约翰·巴思

约翰·西蒙斯·巴思（英语：John Simmons Barth，1930年5月27日—2024年4月2日），美国小说家，其小说被认为具有后现代主义和超小说性质。

巴思生于马里兰州剑桥，他从小喜爱音乐，擅长演奏乐器。在剑桥高中时担任校队的鼓手，及为校报撰写文章。在进入约翰·霍普金斯大学前，1947年在朱利亚德学院短暂学习管弦乐，1951年获得文学学士学位，1952年获硕士学位。

1956年因《漂浮的歌剧院》（The Floating Opera）获美国国家图书奖提名。1972年因《客迈拉》（Chimera ）获美国国家图书奖。

获得奖项

1973年，获得美国国家图书奖。

1997年，获得弗朗西斯·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德美国小说杰出成就奖。

1998年，获得兰南基金会终身成就奖。

著作

《The Floating Opera》，约翰·巴思，1956。ISBN 9780553240986

《The Sot-Weed Factor》，约翰·巴思，道布尔戴出版社，1960。ISBN 9780385240888

《Giles Goat-Boy》，约翰·巴思，道布尔戴出版社，1966。 ISBN 9780449235249

《Lost in the Funhouse》，约翰·巴思，道布尔戴出版社，1968。 ISBN 9781131186511

《路的尽头》，约翰·巴思，王艾修芸 译，译林出版社，1998。ISBN 9787805677897

John Simmons Barth (May 27, 1930 – April 2, 2024) was an American writer best known for his postmodern and metafictional fiction. His most highly regarded and influential works were published in the 1960s, and include The Sot-Weed Factor, a whimsical retelling of Maryland's colonial history; Giles Goat-Boy, a satirical fantasy in which a university is a microcosm of the Cold War world; and Lost in the Funhouse, a self-referential and experimental collection of short stories. He was co-recipient of the National Book Award in 1973 for his episodic novel Chimera.

Life

John Simmons Barth, called "Jack", was born in Cambridge, Maryland, on May 27, 1930. His parents were John Jacob and Georgia (Simmons) Barth. His father ran a candy store. He had an older brother, Bill, and a twin sister, Jill. In 1947, he graduated from Cambridge High School, where he played drums and wrote for the school newspaper. He briefly studied Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration at the Juilliard School before attending Johns Hopkins University, where he received a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952. His thesis novel, The Shirt of Nessus, drew on his experiences at Johns Hopkins.

Barth married Harriet Anne Strickland on January 11, 1950. He published two short stories that same year, one in Johns Hopkins's student literary magazine and one in The Hopkins Review. His daughter, Christine Ann, was born in the summer of 1951. His son, John Strickland, was born the following year.

From 1953 to 1965, Barth was a professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he met his second wife, Shelly Rosenberg. His third child, Daniel Stephen, was born in 1954. In 1965, he moved to the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he taught from 1965 to 1973. In that period, he came to know "the remarkable short fiction" of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, which inspired his collection Lost in the Funhouse.

Barth taught at Boston University as a visiting professor in 1972, then at Johns Hopkins University from 1973 until he retired in 1995 with the emeritus rank.

Barth died under hospice care in Bonita Springs, Florida, on April 2, 2024, at the age of 93.

Literary work

Barth's career began with The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, two short realist novels that deal with controversial topics: suicide and abortion, respectively.

The Sot-Weed Factor (1960; the title is an archaic phrase meaning "the tobacco merchant") was initially intended as completing a trilogy of "realist" novels, but developed into a different project and is seen as marking Barth's discovery of postmodernism. It reimagines the life of Ebenezer Cooke, a poet in colonial Maryland, and recounts a series of fantastic and often comic adventures, including an account of the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.

Barth's next novel, Giles Goat-Boy (1966), is a lengthy satirical fantasy serving as an allegory of the Cold War, set in a university divided into an authoritarian East Campus and a more open West Campus. George Giles, a boy raised as a goat, discovers his humanity and sets out on a quest to become a "Grand Tutor", a messiah-like spiritual leader within the university. The novel was a surprise best-seller, and some consider it Barth's best work.

The short story collection Lost in the Funhouse (1968) and the novella collection Chimera (1972) are even more metafictional than their two predecessors, foregrounding the writing process and presenting achievements such as a seven-deep nested quotation. Chimera shared the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.