Proving himself yet again a master of every form, Barth conquers in his latest the ruminative short essay- jeux d'esprits, as Barth describes them. These mostly one-page tidbits pay homage to Barth's literary influences while retaining his trademark self-consciousness and willingness to play.
Barth's earlier accomplishments amount to a watershed for the country's fiction, a landmark in what's known as Postmodernism. ... As Barth's work matures, its elements of experiment take us further from the ordinary. -John Domini, LitHub
Every sentence he writes either looks at itself askance or ushers in a following sentence that will perform the task. In his fascinated commitment to the art-and to the criticism-of storytelling, he has no rival.-William Pritchard, New York Times
John Barth has spent most of his allotted era watching our wheels spin with a coolly detached, not unamused gaze. He doesn't ignore or eschew change, but he takes a wider view. He is Heraclitean to the core. . . . If, as Nabokov wrote in the Afterword to Lolita, art is kindness, then John Barth embodies art every bit as much as anyone ever has.-James Greer, LA Review of Books