John Barth (1930-2024)

Author John Barth, 93, died April 2, 2024 at a hospice in Bonita Springs FL. Barth was famed for his (often hilarious) experimental fiction.

His debut The Floating Opera appeared in 1956, but he attained literary fame with his third novel, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960). His innovations occasionally led him into speculative territory, notably in Giles Goat-Boy (1966) and The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991). His 1967 essay “The Literature of Exhaustion” was a landmark for postmodernism, arguing that conventional approaches to ficiton writing had been “used up.” His collection of experimental stories Lost in the Funhouse (1969) was a National Book Award finalist, and collection Chimera won in 1973; both include speculative stories. In all, Barth published nearly a score of novels and story collections, plus books of critical essays. His final book was a collection of short non-fiction, Postscripts, in 2022.

John Simmons Barth was born on May 27, 1930 in Cambridge MD. He attended Johns Hopkins University, graduating in 1951, and earned his Master’s degree there in 1952. He taught at Pennsylvania State University from 1953-65, and the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1965-73, and in the writing department at Johns Hopkins from 1973-95, when he retired. He marred Harriette Strickland in 1950, and divorced in 1969; they had three children. He married Shelly Rosenberg in 1970, and he survives him, along with his children.