Grasp Every Third Thought: A Novel In Five Seasons Assembled By John Barth Depicted In Electronic Format

godsdamn Barth Book.

sitelink

I've read them all, Beginning back inwith On With the Story followed ten years later by the discovery of The SotWeed Factor and the rest is now History.


Pending Completionism in:: Alexander Therouxremaining William Gaddis one David Foster Wallace really only the rap book outstanding,will doubtless see more Completionism,

Meanwhile, about the magic of story telling with Barth der Erzähler, I highly recommend Friend Paul's review of the present volume, found sitelinkHERE.
And for the Twin Census of Barthiana, see my review of The Tidewater Tales sitelinkHERE, can't remember who it was who described Barth's writing as "selfconsuming metafiction", but it definitely fits, But in a good way, This book, like some others before it e, g. , Once Upon a Time, narrates the fictional story of the writing of the book itself, The narrator, George I. Newett, is writing the book to complete the work of his lost friend, Ned Prosper, who may or may not have existed within the story.
You can't tell whether the story is being drawn from real life or real life is being drawn from the story, At one point in the book, Newett's wife and fellow writer, Amanda, jabs the theme in deep, saying, "So, then: Are we fictitious too, . . "

It's not all postmodern styling, There's a very good story here, and it grows on you, "Every Third Thought" refers to the reconsiderations after "on second thought", and the subtitle, "A Novel in Five Seasons", refers to the seasons of George Newett's and Barth's life, and his marriage with Amanda.
He is in his second "Fall" the first centered on an actual fall on a vacation hence a "trip and fall" with Amanda, visiting Stratford, home of Shakespeare.


Newett's second Fall parallels Barth's own, both author and character approaching their eightieth years as Barth was writing the book, I won't spoil the ending, The one thing I'll say about it is that it is sadly honest,

Barth has always played at this disappearing boundary between living a life and writing a story, I know it can be tedious at times, especially to unindoctrinated readers, and it's coupled with a lot of alliterative stylings, puns, and the like.
In the end though, Barth is living and telling a compelling story, Not gonna spend too much time on this little treasure, I began reading Barth earlier last year with Lost in the Funhouse which I still haven't completely finished but am so dumbfounded by the tricks that I had to give it a break.


This novel, Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons is John Barth's latest, It's a postmodern book with a few stories within the stories, within the stories, And, it's kind of cool the way he morphs the stories that his protagonist is writing about to join with the story his protagonist is a character in.
And, if that wasn't enough, it gives a personal autobiographical feel to it but, of course, this could just be Barth's amazing prose making me want to believe it comes from a real source.


All in all, it's a "good" story, Very clever. I'm trying to eventually get enough courage to read some of his masterpieces, such as The SotWeed Factor, I'm sure I'll get to it soon enough, I just needed a little Barth to wet my postmodern whistle sounds kinky,

Recommended Yep Good start to anybody looking to venture into Postmodernism,

Starsinsideinside!
Not one of my favorite books but I did seem to keep coming back for more, John is obviously a very intelligent man as is shown in his writing, But I found that his sometimes page long sentences, though extremely descriptive, at times just seemed as though he was rambling on, They were full of thoughts and sub thoughts as though he was trying to get a point across, which he did, At times I wondered, "When Wil this sentence just end" That being said, I did enjoy this book, recommended by Neil Peart at Bubbas Book club, and Im thinking of reading another John Barth book.
Companion piece to his "The Development,"
but much better developed, I haven't sat down and taken my time to write a full review in while,usally because I dive right into reading the next book, but damn can Barth craft some nice sentences, he does with an effortless ease of a true master, words that last, there's a seen in which two inspiring writers watch divers and comment that the divers act of diving is life, some do flips and stunts, some just dive feet first, some make big splashes while others barley splash at all.
Wry and punfilled fun. When I look back over the Barth bibliography, I find that there have been a lot of hits and misses, There was often always a charm to his writing, it's witticisms and historical perspective, but the weaker works, like most of the more recent books and even his gigantic tome yes, that's saying a lot LETTERS, Just make for a lot of redundancy and spotlighting of some of Barth's personal obsessions.
But even in the great books, where these things still abound, there was at least a sense of reading a new way of telling stories.
If you still think the same way about storytelling after Lost in the Funhouse or Chimera or Tidewater Tales, then you just haven't read that closely.
Even Where Three Roads meet holds some esteem for admitting that stories can't be told as real life,
But this book just goes back over many of the same obsessions and feels empty in the process, High respect and kudos to Barth for his endless productivity, but when the stories all smack the same keywords and motifs, one wonders just how new the new book is.
Kind of started leafing forward feeling Been There, Done That, impressed only by the protagonist's name, not much to hang a novel on, For past two or three years it's the second author after Jay Rayner's "Apologist" whose books i'd say dance anymore,
First of all, 'course, terrible stairstep translation into russian by Sergey Ilyin, But to hell with him
Second is uselessness of memoirphormed memoirmorphic presentation with Postromantic author used this term, so don't blame me officially infantile exhibition.

Third it is too long and affectionate to truly touch subconsciousness, and too short and ragged to pick a thought or two for review.
John Barth is masterful with language, Even if you do not care for the plot or the characters, you continue to read because his sentences are filled with wordplay, puns, innuendos, and witticisms.
Each of his sentences feels like I am unrolling a poster that had been rolled in storage for years, I open the poster and as soon as I see what the poster is, it rolls back in on itself, There are sometimes, you get enough in just the one glance, but many times, you end up unrolling the poster again, to really take a good look, to really enjoy the craftmanship of the words.


Barth is great at crafting words, He is great at putting ideas and symbols together, He is great about being impressive, Having said this, there is not much else but the silly enjoyment of reading this novel,

The novel itself, the story ofyearold G, I. Newett trying to push out one novel in the twilight of his years, is not too exciting, It actually can be shelved with all of the other "My years are quickly running ou so let's write a novel before it runs out completely.
" It's kind of deathdefying fictions, trying to get that last squeeze out before the end, mostly novels that are reminicent in content, Updike did it. Philip Roth has been doing this for aboutyears now, Joyce Carol Oates has been doing it pretty much her entire career, The end of life, in G, I. N's perspective, deserves to have a final burst of creativity, even if the story is about how it used to be vs, how it is.

I did enjoy this novel, but it wasn't for the plot or the characters as much as the technique used to put it together.
This is typical Barth, which makes even his notsogood books entertaining to read, Unintentionally arrived at three nonegenarians on my readlist Saramago, GarciaMarquez, amp Barth and this was the only book I'd recommend, It's Barth's usual schtick in a maybememoir about a lost friend and found love, It reminded me of David Markson's 'Last Novel' in its power to tickle and move simultaneously, John Barth, I used to love you but I think it's time to end our relationship and I'm sorry, Maybe it's me, and not you, but it's really difficult to read your navelgazing writing style selfindulgent, selfreflective, too many inside jokes, too much "OFF" language, and frankly sex scenes that aren't that sexy especially after having a head injury.
Thus is the irony, as Every Third Thought's pivotal moment is the author's knock to the head when missing a step in Stratford upon Avon, which theoretically causes three hallucinations or visions.

But reading this really made my head hurt, and I am glad that it was only aboutpages, Again, I'm sorry. It's me, not you. Maybe we can still be friends Remember all the good times we had together I'm no Barth scholar, but ten years ago, I was charmed and touched by his rambling postmodern The Floating Opera, a book he wrote in the midtwentieth century.
Like Pynchon and Kafka, he was ahead of his time, His metafiction wasn't just for show and selfindulgence the winkwink and digressing were salient to the themes, and showcased the sophistry of righteous absolutes and its contradictions.
It was an intellectual frolic into the act of writing itself, with a tender touch of comic genius,

His latest and slim novel is also a linguistic romp, and resurrects some familiar subjects/settings, such as a love triangle, prostate troubles, and his beloved Eastern Shore of Maryland, specifically Stratford.
Retired professor G. I. Newitt experiences some strange catastrophic flukes associated with a series of visions, He is subsequently inspired to chronicle these seasonal occurrences and phenomena, such as a "postequinoctial vision" and a "solstitial illumination, " The latest casualties include a tornado that wiped out the retirement community that he lived in with his wife and muse, Amanda, and a fall on histh birthday in another Stratfordthe one particular to the Bard.
Newitt's efforts to pen his memoir is the central event, and he shares every daily outburst of desultory thought with Amanda,

I am surprised that this is the same author who wrote The Floating Opera, There was nothing here to tantalize beyond some lexical stretching, The narrative was selfconscious and obvious, like the protagonist's name, G. I. Newitt is as blunt and prosaic as Seymour Butts, The events, and the telling of them, were repetitive and dull, the narrative style antiquated and stilted, The most inspired was the title's allusion to Prospero's lines in The Tempest,

It read like Barth just showed up for practice, much like the gasbag Newitt, and was compelled to cough up all the topical issues of the daythe war, the Bush administration, the government's failure during natural disasters.
But it was arid and lusterless notions stuck to the page like Teflon, a reiteration of the mundane, It managed to be both capricious and monotonous, It was ostensibly about aging and mortality, but it was derivative, uninspired, Pithy scribbles and warmups weren't enough to support a gimmicky, stale story, Distilled Barth Barth in essence, Every Third Thought tells a familiar story, shot through the familiar lens of Barthconcerns old and new, There's nothing here that's new to Barthfollowers the academic writer, his younger wife and soulmate, the Maryland tidewater, the concerns of ageing, the nature of fiction, the referencing of Scheherazade and Shakespeare, the Barth style, all twisted logic and curlicued sentences.


And yet.

And yet, everything's new here, The characters rescued from their predicament in sitelinkThe Development enter a kind of twlilight world, and reflect on the closure of life, not from the foothills of old age, as in the past, but from somewhere near the summit.
The narration is as unreliable as you'd expect, and the layers of

structure as satisfyingly complex as ever, but there's something more here, something we haven't really seen before.


We're in a world of dreams and forgetfulness, of curious concerns and seenitallbefore worldweariness, leavened by Barth's usual metafictional caprices, here taken to a startlingly emotional climax, which leaves the reader trepidatious of turning the last page, and still satisfied by the payoff, which tells us everything and nothing, all at once.


It's not fulllength Barth I doubt there's another of those in the pipeline, but as a summary of the man's wit and wisdom, and a reminder of what he's still capable of, it beats just about anything out there.


Aging has its rewards, it seems, and if it can't go on forever, surely there's time for just one more story, . .

. John Barth is one of the only writers that always succeeds in bringing about an unabashed feeling of love in me, I love his work for many different reasons, but the primary one is that it makes me love language and storytelling to see them as magical gifts of the muse, of some divine spirit, of humanity.
. . but who really cares where the gift comes from

Every Third Thought, as in almost every Barth book since the seminal The SotWeed Factor, is chockfull of postmodern techniques, deconstructive tendencies you name it.
Now, I know that those of us experimental fiction lovers have always associated this stuff with Barth, But somehow, some people including some very excellent writers whom I won't name here have missed the point, Barth's sentences aren't cold tricks they're not ironic they're not calculated, They most definitely aren't flashy, Nor are they meant to show off Barth's intellect,

All of the negative criticism thrown at Barth namely that he's a masturbatory literary experimenter, that his books have nothing to do with social and political reality are not only completely wrong on a literal level name a Barth book that doesn't deal with history, in some capacity at least but on a metaphysical and, even, a spiritual level.


I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Barth is one of the most spiritual writers of our time.
He doesn't write about god in a religious or any other nonsensical context rather, he locates spirituality in language and storytelling themselves, That's why the realist conventions of plot and character mean jack squat to him not that there's anything wrong with these conventions, It's just that in showing us how stories get made, Barth highlights the magical and spiritual powers of stories themselves, When you read his books, you're left realizing that all texts participate in the longstanding tradition of humanity trying to make sense of the world.
And it's the attempt at understanding that's holy for Barth,

Yes, I did use the word "holy, " Barth himself probably wouldn't like my use of this word, But, it seems to me, that instead of simply labeling Barth as a "postmodernist" or "practicer of metafiction," we should stop and think about what he's actually doing, which is foregrounding the amazing continuity in storytelling and linguistic innovations that have bound the human race together since day one.


Furthermore, Barth's texts invite us to remember that's right, remember the importance of each and every word that has ever passed through human lips or has been written or typed with human hands.
Words are the way we construct our own identities for ourselves and other people, And the stories that they help us construct about other people and the world around us are the only vehicles we have to advance our understanding of anything.


So, to be bawdy like Barth, screw you to all the Barth detractors, . . and those like J. Franzen okay, I had to drop the name of a hater, . . who just don't get what Barth is up to! I shouldn't say that they don't "get it" rather, that they're more than willing to supply dismissive labels to experimental writing.
Labeling, after all, is much easier than working,

I know that Barth's masterworks The SotWeed Factor, Giles GoatBoy, LETTERS, and The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor are enormous, but do yourself the challenge of picking one up.
Do the work especially if you want to learn from a master HOW TO WRITE Barth taught at Hopkins for many years, You'll laugh your ass off, be impressed by the master's "passionate virtuosity," and learn something about the way stories work, The shorter fiction from Lost in the Funhouse and Chimera to Every Third Thought is a great way to get an intro to Barth, But the man runs marathons and not sprints, and the meganovel is his forte,

You're right: I haven't said much directly about Every Third Thought, But I've also said everything,

Read this book, Read Barth. I mean, the man's spent his entire career making Finnegans Wake a lot more fun to read, Those of you who know Barth know just what I mean, .