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John Barth

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Author

The Resume

    (May 27, 1930-April 2, 2024)
    Born in Cambridge, Maryland
    Postmodernist author
    Wrote the novels 'The Floating Opera' (1956), 'The End of the Road' (1958), 'The Sot-Weed Factor' (1960), 'Giles Goat-Boy' (1966), 'LETTERS' (1979), 'The Tidewater Tales' (1987), 'Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative' (2001),, and 'Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons' (2011)
    Short story collections include 'Lost in the Funhouse' (1968), 'On with the Story' (1996), and 'The Development: Nine Stories' (2018)

Why he might be annoying:

    He described his works as 'novels which imitate the form of a novel by an author who imitates the role of an author.'
    Several of his books are real doorstoppers, with the New York Times -- in a positive review -- describing 'The Sot-Weed Factor' as 'so monstrously long that reading it seemed nearly as laborious as writing it.'
    Gore Vidal called his novels 'astonishingly boring.'
    We have not proved it, but we suspect there is a link between 'Giles Goat-Boy' and Jim Breuer's creation of the most idiotic recurring character on SNL.

Why he might not be annoying:

    His influences include Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, and Samuel Beckett.
    Encyclopedia Britannica wrote that his novels 'combine philosophical depth and complexity with biting satire and boisterous, frequently bawdy, humor.'
    The Los Angeles Review of Books called him 'arguably America's greatest living writer.' (2012)

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 11 Votes: 63.64% Annoying