The Friday Book is a collection of nonfiction by John Barth. Many of them are introductory remarks he gave before readings, so they tend to dwell on what's on his mind as he's writing various works. And his mind is full of a lot of miscellaneous things. And many of the usual things for Barth... the Arabian Nights, myth, Maryland crabs, and boating. And as a professor of creative writing, he often gets very academic with his presentation, too abstruse for an ill-educated wannabe scribbler like me to fully appreciate. I love Borges and the Arabian Nights almost as much as Barth does, and enjoy his discussions of these topics, but several essaylets and introductions split hairs between modernist, premodernist, and postmodernist novels. Barth gleefully admits that other experts have informed him that his definition of postmodernism is entirely wrong. I gleefully confess I don't care. Another favorite bit was his defense of 'dippy verses' (the very phrase of a critic of one of his novels). Having composed a few dippy verses of my own, I sympathize. I'm not sure why the piece also includes a long discourse on osprey nests, but I'm glad it does. Alas, on the whole, I felt there were not enough enjoyable nuggets in this Cracker Jack box of miscellanea.
-
- No. 118 (
essentialsaltes) wrote,
No. 118
essentialsaltes
Halting State / The Friday Book
The Friday Book is a collection of nonfiction by John Barth. Many of them are introductory remarks he gave before readings, so they tend to dwell on what's on his mind as he's writing various works. And his mind is full of a lot of miscellaneous things. And many of the usual things for Barth... the Arabian Nights, myth, Maryland crabs, and boating. And as a professor of creative writing, he often gets very academic with his presentation, too abstruse for an ill-educated wannabe scribbler like me to fully appreciate. I love Borges and the Arabian Nights almost as much as Barth does, and enjoy his discussions of these topics, but several essaylets and introductions split hairs between modernist, premodernist, and postmodernist novels. Barth gleefully admits that other experts have informed him that his definition of postmodernism is entirely wrong. I gleefully confess I don't care. Another favorite bit was his defense of 'dippy verses' (the very phrase of a critic of one of his novels). Having composed a few dippy verses of my own, I sympathize. I'm not sure why the piece also includes a long discourse on osprey nests, but I'm glad it does. Alas, on the whole, I felt there were not enough enjoyable nuggets in this Cracker Jack box of miscellanea.
-
The Russia House, by John Le Carré
Kind of interesting for being written in the time of Gorbachev and glasnost and perestroika. Not long before the Soviet Union collapsed. But as a…
-
The Glass Hammer / A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy
The Glass Hammer, by KW Jeter, bears the stamp of Jeter's mentor Philip K Dick, both thematically and in a character that seems very much like a…
-
Waking Nightmares / Some Assembly Required
Waking Nightmares is an anthology of Ramsey Campbell short stories. No particular theme to them, although many of them do have an element of dream…
- Post a new comment
- 0 comments
- Post a new comment
- 0 comments
