The Development (more berets) - John Barth

Back when I started studying litrichur, scratching slates with coal, etc., John Barth (and, unofficially) was an already established writer. I remember reading Floating Opera and Chimera in classes - don't remember if I first read Sotweed Factor for fun or profit. (Just thinking about it makes me want to do it again. Or Letters - maybe I'll take a crack at Letters.) But anyway, he was there then, and he's still here now, and I've just read last year's The Development. Thanks, Mr. Barth.

The ending of the second story in the book made me cry. On the subway. Generally, brothers and sisters, don't do this. Your fellow passengers assume you are, you know, crazy or unstable or just generally about to impinge on their personal space in a way that's really going to harsh their mellow - though probably make for good dinner / drinks conversation. But Mr. Barth is 79 now, and was just a few years younger I guess when writing The Development, and he was writing about the things he and his coevals are worrying about and going through - the diminishing of life, health, the shortening of days, dementia, death. It's a long life, but we do get to the end of it.

Sidenote: The Scriptorium asks, and answers:

For whom is the fiction of John Barth fun? Perhaps for lovers of complex metafictions. For people constrained by nineteenth century notions of realist literature it is a place of fear and confusion.