This 'novel,' written sometime after Giles Goat-Boy and Lost in the Funhouse, is comprised of three very loosely connected novellas, all taking post-modern slants on classic mythological stories.
Though somewhat uneven throughout, John Barth's Chimera is an enjoyable and complex read, particularly for those with an interest in Ancient Mythology and Post Modern fiction. These are not writer comparisons but reader idiosyncrasies. Finally, if you enjoyed Craig Shaw Gardner's books, maybe you will enjoy Chimera, but for different reasons. If you like Gore Vidal's 'histories', you may well like this book. If you like Greek mythology, you should read this book for the perspective, the depth and the whimsy.Īnd, who knows, you may start looking at more recent history in a different way. If you like Barth, or this type of literary writing, but do not know much Greek mythology, you must read this book for fun and to expand your cultural horizons. And if the reader gets even more than he hoped to get out of reading the book, then the reader recommends it to others and sometimes writes a review. One reads this type of work if one likes this type of work. The style is sometimes easy, sometimes cryptic and sometimes full of intellectual vanity. The three short novels in Chimera are different in subject matter from Barth's other novels. He writes them in specific styles and ways because that is what he enjoys and that is how he thinks, and that is how he writes. John Barth writes novels, long or short, because he likes to.
Critics label novels and authors because they like to put things and people in their places. John Barth's wiki: John Simmons Barth (/bɑːrθ/ born May 27, 1930) is an American writer, best known for his postmodernist and metafictional fiction.LifeJohn Barth, called 'Jack', was born in Cambridge, Maryland.Īuthors do not write novels with the purpose of having them labelled. Barth's use ofthe three central narrators in the three sections of the novel- the 'Dunyazadiad,'the 'Perseid,' and the 'Bellerophoniad'- foregrounds the relationship between diffusion of identity and artistic self-consciousness within the novel. John Barth's novel Chimera is a supremely self-conscious fiction.
0 kommentar(er)
