Title: The Tidewater Tales
Author: John Barth
Language: English
ISBN: 9780399132476
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Extension: EPUB
Size: 2 MB
Tell me a story! Katherine Shorter Sherritt Sagamore orders her husband Peter Sagamore -- and so lets loose a flood of tales that floats them both past encounteres with their own lives and loves, entanglements with the CIA and toxic waste, and fantastically inventive brushes with some of the greatest characters of all time, including updated versions of Don Quixote, Odysseus, and Scheherazade.
From Library Journal
Peter Sagamore, novelist, has come down with a bad case of minimalism. Ruthless self-editing leaves him with works only a few words in length, and no readers. His wife is a "maximalist" oral historian with an MLS. In June 1980 they spend two weeks sailing around Chesapeake Bay in their boat Story, telling stories. The result is familiar Barthean fare: "lost episodes" of the Odyssey, the Arabian Nights, and Don Quixote interspersed with lectures on Maryland history, the CIA, and toxic waste. (Librarians will wince at the incoherent review of cataloging procedures on Day 5.) A strong addition to the Barth canon, Tidewater Tales is probably the only piece of experimental fiction that can double as summer beach reading. An essential purchase for all collections of contemporary literature. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Marymount Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Charting ever more daring fictional waters, John Barth here sets sail on a huge voyage of a book―part myth, part fantasy, part history, part sheer exuberant wordplay.
(Washington Post Book World)
What is so moving about The Tidewater Tales is its frequent and frequently incidental richness as a love story―marital, filial, domestic―and also in its love of a place, of a country, even as place and country are scarred by depredation.The newest edition of the most complete introduction to the vital security issues facing the United States returns to the book's classic organizational format.
(William Pritchard New York Times Book Review)
The Tidewater Tales takes the form of a narrative encyclopedia, a pre-natal crash course in the politics, social life, literature, history, and mythology of late-twentieth century America... It sits... on the map of modern American fiction as a gigantic memorable construction.
(Jonathan Raban Times Literary Supplement)
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