Chimera

On the one hand John Barth threshed with the flail of his imagination many folklore and mythological archetypes to trash. Polyeidus had a daughter, who knows by whom. Sibyl. Younger than we. That summer she was our friend. Deliades adored her, she me. I screwed her while he watched, in a little grove......more

For her part (she would go on--what a wife was this!), she took what she was pleased to term the Tragic View of Marriage and Parenthood: reckoning together their joys and griefs must inevitable show a net loss, if only because like life itself their attrition was constant and their term mortal. But......more

This is a stupid book. John Barth has admirable goals (rejuvenating the novel) and an precise, musical command of language. But his one fatal flaw is his inability to get outside his own head. He aims for mythic significance, but the cosmic scope of his stories keeps getting mixed together with the v......more

Delusions of Demi-Godlike Grandeur In this collection of three chimerical novellas, the middle-aged “author” indulges his fantasies of virility and fears of impotency in the garb and guise of “Tales of 1001 Nights” and Greek mythological tales. As an exercise in “belletristic masturbation”, it’s more......more

"Химера", подобно на митологичното чудовище, се състои от три отделни, доста незамисими, но сякаш не несвързани части. Това ми позволи да прочета третата част след няколкомесечна пауза, деляща я от другите две. В тези три новели, да кажем, Джон Барт нѐ препраща, а направо хвърля през глава читателя в......more