Coming Soon!

In a novelistic romp that is by turns hilarious and brilliant, John Barth, the dean of postmodern fiction, spoofs his own place in the pantheon of contemporary fiction and the experimental writers who have followed on the path of his literary trailblazing. Charming, playful, and teeming with Barth's vintage wit, Coming Soon!!! is the tale of two writers: an older retiring novelist setting out to write his last work and a young aspiring writer of hypertext intent on toppling his master. Inspired by a gently sinking showboat replica called The Original Floating Opera II, grounded on a shoal somewhere in the Chesapeake Bay as a hurricane (and Y2K) approaches, they race each other to write a novel about a floating opera a reprise of the fictional mentor's first novel, of Barth's own first novel, of Edna Ferber's literary monument Show Boat and its spawn of musicals and films. In the heat of their rivalry, the writers explore, and sometimes stumble over, the cultural fault lines between print and electronic fiction, mentor and mentee, postmodernism and modernism. At a moment of intense renewed interest in postmodernism, Coming Soon!!! is sure to be one of the publishing events of the season. It is an extraordinary addition to and in many respects a commentary on Barth's distinguished career as the author of a series of books that has shaped contemporary literature.


Genre: Literary Fiction