything is recycled, iterates on itself and its predecessors whether aware or not.
The more Barth you've read going into this, the better; at the very least read Sot-Weed first, as its the most vital to the setting (and also is his most significant book, worth reading for its own sake and for its influence on other writers). Like other big 20th-century "postmodernist" volumes this book has a little of everything; parts are sad or gross or frightening, parts are comfy or downright joyous, but Barth's signature playfulness and humor pervade, as in his others. Its writing was a serious undertaking, and within these pages are a solid decade's worth of a good brain's distillation. If there's a weakness it's a relative lack of style in the prose, but Barth makes up for this with the aforementioned humor, the dizzying complexity of the "plot", and like the aforementioned mathematician an effort to simplify what can be simplified such that that complexity can be properly beheld.
R.I.P. J.B.
August 21, 2022
2+ months later - this may be the longest it’s ever taken me to read a book. As usual with a novel this size, I alternated between believing it to be one of the best books I’ve ever read, being bored to tears, and feeling like I was going to have to reread it someday to begin to juggle all of these characters, each plot and its connecting threads.
And now that it’s done, I’m not sure how to feel. It’s the best Barth I’ve read outside of The Sot-Weed Factor, it’s a worthy addition to my collection of postmodern doorstops, and now that it no longer taunts me from my bookshelf, it will continue to taunt me from my memory.
I’ll pick it up again eventually, someday when I’m a different person.
And now that it’s done, I’m not sure how to feel. It’s the best Barth I’ve read outside of The Sot-Weed Factor, it’s a worthy addition to my collection of postmodern doorstops, and now that it no longer taunts me from my bookshelf, it will continue to taunt me from my memory.
I’ll pick it up again eventually, someday when I’m a different person.
April 1, 2025
I think this was one of my most disappointed reads maybe ever. I'm a big Barth fan, I would say he's written two of my favourite books of all time. Letters brings together characters and plot points from his first 6 books and this thing is long and boring, lifeless, the worst thing I've read by Barth.
October 21, 2025
in which The Author overreacts a tad to one of his novels getting an arguably objectionable movie adaptation
January 7, 2021
The quintessential po-mo self-referential metafiction I would think. Barth here explores the whole history of narrative fiction, interrogates the worthiness of the concept of fiction at all, undermines the assumptions of modern realistic fiction, disputes "death of the author" theorizing by just making himself a character in this fantasia of American history, pokes angry fun at computer-centered futurism and lovingly details a Chesapeake Bay sailing adventure. It is at times a nutty read (the whole Jerome Bray sections, a weak satire of the efforts of computer geeks to digitize all experience), at times a slew of confusion of characters that seem to shape shift, change and interchange identities (the A.B. Cook sections), at times a somewhat embarrassing TMI sex farce (Germaine Pitt/Lady Amherst-Ambrose Mensch sections), at times an obvious satire of the pretensions of third-rate regional academia (the whole honorary degree debacle, which brings the Author in as a character, though a rather removed, distant and uninvolved character, although of course all the other characters are just manifestations of the Author's imagination, which is, after all, what fiction is, and is all about). And let's not forget the elaboration of a chapter of American history that is all too often glossed over without much discussion or inquiry--the French and Indian Wars and their aftermath in the War of 1812, which, according to Barth (who clearly did a lot of research) was the occasion for the first inklings of the states' right to secede from the Union (in this case, New York and New England breaking away), the beginnings of the expansionist spirit that got mythologized as "Manifest Destiny" in the aborted attempts to annex Canada to the Union, the first last gasp of Native Peoples to consolidate against the expansionist white man (the tragedy of Tecumseh). All this while playing with the not-quite-rational but nevertheless sort of fun "anniversary theory of history" (lists of notable events that took place on the same day of the year at various times in history, an obsession of the Jacob Horner character) and the sort-of paranoid notion that history is just a series of inter-related plots, schemes, broken promises, spies, misinformation, deception, false identities and double and triple crosses as embodied in Henry Burlingame and his progeny.
I will remember that I plugged along and plowed through this nutty mishmash, trying to finish it by the end of 2020, but just couldn't. I will remember its thorough readability, even when the details of the plots, counter-plots, multiple identities of characters and what, exactly is going on in the historical recreation sections became hard to follow. It was fun to read, sort of, the kind of fun difficult fiction geeks have when they read something they are pretty sure no one else they know would be the least bit interested in.
I will remember Barth's efforts to ponder, through his fiction, the nature and purpose of fiction, his investigation of the history of tale-telling and the centrality of that process to human history and consciousness. Reading this certainly did make me want to revisit The Sot-Weed Factor (I am not so sure about The End of the Road or the lead-in post-modern experiments of Lost in the Funhouse or Chimera).
I will remember that I plugged along and plowed through this nutty mishmash, trying to finish it by the end of 2020, but just couldn't. I will remember its thorough readability, even when the details of the plots, counter-plots, multiple identities of characters and what, exactly is going on in the historical recreation sections became hard to follow. It was fun to read, sort of, the kind of fun difficult fiction geeks have when they read something they are pretty sure no one else they know would be the least bit interested in.
I will remember Barth's efforts to ponder, through his fiction, the nature and purpose of fiction, his investigation of the history of tale-telling and the centrality of that process to human history and consciousness. Reading this certainly did make me want to revisit The Sot-Weed Factor (I am not so sure about The End of the Road or the lead-in post-modern experiments of Lost in the Funhouse or Chimera).
December 15, 2014
One of the great things about this book is that Barth is able to tap into the ethos of all his included earlier works. It becomes almost a burden if you are familiar with the characters already, for it makes the reading experience one of constant nostalgia. The fresh reader will not have that problem, though I'm sure it adds to the epistolary experience as one connecting with characters you already "know."
That being said, Barth takes on a huge role in this novel. Though I disagree with many of the critics (I in fact find this book entirely readable), at the same time I feel his writing wanes as the structure takes over, leaving the middle to late third of the novel a bit hollow. Be that as it may, it is an admirable enterprise, and it highlights the power and anachronisms of the epistolary novel. Of particular consequence in his writing, one that extends beyond the work and becomes at the same time a literary criticism piece, is the fact that even back to the romantics, the novel was a form in which the story was written FOR someone. This breaks the conventional view of the omniscient perspective of detachment for the pure Deus Ex Machina. He blatantly turns the characters into the very gods that writing is supposed to supplant, creating a polytheistic story. This though is where he has his struggle. For while each perspective vies for its position in the plot, some inevitable take precedence and therefore diminish the role and subsequent relevance of some of the other writers. In fact, some of the secondary characters gain more relevance than do the authors themselves.
Overall a great read though for any fan of Barth or his criticism. His is not the most palatable touch. I find the best thing about him is that he does not try to be grandiose in his writings by making statements about life, but explores(even more explicitly in LETTERS) the very reality of words, symbols, and their effects on thought as a whole.
That being said, Barth takes on a huge role in this novel. Though I disagree with many of the critics (I in fact find this book entirely readable), at the same time I feel his writing wanes as the structure takes over, leaving the middle to late third of the novel a bit hollow. Be that as it may, it is an admirable enterprise, and it highlights the power and anachronisms of the epistolary novel. Of particular consequence in his writing, one that extends beyond the work and becomes at the same time a literary criticism piece, is the fact that even back to the romantics, the novel was a form in which the story was written FOR someone. This breaks the conventional view of the omniscient perspective of detachment for the pure Deus Ex Machina. He blatantly turns the characters into the very gods that writing is supposed to supplant, creating a polytheistic story. This though is where he has his struggle. For while each perspective vies for its position in the plot, some inevitable take precedence and therefore diminish the role and subsequent relevance of some of the other writers. In fact, some of the secondary characters gain more relevance than do the authors themselves.
Overall a great read though for any fan of Barth or his criticism. His is not the most palatable touch. I find the best thing about him is that he does not try to be grandiose in his writings by making statements about life, but explores(even more explicitly in LETTERS) the very reality of words, symbols, and their effects on thought as a whole.
September 17, 2011
God bless the library discard store.
Read
April 26, 2020I tried a new experiment with this re-reading and, for the most part, it worked wonderfully. I read the letters in the order in which they are dated, rather than the order in which they are collected in the novel. Everything seems to make much more sense that way. I feel Barth may have gone one experimental step too far in making this novel, so dependent on a kind of chronological progression via dated letters, non-linear. I admit, I still think it’s about 200 pages too long, and about 150 of those pages at least I would remove from the contributions of A.B. Cook VI. The history of the war of 1812 seems to be given more emphasis than makes any reasonable contribution to the bulk of the plot line unfolding in 1969, and Cook is not the most engaging of prose stylists. I could also do with less of J. B. Bray and Jacob Horner, but both of these gentlemen tend towards writing shorter bursts than does Mr. Cook. I continue to find Germaine Amherst the most interesting of the novel’s multiple narrators; I sincerely hope that is not solely because of how much she talks about sex. I hope that at least a good portion of my goodwill towards her arises from her being a new character. The novel is ‘recycled’ in a sense from all Barth’s previous work to date (1970s). While Lady Amherst is the most interesting, Todd Andrews remains the character with whom I feel the greatest sympathy even if he is also the one with whom I have the smallest overlap—an old Maryland lawyer and sailing enthusiast born in 1900. I have long agreed with Andrews on the Tragic View of human history (humanity is capable of great change for the better, but probably won’t) and, in general, with his brand of liberal humanism which he defines, at one point, as being profoundly mistrustful of our social institutions while preferring them absolutely to any of their alternatives. Reading the letters “as written” rather than as published restores a sense of time to the novel which, though it portrays the chaos of the late 60s in U.S. (and world) life, probably is less successful for doing so in a chaotic (or at least an imposed from without) pattern.
January 31, 2025
I get it, a supposed post-modern masterpiece by one of the greats, where characters from the author's first six books engaged in correspondence with each other and the author, in some kind of re-enactment of a revolution. So it's like one for the price of seven, you gotta read a bibliography's worth of pomo to get to it. The reviews at the time trashed it, which is a good thing in that the same thing happened to The Recognitions. There's like two convincing blog posts that say it's good. The Sot Weed Factor is legit an all-timer. Chimera is underrated. You believe in yourself.
But this book is an act of madness. The human will required to deliver something so constipated and still-born is staggering. This is 772 pages of dense writing, a structure denser than the heart of the sun, but it is all strain and no sense. It's like climbing an alien rock face that is sheer, with nothing to grab onto, and you get to the top and the view sucks, it looks like Ottawa in November, grey with a smattering of dead trees. The jokes aren't funny. The intellectual insights are not profound. The characters are unreal. The situations they are engaged in are obtuse. It is Sunk-Cost Fallacy, the novel.
You don't have to read Letters, you sicko.
But this book is an act of madness. The human will required to deliver something so constipated and still-born is staggering. This is 772 pages of dense writing, a structure denser than the heart of the sun, but it is all strain and no sense. It's like climbing an alien rock face that is sheer, with nothing to grab onto, and you get to the top and the view sucks, it looks like Ottawa in November, grey with a smattering of dead trees. The jokes aren't funny. The intellectual insights are not profound. The characters are unreal. The situations they are engaged in are obtuse. It is Sunk-Cost Fallacy, the novel.
You don't have to read Letters, you sicko.
September 2, 2017
Look: I'm not gonna deny that this book is brilliant and enthralling, notwithstanding my non-love of the author's handling of gender relations. But I feel like everyone else is too scared to admit what we all know to be true--the blank in the ointment, if you will: that all the historic A.B. Cook stuff is just coma-inducingly boring. I mean, really. Let's just acknowledge that. We'll feel better.
Want to read
October 5, 2025not a review per se, but i attempted to read this before as my first barth, having first heard about him when he died, and got a very enjoyable headache (complimentary) about 100 pages in when i realized just how often much it was referencing his previous novels. i do intend to get back to it some day, but i want to at least read the sot-weed factor first and possibly all the other ones before i do.
June 17, 2021
exhausting as ascending everest, and as exhilariting, genius beyond the scale of human (or at least my own) comprehension. it's almost pure plot, every paragraph is stuffed to the gills with incident. the peak and apotheosis of B's career up to this point, i hope afterwards he learns his own lesson and loses the rigidness he brings to perfection here
August 1, 2021
A whole lot of Barth. By turns inspiring, absorbing, infuriating, tedious. Always ingenious. He's the most linguistically dextrous and erudite writer the U.S. has produced maybe ever. A Joycean figure who unlike James writes books that are their own skeleton keys.
July 1, 2017
I love Barth. This is a novel only Barth lovers would love, yet I did not love it. I admired it...but I did not love it.
March 13, 2021
This was rather tedious in parts, but Barth’s interweaving of characters and plots is worth seeing through to the finish.
February 19, 2025
A long time ago, but I recall buying this hardcover at great expense and being disappointed.
June 19, 2025
one of the most difficult and involved books I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
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April 29, 2013Currently unfinished. Abandoned at about 400 pages, not because I wasn't enjoying it, not because it was difficult (far from it, it's just long and digressive). A mixture of MA work and other reading has simply taken precedent, and the decision to not write about it in my dissertation means I have slightly more productive things to be reading right now.
To return to some day.
To return to some day.
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August 3, 2011Barth is obviously a genius on many levels; foremost as a story-teller. Here he brings characters from his previous novels back to life in a series of letters where they interact. Challenging and VERY funny.
May 28, 2012
haunting and infinitely rereadable
July 11, 2016
A panithiopliconica of everything Barth: a Barthithiopliconica.
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