Heirs, Barth

[David Casseres]

I think Chimera is a masterpiece of Barth's favorite thing, the story
about story-telling.  My other big favorite is The Last Voyage of
Somebody the Sailor.

On 9/19/05, Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Heirs to Pynchon - got me wondering if any of the writers I really like
> have "heirs" in any sense.
>
> Shakespeare influences a lot of writers, and is a touchstone they can
> reference, quote, emulate.  Likewise Joyce.  They don't really have
> heirs, do they?  But these are writers whose work - this may be
> tantamount to admitting I'm shallow - I mostly study and respect
> because of their acknowledged greatness.
>
> Pynchon is in a different group - writers whose work I love.  Other
> members would be Joseph Heller, Laurence Sterne, JD Salinger - and John
> Barth.  I would suggest these guys don't really have "heirs" either, in
> the sense of authors who pick up where they left off and have
> recognizable features of their sires.
>
> As to Giles Goat-Boy being Barth's "best", that's a subjective
> statement that I wouldn't make.  For me, Giles Goat-Boy and Sot-Weed
> are glances forward and back in a funhouse telescope.  Lots of talent
> evinced there, and certainly fine work.  The End of the Road and the
> Floating Opera kind of book-end together in my estimation too, though
> the polar opposites they suggest aren't future and past, but something
> like the "romantic" vs "classical" dichotomy that "Zen and the Art of
> Motorcycle Maintenance" denoted.  However, most critics and readers
> haven't seemed to relish Barth's later work like it deserves: Letters,
> Tidewater Chronicles, and Coming Soon! are not half bad.  My personal
> favorite still remains "Lost in the Funhouse" which is unusual because
> I tend to prefer longer works.  However, it manages to be satisfying
> without a high page count.  My second favorite is his reworking of
> myth, "Chimera", although again, they're all good.
>
> I think Pynchon gets more respect than Barth because most people are
> not as respectful of the first-person narrative as of stories where the
> author's voice is more veiled.
>
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