John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barthis an American writer, best known for his postmodernist and metafictional fiction...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth27 May 1930
CountryUnited States of America
self loathing self-loathing
Nothing is loathsomer than the self-loathing of a self one loathes.
history knaves events
History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant
mistake coaching levels
Finally you begin to make your mistakes on the highest level-let's say the upper slopes of slippery Parnassus-and it's at that point you need coaching.
way difficulty loses
Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way?
art philosophy sleep
You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.
world crafts want
If you are a novelist of a certain type of termperament, then what you really want to do is re-invent the world. God wasn't too bad a novelist except he was a Realist.
angel heart men
Is man a savage at heart, skinned o'er with fragile Manners? Or is savagery but a faint taint in the natural man's gentility, which erupts now and again like pimples on an angel's arse?
sweet self play
I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.
simple talent complicated
I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.
loyalty men allegiance
All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.
girl simple civilization
Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.
secret wish lovers
He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.
Nobody knew how to be what they were right.
hero boys thrown
not every boy thrown to the wolves becomes a hero.