BOOKISH: Sister spit, bony boys and good, old-fashioned teatime

This week in Bookish: Boys with strange bones, tea-drinking tours and the Sister Spit tour comes to Penn.

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BOOKISH: Sister spit, bony boys and good, old-fashioned teatime

POSTED: Thursday, April 19, 2012, 5:00 PM

Filed Under: Arts Books

Monday, April 23

Lost in the Funhouse

At age 82, author John Barth remains one of the most experimental writers of our time. Always anticipating the next sentence, ignoring most narrative rules, and generally playing with the reader's expectations, Barth is a master of the meta narrative—a self-conscious kind of writing that laid the groundwork for postmodern fiction. His arrival on the literary circuit during the mid-60s was welcomed with a kind of Barthomania of fans reveling in his refreshingly different approach to writing. Still active today, the Society for the Celebration of Barthomania is complete with various ranks and regular meetings held in the presence of a plastic eggplant. The highest symbol of the group, the odd prop comes from Barth's story The Sot-Weed Factor, in which the eggplant was said to hold powers of sexual potency. Aside from his following among eggplant-holding enthusiasts, Barth has also earned countless awards for his work, including the National Book Award for his 1973 collection Chimera. Seven decades into his career, Barth is still pushing literary boundaries as he flushes out the final touches on his latest Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seconds.

6:30 p.m., free, Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, writing.upenn.edu/wh

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