LETTERS

1979 novel by John Barth

LETTERS

First edition

Author| John Barth
Cover artist| Lynn Hollyn & David Gatti[1]
Language| English
Genre| Epistolary novel
Publisher| Putnam

Publication date

| 1979
Publication place| United States
Media type| Print
Pages| 772
ISBN| 0436036746
OCLC| 16495246

LETTERS is an epistolary novel by the American writer John Barth, published in 1979. It consists of a series of letters in which Barth and the characters of his other books interact.

In addition to the Author and Germaine Pitt (or 'Lady Amherst', unrelated to any of Barth's previous novels), the correspondents are Todd Andrews (from The Floating Opera), Jacob Horner (from The End of the Road), A.B. Cook (a descendant of Burlingame in The Sot-Weed Factor), Jerome Bray (associated with Giles Goat-Boy and Chimera) and Ambrose Mensch (from Lost in the Funhouse).[2]

The book is subtitled "An old time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls & dreamers each of which imagines himself factual." The structure is such that when the first character of each of the letters in the book are placed on a calendar according to their dates, and the individual months are turned sideways, they spell out the subtitle. In addition, the marked dates spell out the word "LETTERS."[3]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Modern first editions - a set on Flickr
2. ^ Tony Tanner, "Yours Sincerely, John Barth (Review of Letters)", The Washington Post, Sept. 9, 1979.
3. ^ Thomas R. Edwards, "A Novel of Correspondences (Review of Letters)", The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1979.

## External links

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* Marjorie Godlin Roemer (1987). "The Paradigmatic Mind: John Barth's LETTERS". Twentieth Century Literature. 33 (1). Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 33, No. 1: 38–50\. doi:10.2307/441331. JSTOR 441331.
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John Barth

Fiction|

* The Floating Opera (1956)
* The End of the Road (1958)
* The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
* Giles Goat-Boy (1966)
* Lost in the Funhouse (1968)
* Chimera (1972)
* LETTERS (1979)
* Sabbatical (1982)
* The Tidewater Tales (1987)
* The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991)
* Once Upon a Time: A Floating Opera (1994)
* On with the Story (1996)
* Coming Soon!!! (2001)
* The Book of Ten Nights and a Night (2004)
* Where Three Roads Meet (2005)
* The Development (2008)
* Every Third Thought (2011)

Non-fiction|

* "The Literature of Exhaustion" (1967)
* The Friday Book (1984)
* Further Fridays (1995)
* Final Fridays (2012)
* Postscripts (or Just Desserts) (2022)

Other|

End of the Road

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