Sabbatical

Why this seems considered a lesser Barth is beyond me - I found it thrilling and touching and scary and beautiful. It's a smaller canvas than the sprawling of LETTERS, but just as intricate and amazing, and as for the former's wide canvas this one got intimacy. As always, Barth also pull off some ama......more

Maybe overmuch muchness, but a carp about Barth is not worth keying. Sublime pleasures aplenty, it would be ridiculous were they uninterrupted. Gales, doldrums, breezes and squalls, the weather is fine after alls.......more

I expected to finish this and leave a short review, but as I read it, John Barth died. I’m glad that this is the one I was reading while it happened - I’ll let this review be a testament to his greatness. Like most others aware of Barth, I discovered him through The Sot-Weed Factor, which remains on......more

Like all of Barth's novels, this one is fiendishly clever and impressively complex-- highly "meta," referential, postmodern, whatever you want to call it; plus, it's told from the first-person point of view of two people at once, a "couple's" perspective-- but for as technically impressive as it is,......more

Barth is always so much fun to read and still so original. A lot of the stuff Barth does shouldn't work or shouldn't work as well as it does. RIP John Barth.......more