Chimera

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Synopsis
Chimera is a 310 page mythological fantasy novel written by the distinguished novelist and Humanities professor John Barth and first published in 1972. Random House provides the following illustration and analysis of the work's artistic tone and value:

"At this point I interrupted my sister as usual to say, 'You have a way with words, Scheherazade. This is the thousandth night I've sat at the foot of your bed while you and the King made love and you told him stories, and the one in progress holds me like a genie's gaze.'"

The speaker here is Dunyazade, kid sister of Scheherazade of The Thousand and One Nights, who has her own way with words. There is also Perseus, the demigod who slew the Gorgon Medusa, and yet finds himself at forty "sealeveled, parched and plucked, every grain in my molted sandals raising blisters, and beleaguered by the serpents of my past." And Bellerophon, the hero who tames the winged horse Pegasus only to discover, "My life's a failure. I'm not a mythic hero. I never will be." Like the Chimera of myth, which had a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail, they are all joined into a single, dazzling whole that is, in a sense, the culmination of all of John Barth's work thus far, transforming myth into daily reality and vice versa.

"To the objection that classical mythology, like the Bible, is no longer a staple of the average reader's education and that, consequently, the old agonies of Oedipus or Antigone are without effect on contemporary sensibility, I reply, hum, I forget what, something about comedy and selfexplanatory context."

The reader needs no previous acquaintance with the characters to be caught up in this hilariously exuberant exploration of the nature of the hero, the multitudinous relationships between men and women, and the mortal search for immortality, which, it is persuasively suggested, may lie not in deeds but in words.

Winner of the National Book Award

Copyright:
1977

Book Details

Book Quality:
Excellent
Book Size:
300 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780394481890
Publisher:
Random House
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
John Barth
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Literature and Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy
Submitted By:
Roger Drewicke
Proofread By:
David H. Carter
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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