Letters

Wealthe & Wisdom &

Xcellence Bee

Younge in hearte with

Zest to enjoy these & alle other good thyngs

Amen

B.

L: The Author to the Reader. LETTERS is “now” ended. Envoi.

“Sunday, September 14, 1969”

Dear Reader,

LETTERS reaches herewith and “now” (the Author outlines this last on Tuesday, July 4, 1978. The U.S. Bicente

(The Author drafts this in longhand at Chautauqua Lake, N.Y., on Monday, July 10, 1978, a decade since he first conceived an old-time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls etc. U.S. cancels missions to U.S.S.R. to protest trial of Soviet dissidents. Cloudy and cool on Niagara Frontier, warm and humid on Chesapeake Bay. In the interim between outline and longhand draft, as again between longhand draft and first typescript, first typescript and final draft, final draft and galley proofs, he goes forward with Horace’s “labor of the file”: rewriting, editing, dismantling the scaffolding, clearing out the rubbish, planting azaleas about the foundations, testing the wiring and plumbing, hanging doors and windows and pictures, waxing floors, polishing mirrors and windowpanes — and glancing from time to time, even gazing, from an upper storey, down the road, where he makes out in the hazy distance what appear to be familiar loblolly pines, a certain point of dry ground between two creeklets, a steaming tidewater noon, someone waking half tranced, knowing where he is but not at first who, or why he’s there. He yawns and shivers, blinks and looks about. He reaches to check and wind his pocketwatch.

(He types this on October 5, 1978, in Baltimore, Maryland. Time flies. Sloop Brillig found abandoned in Chesapeake Bay off mouth of Patuxent River, all sails set, C.I.A. documents in attaché case aboard. Body of owner, former C.I.A. agent, recovered from Bay one week later, 40 pounds of scuba-diving weights attached, bullet hole in head. C.I.A. and F.B.I, monitoring investigation by local authorities. Nature of documents not disclosed. Time now to lay the cornerstone, run Old Glory up the pole, let off the fireworks, open doors to the public. This way, please. Mind your step: floors just waxed. Do read the guide markers as you go along. Here’s one now.

(You read this on [supply date and news items]. How time passes. Sic transit! Plus ça change! On the letterhead date itself, in fact, there was, beyond certain actions of our story, no particular news of note. Further U.S. troop withdrawals from Southeast Asia scheduled for the fall; South Vietnamese army desertion rate continues at 10,000 per month. Exxon oil tanker Manhattan completes first successful Northwest Passage to Alaska. U.S. Attorney General’s office receives without disapproval “more reasonable schedule” of court sentences for illegal drug use. Happy birthday Jan Masaryk, Ivan Pavlov, Alexander von Humboldt, Luigi Cherubini. On this date in history: 1901: President McKinley dies from assassin’s bullet in Buffalo, New York. 1862: General McClellan drives back General Lee in Battle of South Mountain, Maryland. 1814: Fort McHenry bombardment ceases; F. S. Key reports flag still there) the end.

About the Author

John Barth won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1973 for Chimera, a volume of novellas. He is the author of four novels, Giles Goat-Boy, The Sot-Weed Factor, The Floating Opera, and The End of the Road, as well as a series of short fictions for print, tape, and live voice, Lost in the Funhouse. Born in Cambridge, Maryland, in 1930, Mr. Barth was elected in 1974 to both the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

John Barth is presently the Alumni Cente

Back Cover

LETTERS…

scarlet

fatal

forged

misdirected

amatory

doctored

concealed

crossed

purloined…

are triumphantly delivered in this new comic masterpiece, the first novel in a decade by the man the New York Times called “the best writer of fiction we have in America at present, and one of the best we have ever had.”

LETTERS revives an old-time form — the epistolary novel — and transforms it into a dazzling comic epic of today. The seven letter-writers—“drolls and dreamers” all — are:

• a fifty-year old British gentlewoman, erstwhile mistress (by her own confession) of Herma

• a seventy-year-old small-town bachelor lawyer who enjoys cordial incest during his final cruise on Chesapeake Bay;

• a long-time patient at a Canadian Remobilization Farm, who is ordered to re-dream history or die;

• a terrorist, or counter-terrorist, poet laureate who sets about to blow up the birthplace of our National Anthem, or to prevent others from so doing;

• a rival novelist, who may in fact be a very large insect with computer assistance, plotting from his base in the Spiritualist Capital of America;

• the avant-garde lover of the aforementioned gentlewoman;

• the Author himself, none other.

At once John Barth’s most novel novel, the culmination of all his fiction thus far, and a fabulous roller-coaster ride through the hazards and delights of our lives and histories, such is LETTERS.