LETTERS
772 pages.
Original publisher: Putnam.
Current publisher: Dalkey Archive Press.
Buy now from Amazon.com.
Synopsis
For diehard Barth fans only. Barth defends this notoriously difficult nearly-800-page opus in his introduction to the re-released paperback version, but I found it tedious.
The book features most of the central characters of Barth’s previous six books, as well as the author himself, who corresponds with his characters by mail. His correspondents include a descendent of Henry Burlingame III from The Sot-Weed Factor (whose ramblings about the Second American Revolution are pure paranoia in the Pynchonian sense), Jerome Bonaparte Bray (who may have turned into a giant insect), and one new character, Germaine G. Pitt (who is the novel’s most intriguing personality).
LETTERS is meant to be a reinvigoration of the novel in an age where books have become increasingly irrelevant. Instead it signaled Barth’s farewell to mainstream critical attention.
Critical Reaction
“By turns, enormous and exhilarating, subtle and silly, brilliant and boisterous.”
— Baltimore Sun
Resources
- LETTERS review by The New York Times
- Dalkey Archive Press page for Sabbatical and LETTERS
Other Covers
