John Barth, Bearded Bards & Splitting Hairs

John Barth, Bearded Bards & Splitting Hairs is the seventeenth issue of the Journal of Experimental Fiction, a Festschrift edited by Eckhard Gerdes and built around the work of John Barth. It is not a Barth book; it is a book about Barth, assembled the way JEF has built its single-author tributes since Raymond Federman proposed an entire issue devoted to his own work.

Its centerpiece is a previously unpublished essay by Barth, presented as a lecture at Macon State College, answered by seventeen narrative responses from students. Around it sit fiction by Steven Kedrowski, Amina Memory Cain, Daniel Borzutzky, Lee Groban, and others; parodies of famous experimental works by Thomas McCain, Dawn Hamilton, and Gerdes himself; a critical essay by Tim Miller; and a review of Barth's then-new novel Coming Soon!!!.

The form is the editorial point: criticism, homage, and new creative work in one place, so that the tribute is also a contribution to the work it honors.