Datura Trader
39.99 €
In stock
Datura Trader
39.99 €
It is no wonder that John Barth was recognized as a classic during his lifetime, given his status as the “alpha” and “omega” of postmodern literature. If we set out to find a spiral trajectory in the history of literature, then it makes a full turn: being not only a practitioner but also a theorist, Barth either announced, or substantiated, or invented the end of one artistic method (“the literature of exhaustion”) and the beginning of another (“the literature of replenishment”). Having tried almost all the methods and antics of postmodernism - from irony that destroys meanings through metafiction and epic canvases - Barth returned to realistic texts, the “exhaustion” of which he himself once postulated. And while literary historians kept track of dead ends and crises, he declared that “the exhaustion of certain forms or the exhaustion of some possibilities is by no means a reason for despair” and continued to write. "The Datura Merchant" (1960) is the author's central novel, which earned him the title of the main innovator in American literature, although the writer certainly remained a traditionalist and a classicist almost in the ancient sense, calling his craft nothing less than "working with the muse." The action takes place in the first decades of the exploration of the North American continent by British colonists. At the center is the life of a young clumsy poet named Ebenezer Cook, who finds himself drawn into intrigues, political machinations and romantic twists and turns. Issues of smuggling are combined with problems of the metaphysics of creativity, the call of circumstances - with the predestination of fate. Add to this a great many eccentric characters, a wide arsenal of piercing satire and magnificent humor, the puzzle of a real historical plot - and you get a literary journey that Odysseus himself would envy!