Fiction

"Giles Goat-Boy is a farcical twist on human history. Structured loosely around Otto Rank’s theories about the ritual wandering hero and Joseph Campbell’s “chart for a perfect mythological hero” (another obsession of Barth’s), the book tells the story of a would-be Messiah raised by goats who launches on a voyage of prophecy and discovery in a giant University, which is really the world in microcosm. Got that?

The book is rigidly structured (as many of Barth’s tales are). But there is so much pleasure to be derived from finding the concordances between the University-world and the real world (East Campus is the Soviet Union, Enos Enoch is Jesus Christ, the Quiet Riot is the Cold War). The mock introduction by four “editors” of the book is a classic text in itself."

I read all 800 pages but it nearly drove me nuts.

He also did a weird piece called "The Sotweed Factor" (basically the Henp Seller) set in 1600's England and colonial America. Barth is highly acclaimed but hard as hell to wade through.