Where Three Roads Meet

From the National Book Award winner, three linked novellas that "e;will stretch your mind, challenge your thoughts, and bend your reality"e; (Charlotte Observer).John Barth, "e;one of the greatest novelists of our time"e; (Washington Post Book World) and "e;the master of experimental fiction"e; (Details), presents a lively triad of tales that delight in the many possibilities of language and its users.The first novella, "e;Tell Me,"e; explores a callow undergraduate's initiation into the mysteries of sex, death, and the Heroic Cycle. The second, "e;I've Been Told,"e; traces no less than the history of storytelling and examines innocence and modernity, ignorance and self-consciousness. And the three elderly sisters of "e;As I Was Saying . . . "e; record an oral history of their youthful muse-like services to (and servicing of) a subsequently notorious and now mysteriously vanished novelist.Sexy, humorous, and brimming with Barth's deep intelligence and playful irreverence, Where Three Roads Meet "e;employs all of his familiar devices-alliteration, shifts in diction and time, puns-to tease and titillate, while at the same time articulate-obliquely, sadly, angrily, gloriously-a farewell to language and its objects: us"e; (Publishers Weekly, starred review)."e;Barth is markedly intelligent about language and often very funny."e; -The New York Times"e;Perhaps the most prodigally gifted comic novelist writing in English today."e; -Newsweek

From the National Book Award winner, three linked novellas that "e;will stretch your mind, challenge your thoughts, and bend your reality"e; (Charlotte Observer).John Barth, "e;one of the greatest novelists of our time"e; (Washington Post Book World) and "e;the master of experimental fiction"e; (Details), presents a lively triad of tales that delight in the many possibilities of language and its users.The first novella, "e;Tell Me,"e; explores a callow undergraduate's initiation into the mysteries of sex, death, and the Heroic Cycle. The second, "e;I've Been Told,"e; traces no less than the history of storytelling and examines innocence and modernity, ignorance and self-consciousness. And the three elderly sisters of "e;As I Was Saying . . . "e; record an oral history of their youthful muse-like services to (and servicing of) a subsequently notorious and now mysteriously vanished novelist.Sexy, humorous, and brimming with Barth's deep intelligence and playful irreverence, Where Three Roads Meet "e;employs all of his familiar devices-alliteration, shifts in diction and time, puns-to tease and titillate, while at the same time articulate-obliquely, sadly, angrily, gloriously-a farewell to language and its objects: us"e; (Publishers Weekly, starred review)."e;Barth is markedly intelligent about language and often very funny."e; -The New York Times"e;Perhaps the most prodigally gifted comic novelist writing in English today."e; -Newsweek