John Barth

John Barth is an American novelist who specialised in postmodernism and metafiction.  Barth claimed that the conventional styles of literary representation had been ‘used up’.  The literary conventions of the 1960’s had been over used and there was nothing original about a novel.  John Barth wrote a manifesto called The Literature of exhaustion in which he claimed metafiction is the answer to the ‘used upness’ of the novel.  Barth claims that experimental techniques in literature by writers like Borges and Beckett had revitalised the novel as an art form. These writers were interested in the ‘representation of representation’ (Currie 1995) of the novel and believed that this was mimetic but was done with ‘ironic intent’ to create ‘new human work’ (Currie 1995)  Mimetic not only in the artificiality of the art itself but also in life.

Secondly, that the ‘contamination of reality by dreams’ (Currie 1995) is a reality that begins to impose itself to our existence and will eventually destroy our previous reality.  The story appears to have an alternate reality to our own. Borges claims that this is a way of showing that the ‘medium is the message’.

Finally, the writers idea of ‘the metaphysically disturbing effect of the regressus in infinitum  roduced by the story within the story and the process whereby the characters in a novel become authors or readers within the fictitious aspect of our existence’ (Currie 1995).  These metafictional devices are seen in postmodern fiction as they cause chaos in their understanding.  The regressus in infinitum is ‘the process of going back endlessly: tracing each happening to a preceding step (mises.org). This happens when the story would not have a linear telling, we would have analepsis and prolepsis throughout the telling of a story.  The novel would than confuse the reader into who was doing the telling, the author or the characters or both.  To further confuse matters, the novel would refer to itself in the novel.  All these metafictional devices are attempting to confuse your idea of reality, to make you question yourself as to what is the real reality? In your world and in the novel?

In conclusion, Literature of Exhaustion is about how every story that is ever told, has already been told.  There are no stories to write because all the stories have been written.  The only way to make any impact on the novel is to metafictionalise it, to make your mark on the story. 

Currie, M. (1995)  Metafiction Longman: London

www.mises.org