The book of ten nights and a night eleven stories

by John Barth

Paper Book, 2005

Library's rating

½

Publication

London Atlantic 2005

ISBN

1843544067 / 9781843544067

Language

Description

John Barth, the postmodern master, is back with this collection of stories, which are gathered here for the first time in a single volume. Through his exploration of the nature of storytelling, and the uncanny power that language has in our lives, he offers the thrilling blend of playfulness and illuminating insight that have marked him as one of the postwar period's most distinguished writers. Here are tales of ageing, time possibility and relationships framed - in classically Barthian fashion - by the narration of a veteran writer, Graybard, and his flirtatious, insouciant muse, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). During the eleven days that followed September 11, 2001, Graybard and WYSIWYG debate the meaning and relevance of writing and storytelling in the wake of disaster, or TEOTWAW (A) KI - The End Of The World As We (Americans) Knew It.… (more)

Subjects

User reviews

LibraryThing member the_awesome_opossum
Ten Nights and a Night is a collection of eleven short stories, held together with a conceit that an author and his muse are shacking up and discussing these as they're being written. Therefore, while some of the short stories are fairly straightforward, the book calls attention to its own craft
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and to the decisions of an author as he or she writes.

It's a cheap PoMo trick, but I am a PoMo reader so I found parts of it interesting. Ultimately though, although the structure of the book invites discussion and deliberation, it doesn't hang together well enough as a *book* - neither the stories nor the author/muse interludes were interesting enough to keep me really gripped. I like what Barth was aiming for, and Ten Nights and a Night wasn't without its interesting and good parts, but on the whole not very satisfying.
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LibraryThing member Big_Bang_Gorilla
I spent little time on this teratism. Between its precious running interstitial conceit of a couple of oversexed, overly obsessed with 9/11people dialoging about the nature of narrative fiction (now invariably called "storytelling") and an inert first story, it was time to move on, filled with
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dismay on how big-name authors get their reputations.
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Original publication date

2004
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