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.
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.
John Barth, a moderately successful novelist just turned sixty, decides to take a sail on Chesapeake Bay with his wife, but a tropical storm forces them deep into the Maryland tidal marshes. Lost, Barth takes out his dinghy to search for a way home, but becomes embarked instead on a quest through the murkier regions of his own memory-a semi-memoir, staged as an operatic cruise through desire, vocation, despair, love, marriage, selves, and counterselves.
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