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
teaching two bird
One of the things I miss about teaching is that students would tell me what I ought to read. One of my students, back in the 1960s, put me onto Borges, and I remember another mentioning Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two-Birds in the same way.
existence
Choosing is existence. To the extent that you don't choose, you don't exist,
may stones matter
It is often pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we may admire him.
opinion horror
The horror of our history has purged me of opinions.
lions world innocence
Tis e'er the lot of the innocent in the world, to fly to the wolf for succor from the lion.
art technique easier
It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.
love reading mean
The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' - by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love.
writing years knowing
A curious thing about written literature: It is about four thousand years old, but we have no way of knowing whether four thousand years constitutes senility or the maiden blush of youth.
art mean men
Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.
serendipity good-faith elsewhere
You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings ... serendipitously.
history political secret
More history is made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills and proclamations.
god men
The Bible is not man's word about God, but God's word about man.
simple soul deeds
Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and o'erlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer.
stories life-is
The story of your life is not your life; it's your story.