Barth, John (bärth), 1930–, American writer, b. Cambridge, Md. He attended Johns Hopkins (B.A. 1951, M.A. 1952), and, beginning in 1973, taught writing at its graduate school for nearly 20 years. Barth's postmodern novels—experimental, comic, self-referential, and often sprawling—reflect his anger and despair at a world he finds ludicrous and meaningless. While his early books were extravagantly praised, many critics have viewed his later work as verbose and bordering on incomprehensibility. Barth has a particular gift for parody. One of his best-known novels, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), is set in 17th-century Maryland and deftly satirizes historical novels. His other fiction includes The Floating Opera (1956), The End of the Road (1958), Giles Goat-Boy (1966), Chimera (1972), Letters (1979), Sabbatical (1982), Once upon a Time (1994), Coming Soon!!! (2001), the stories and commentary of The Book of Ten Nights and a Night (2004), and the novellas of Where Three Roads Meet (2005).

Bibliography

See studies by C. B. Harris (1983) and E. P. Walkiewicz (1986).

Barth, John

orig. John Simmons Barth, Jr.

(born May 27, 1930, Cambridge, Md., U.S.) U.S. writer. Barth grew up on Maryland's eastern shore, the locale of much of his writing, and from 1953 he taught principally at Johns Hopkins University. Apart from the experimental pieces in Lost in the Funhouse (1968), his best-known works are the novels The Floating Opera (1956), The End of the Road (1958), The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), Giles Goat-Boy (1966), and The Tidewater Tales (1987), most of which play with and parody traditional narrative forms, combining philosophical depth with biting satire and boisterous, often bawdy humour. In 2001 he published the experimental novel Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative, which was not well received.

Barth, John (Simmons) (1930– ) writer, educator; born in Cambridge, Md. He graduated from Johns Hopkins, where, during a long academic career, he joined the English faculty (1973). His novels, some set on Maryland's Eastern Shore, were distinctive for their formal ingenuity and an existential questioning bordering on nihilism. They include The End of the Road (1958), Chimera (1972, National Book Award), and Tidewater Tales (1988). A major exception was his second novel, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), a long, playful parody written in the style of an 18th century novel.