The tale of the author or, Scheherazade's betrayal

Abstract

John Barth, the postmodernist american writer, who is now in the second cycle of his middle age, professes to have had only one true love during all of his life. Her name is Scheherazade. This love affair began when the writer,"as an illiterate undergraduate, worked off part of my tuition filing books in the Classics Library at Johns Hopkins, which included the stacks of the Oriental Seminary". In 1972 Barth published "Chimera", which consists of three novellas.