John Barth was my first favorite author

Update: 2 copies of "The Sot-weed Factor were found and packed to go to Maryland. Ask me when we get there if you want to read it.

Sadly, I know of no one specifically to share this with.

Bill Hutchison handed me a copy of "The Sot-weed Factor" in high school. That, and knocking bullies off me one time, etched a permanent memory of him in my mind. But we never really connected and never stayed in touch after high school. And nobody else that I ever handed the book to ever finished reading it, to my knowledge.

So I will share this obituary - https://www.npr.org/2024/04/03/1242508803/john-barth-novelist-author-obituary - with my blog.

Linked from Wikipedia

He was my favorite author for many years. While none of his other works ever reached the level of immersion I got in "The Sot-weed Factor," he wrote several others that are "classic" in my mind. Would he have objected to that term?

I took 2 literature courses in college that I selected by seeing a book of his on the syllabus. I still have a copy of "Why the Floating Opera" that I wrote for one of those. While the paper was above average - inspired by the book - it was still the product of a sophomore. So maybe I should resist sending it through the OCR and attaching it . . .

"Giles Goat-boy" was my second-favorite of his books. If it had been written in this century, it might have been labelled "fantasy" and ended up on Netflix. I fell in love with the name "Anastasia" from that book and our daughter got that name. I must clarify, though, she is not "named after" the character.

I read everything John Barth wrote for a long while. Every book was literature, not just a product for the printing presses. After many years though, it seemed that he was no longer writing for me, the reader, but for other writers to learn from. Being a consumer of fiction, I eventually stopped looking for anything new from him.

That's when somebody turned me on to Neil Gaiman. Hopefully, I will need really strong reading glasses to read his obituary (or vice-versa). Neil has also moved on from works of classic adult literature, so I need a new favorite author.