John Barth, a "writer's writer," was a central figure among the anti-realist or comico-realist American fiction writers of the 1960s-1970s (others are William H. Gass, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover). Inspired in part by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, John Barth began in the mid-1950s to write innovative, self-referential, "experimental" novels such as The Floating Opera (rejected by six publishers) and The End of the Road (later made into a film with James Earl Jones and Stacy Keach). By the 1960s, with the mock-18th-century tale The Sot-Weed Factor, the sensationally popular Giles Goat-Boy, and the collection Lost in the Funhouse, Barth's work reached best-selling status. By the mid-1970s he had won a National Book Award for the Scheherezade-style Chimera and published Letters (1979), arguably his masterpiece. Several other novels followed, including The Tidewater Tales, Sabbatical: A Romance, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, Once Upon a Time, and the very recent Coming Soon!!!, whose mixed reviews point up the controversial nature of Barth's novelistic techniques and ambitions. Even at their worst, such reviews are enticements to read when they describe Barth's work as "sort of like hanging out with a clever teen-age boy who forgot to take his ritalin?!"? The Denver Post.

All readings are followed by a reception. Acting director of Poetry-in-the-Round is David Stevens, assistant professor, Department of English, Seton Hall University. For further information, contact (973) 761-9388; e-mail stevenda@shu.edu; or access the Poetry-in-the-Round homepage at www.shu.edu/news/poetry.

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