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Understanding John Barth's “The Literature of Replenishment”

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Understanding John Barth's “The Literature of Replenishment” International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://edupediapublications.org/journals Volume 04 Issue 07 June 2017 Understanding John Barth’s “The Literature of Replenishment” D. R. Edwin Christy Assistant Professor of English St. Joseph‟s College (Autonomous) Tiruchirappalli-620002 Tamil Nadu, India. [email protected] Abstract: John Barth, born on 27th May, 1930, is a prominent and leading contemporary postmodernist. He is an American novelist, short story writer and essayist, who has redefined fiction in America. John Barth‟s two landmark essays, “The Literature of Exhaustion” (1967) and “The Literature of Replenishment” (1980), includes the most prominent ideas of John Barth on Literature and writings. Since many misread his essay “The Literature of Exhaustion”, and had mistakenly assumed that John Barth meant that literature is useless, he wanted to bring clarity and also reconsider some of the statements he had made in the 1967 essay and hence published “The Literature of Replenishment” in 1980. Many misread or misunderstood John Barth because of his language which is quite complex. The aim of this research paper is to demystify the language of Barth and thereby help in the understanding of his essay “The Literature of Replenishment”. The Literature of Replenishment: E. P. Walkiewicz in his book “John Barth” states that the essay “The Literature of The essay “The Literature of Replenishment” is a companion piece to Replenishment” was published in 1980, “The Literature of Exhaustion” in which which is thirteen years after the publication John Barth “makes the most of hindsight of “The Literature of Exhaustion” in 1967. and new insights gained from both reading Available online: https://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/IJR/ P a g e | 576 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://edupediapublications.org/journals Volume 04 Issue 07 June 2017 and writing to reclarify some of the his “modernist” predecessors and his “post- statements made and reconsider some of the modernist” contemporaries (including issues raised in the earlier essay” (11). Since himself) in original ways that help us many misread his essay “The Literature of understand the literature of our century” Exhaustion”, and had mistakenly assumed (25). that John Barth meant that literature is In order to actualize his aim of defining useless, he wanted to bring clarity and also „postmodernism‟, John Barth begins his reconsider some of the statements he had essay by highlighting the popularity of made in the 1967 essay. „postmodernism‟ which has gained currency John Barth expresses his yet another especially in the literary works during 1960s important purpose in writing the essay “The and 1970s, by stating that Literature of Replenishment”, which he The word is not yet in our standard wrote in the headnote of his twin essays, dictionaries and encyclopedias, but since the “My purpose was to define to my end of World War II, and especially in the United States in the latter 1960s and satisfaction the term postmodernism, which 1970s, “postmodernism” has enjoyed in 1979 was everywhere in the air” (193). a very considerable currency, particularly Hence, John Barth while bringing clarity to with regard to our contemporary fiction. (194) his 1967 essay aims at defining the term Although it is very difficult to exactly postmodernism by finding answers for the pinpoint the origin of „postmodernism‟, it is questions what is modernism and what is commonly understood that „postmodernism‟ postmodernism. Edward M. White in a gained its popularity after World War II. review of “The Friday Book: Essays and This is what John Barth has reiterated in the Other Nonfiction” says that John Barth in beginning of his 1980 essay. Here, he “The Literature of Replenishment”, “defines Available online: https://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/IJR/ P a g e | 577 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://edupediapublications.org/journals Volume 04 Issue 07 June 2017 particularly focuses on postmodern fiction that being labelled as a postmodernist and postmodern literature and also completely depends on “the critic‟s view of highlights the fact that during 1960s and the phenomenon and of particular writers” 1970s, when postmodernism was gaining (194). Hence in order to identify who the popularity, universities had incorporated the postmodernists are, he lists the postmodern American postmodernist novel in their writers who are commonly included in the courses and even a quarterly journal was canon, other than himself, William Gass and devoted to postmodernist literature. He John Hawkes, namely, Donald Barthelme, further adds that there were even annual Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Thomas meetings conducted by Deutsche Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Saul Bellow, Gesellschaft fur Amerikastudien and Norman Mailer, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Modern Language Association with themes Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, Raymond such as „America in the 1970s‟ with special Queneau, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor, focus on American postmodernist writing Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, Claude and „the self in postmodernist fiction‟ Simon, Claude Mauriac, John Fowles, Julio respectively. All these activities suggested Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Italo the presence of postmodernism in the Calvino. (195) academic circle though the word Having listed the postmodern writers, John „postmodernism‟ did not find its place in the Barth further explores into understanding standard dictionaries and encyclopaedia and defining the term „postmodernism‟. He then. questions, “…do the writers most often Following this, Barth enters into a serious called postmodernist share any aesthetic discussion of being labelled as a principles or practices as significant as the postmodernist and also highlights the fact differences between them?” (196). This Available online: https://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/IJR/ P a g e | 578 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://edupediapublications.org/journals Volume 04 Issue 07 June 2017 question arose in Barth mainly because of Professor Hugh Kenner, who in his study of the critics‟ confusion in labelling the writers American modernist writers titled A as modernists or postmodernists. Barth Homemade World published in 1975, puts clearly expresses the critics state of “modernists and postmodernists together confusion in the following paragraph: without distinction” (196-197). Barth also quotes yet two other professors, one namely Indeed, some of us who have been Gerald Graff of Northwestern University publishing fiction since the 1950s have had who is similar to Professor Kenner in his the interesting experience of being praised views on postmodernism, which is very or damned in that decade as existentialists evident from two of his essays titled “The and in the early 1960s as black humourists. Myth of the Postmodernist Breakthrough” Had our professional careers antedated the and “Babbitt at the Abyss” that were Second World War, we would no doubt published in Tri-Quarterly 26 and Tri- have been praised or damned as modernists, Quarterly 33 respectively. The second one, in the distinguished company listed above. whom Barth quotes is Professor Robert Now we are praised or damned as Alter of Berkeley who also wrote in Tri- postmodernists. (196) Quarterly and subtitled his essay on This confusion among the critics could also postmodernist fiction as “reflections on the be because of some characteristics in writing aftermath of modernism”. Both these critics that is shared by both modernists and consider the postmodern programme as that postmodernists. which “is in some respects an extension of the program of modernism, in other respects John Barth, discusses the views of certain a reaction against it” (197). critics on postmodern writers. First of all he talks about his Johns Hopkins colleague, Available online: https://edupediapublications.org/journals/index.php/IJR/ P a g e | 579 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://edupediapublications.org/journals Volume 04 Issue 07 June 2017 Further, John Barth, summarizes Professor “meaning” of literary action, the adoption of Graff‟s checklist of the characteristics of a tone of epistemological self-mockery modernist fiction and Professor Alter‟s aimed at the naïve pretensions of bourgeois differing characterizations of postmodernist rationality, the opposition of inward fiction. John Barth says that according to consciousness to rational, public, objective Graff, discourse, and an inclination to subjective distortion to point up the evanescence of the The ground motive of modernism… was objective social world of the nineteenth- criticism of the nineteenth-century bourgeois century bourgeoisie. (199) social order and its world view. Its artistic strategy was the self-conscious overturning John Barth finds the above checklist by of the conventions of bourgeois realism by Graff quite reasonable and to that he adds such tactics and devices as the substitution two more characteristics. One being that of of a “mythical” for a “realistic” method and the modernists‟ insistence, in which the the “ manipulation of conscious parallels artist plays an alienated role in his society or between contemporaneity and antiquity” outside it, like James Joyce‟s hero who is (Graff is here
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