John Barth Revisits The Eastern Shore, Once Again

That postmodern novelist whose early work (The End of the Road), by its unflattering portrayal of the educational institution now known as Salisbury University – fictionalized by him as “Wicomico State Teachers College” – made him persona non grata hereabouts for a long time has maintained his fascination with a notional Eastern Shore for more than 50 years. John Barth’s first published novel (The Floating Opera), named in reference to a “showboat” that visited towns on the Chesapeake Bay when he was growing up in Cambridge, depicts as its central character a bachelor lawyer in Dorchester County. Later work that features the Eastern Shore as a central element or setting includes "The Sot-Weed Factor."

Now in his late seventies, Barth has just published "The Development," a series of short stories about life and lives lived in an upscale retirement community located somewhere on the Shore. The attached review recently appeared in USA Today. And here’s an excerpt from the publisher’s release:

Something has disturbed the comfortably retired denizens of a pristine Florida-style gated community in Chesapeake Bay country. In the dawn of the new millennium and the evening of their lives, these empty nesters discover that their tidy enclave can be as colorful, shocking, and surreal as any of John Barth’s fictional locales. From the high jinks of a toga party to marital infidelities, a baffling suicide pact, and the sudden, apocalyptic destruction of the short-lived development, Barth brings mordant humor and compassion to the lives of characters we all know well. From “one of the most prodigally gifted comic novelists writing in English today” (Newsweek), The Development is John Barth at his most accessible and sympathetic best.

This work seems timely as the residents of the erstwhile development are "come heres" whose affluence derives from their careers conducted elsewhere than the Shore.

BE WARNED: sometimes deemed humor, Barth’s work is a darker variety of that species.