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On with the Story
Barth, John
1996 900012 Using the venerable literary device of the bedtime story, which links fictions as different as The Arabian Nights and Charlotte's Web, John Barth ingeniously interweaves stories from an ongoing, high-spirited but deadly serious nocturnal game of tale-telling by a more or less desperate loving couple vacationing at their "last resort." As Scheherazade spun out her bedtime stories to save her life, the narrator of On with the Story spins out his to postpone The End, and to explore en route - wittily, mournfully, tenderly - love in modern life and postmodern literature. As the narrative cycles through the lifescapes of his subjects' stories, Barth affords a view both panoramic and microscopic of our own landscape. With eye and pen both sharp and beautiful he depicts love ranging from the obsessively puppy through the sophisticatedly fatigued, the delusionally murderous, even the quantum-physical, to the superbly fulfilled. Michael Ross John Barth, arguably the most didactic of modern writers, returns to short fiction in this shrewd, indelible (and maddeningly Barthian) book about a pair of vacationing "late-afternoon late-life lovers" who are "post-coitally lassitudinous and sweat-wet, skin to skin." Leapfrogging from voice to voice, deftly weaving plots within plots, Barth spins On With the Story into a comically incisive meditation on love in life and literature by borrowing from Scheherazade and using the bedtime story as his vehicle. The couple in the novel -- who resemble Barth and his real-life spouse, a former student of his named Shelley Rosenberg -- tell each other tales while staying at their "last resort" (a phrase that, finally, deserves to remain a teasing secret). While the stories primarily explore the panorama of modern love -- its curious arrivals, its grim exits and its steadfast presence with this couple -- the book's autobiographical nature always hovers near the surface. Little, Brown & Company 0-316-08263-5 / 9780316082631
Hardcover As New Condition Boston
Price:
12.38 USD
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ON WITH THE STORY: STORIES
Barth, John
1996 900871 John Barth has the paradoxical ability to turn literature on its head in a post-modern sense at the same time he employs a tour-de-force of traditional literary devices. In On with the Story, he tells a story within a story within a collection of short stories. To wit, an affluent and sophisticated retirement age couple is on vacation when the woman receives terrible news about her husband. Is he dying of cancer? Or is that another story? Have they faced death or have they not? With Barth, only the reader can say for sure, having engaged in an experience as unique as it is fascinating. In novels like the National Book Award-winning Chimera, Barth has displayed an ingenious fusion of postmodern, metafictional narrative style and seductive tales. The deconstructive bent is still firmly intact in this collection of 11 short stories. Unfortunately, the tales told are mostly slim and self-indulgent. Many involve middle-aged to elderly academics or writers as they take vacations to places like Club Med, ponder flirtations with other academics or writers or worry about their careers. It's surprising, since Barth links these tepid pieces with clever interludes in which an unnamed, beach-vacationing couple, who are supposedly reading the stories along with the reader, provide contentious running commentary on them. But the stories themselves are remarkably strained: "And Then One Day..." has Elizabeth, a 40-something novelist, wondering about a possible love affair with her old writing teacher, a man 20 years her senior, filtered through the very male perspective of the chatty, "omniscient" narrator. Another attractive 40-something woman, Alice, is the central character of "On with the Story." While on a plane from Boston to Oregon, she has a friendly conversation with an older man (a writer) sitting next to her; ponders her recent divorce, literature and the stages of being a baby boomer; and reads a story that is, unbeknownst to her, written by her seatmate. It's a pity there aren't more pieces like "Goodbye to the Fruits," in which Barth forgoes his stable of stereotypical characters for a joyous, beautifully written and sometimes hilarious ode to fruit. When he's got a subject worth subjecting to his metafictional gamesmanship, Barth remains a sly, inventive and uniquely talented writer. Little Brown & Co 0-316-08263-5 / 9780316082631
Hardcover VERY GOOD CONDITION Boston
Price:
16.67 USD
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ON WITH THE STORY: STORIES
John Barth
10016248 John Barth has the paradoxical ability to turn literature on its head in a post-modern sense at the same time he employs a tour-de-force of traditional literary devices. In On with the Story, he tells a story within a story within a collection of short stories. To wit, an affluent and sophisticated retirement age couple is on vacation when the woman receives terrible news about her husband. Is he dying of cancer? Or is that another story? Have they faced death or have they not? With Barth, only the reader can say for sure, having engaged in an experience as unique as it is fascinating. Little Brown & Co 0316082635 / 9780316082631
Hardcover As New Condition
Price:
14.56 USD
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The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor - Audio Cassette program Read By Arte Johnson
Barth, John
1991 170002924 Set in both the modern world and the mythical realm of medieval BAGHDAD, this is the story of Simon WIlliam Behler, a popular New Journalist whose career has peaked. In 1980, he is lost overboard off the coast of Sri Lanka whlle attemtping to retrace, with his lover, the legendary voyages of Sindbad the Sailor. In a brilliantly entertaining weave of story within story, John Barth illustrates the way we live to tell our own tall tales. Two audio cassettes, boxed, abridged; total playing time approx. 3 hours. Dove Entertainment Inc 1558003983 / 9781558003989
Audio Cassette Program - Boxed As New Condition Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. out of Print
Price:
15.75 USD
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