Life
John Barth, called "Jack", was born in Cambridge, Maryland. Barth has an older brother, Bill, and a twin sister, Jill. He briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, from which he received a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 (for which he wrote a thesis novel, The Shirt of Nessus).
Barth was a professor at The Pennsylvania State University from 1953 to 1965. During the "American high Sixties," he moved to teach at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York from 1965 to 1973. In that period he came to know "the remarkable short fiction" of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, which inspired his collection Lost in the Funhouse.
He then taught at Boston University (visiting professor, 1972–73) and Johns Hopkins University (1973–95) before retiring in 1995.
Read more about this topic: John Barth
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“My dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and ... discuss with absolute frankness.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)