A National Book Award winner, this bawdy, comic trio of novellas finds John Barth injecting his signature wit into three tales many times told: that of Scheherazade, storyteller of the Thousand and One Nights; of Perseus, slayer of Medusa; and of Bellerophon, rider of Pegasus and slayer of the Chimera.

This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece. This modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting . . . to roam the world since Candide.""A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded) this satire of the eighteenth-century picaresque novel—think Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy—is also an earnest picture of the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it mak...

**From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse, comes an outrageously farcical adventure that challenges our notions of technology, power, and human nature."[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York Times**Giles Goat-Boy tells the story of a human boy raised as a goat who comes to believe that he is humanity's prop...

When John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse appeared in 1968, American fiction was turned on its head. Barth’s writing was not a response to the realistic fiction that characterized American literature at the time; it beckoned back to the founders of the novel: Cervantes, Rabelais, and Sterne, echoing their playfulness and reflecting the freedom inherent in the writing of fiction.This collection of Barth’s short fiction is a landmark event, bringing all of his previous collecti...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • John Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction exploring themes of purpose and the meaning of existence."[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." —The New York TimesFrom its opening story, "Frame-Tale"--printed sideways and designed to be cut out...

Proving himself yet again a master of every form, Barth conquers in his latest the ruminative short essay—“jeux d’esprits,” as Barth describes them. These mostly one-page tidbits pay homage to Barth’s literary influences while retaining his trademark self-consciousness and willingness to play.

John Barth’s second book -- a philosophical black comedy -- “a true novel of ideas” (New York Times).Struck with a sudden case of “cosmopsis,” a nihilistic paralysis that occurs in those unable to act amid a sea of choice, Jacob Horner turns to the enigmatic, questionably credentialed Doctor for help. The Doctor prescribes Jake a series of therapeutic treatments, one of which involves his acquiring a teaching job at a local college. There, he finds himself entangled—intellectually,...

John Barth stays true to form in Every Third Thought, written from the perspective of a character Barth introduced in his short story collection The Development.George I. Newett and his wife Amanda Todd lived in the gated community of Heron Bay Estates until its destruction by a fluke tornado. This event, Newett notes, occurred on the 77th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash, a detail that would appear insignificant if it were not for several subsequent eve...

For decades, acclaimed author John Barth has strayed from his Monday–through–Thursday–morning routine of fiction–writing and dedicated Friday mornings to the muse of nonfiction. The result is Final Fridays, his third essay collection, following The Friday Book (1984) and Further Fridays (1995). Sixteen years and six novels since his last volume of non–fiction, Barth delivers yet another remarkable work comprised of 27 insightful essays.With pieces coverin...

"A merry satire about the smart, moneyed, and demanding retirees living in a gated community . . . Scintillating on the surface and churning with danger below" ( Booklist).From a National Book Award–winning author, this is a collection of "nine darkly comic stories set in a gated community on Maryland's Eastern Shore" ( Publishers Weekly).Something has disturbed the comfortably aging denizens of Heron Bay Estates, a pristine retirement comm...

The wildly varied essays in Not–Knowing combine to form a posthumous manifesto of one of America's masters of literary experiment. Here are Barthelme's thoughts on writing (his own and others); his observations on art, architecture, film, and city life; interviews, including two previously unpublished; and meditations on everything from Superman III to the art of rendering "Melancholy Baby" on jazz banjolele. This is a rich and eclectic selection of work by the man Robert...

What is astrology? Fiction for the bourgeoisie. The Tour de France? Anepic. The brain of Einstein? Knowledge reduced to a formula. Like iconicimages of movie stars or the rhetoric of politicians, they arefabricated. Once isolated from the events that gave birth to them, these"mythologies" appear for what they are: the ideology of mass culture.When Roland Barthes's groundbreaking Mythologies firstappeared in English in 1972, it was immedia...