The Peabody Library is currently hosting an exhibition on parts of John Barth’s personal library. Barth has written novels such as the National Book Award winning Chimera. The author was born and raised on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and maintained ties to the state, especially the Chesapeake Bay, throughout his career.
Curator of Literary Rare Books and Manuscripts Gabrielle Dean spoke about Barth’s connection to his home, saying that his broad national acclaim did not pull him away from his origins. Dean argued that Barth managed to escape regional labels while maintaining some localism.
“He always returns to the Chesapeake in his work,” Dean wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I would say that the Chesapeake is his deep subject, his main metaphor.”
Barth is both a Hopkins graduate and professor who finished school in 1952 and returned in 1973 to take a position in the Writing Seminars department. Barth left the University as a professor emeritus and received a Doctor of Humane Letters in 2011.
To celebrate Barth’s contributions to the University and the contemporary canon, Dean hosted a reading and round-table discussion. The panel, made up of four authors and one filmmaker,considered the influence Barth and his style. Its members were Baltimore-based authors Madison Smartt Bell, Rafael Alvarez and Rosalia Scalia, acclaimed independent director Matt Porterfield and Frederick-born author, actor and musician Jason Tinney. Bell is currently a professor at Goucher College and Porterfield teaches in the Film and Media Studies Department at Hopkins. Alvarez, Scalia, and Tinney are all former or current contributors to local news and entertainment publications.
The collection is bound to Barth’s creativity, both in its beginnings and culmination. A summary of the exhibit says that its materials are divided into three sections, “creation, publication, and circulation,” which chart the progress of Barth’s art from pen to print. Amongst its catalogue are manuscripts, novels, mementos, essays, recordings of readings, newspaper articles, teaching materials and more.
Dean wrote that the variety of the exhibition was meant to reflect the scope of Barth’s writing.
“The exhibition is meant to give viewers a glimpse of the writer’s ‘workshop’– the stuff of thinking and making that goes on behind the calm façade of the product,” Dean wrote, making a note of attributing credit to her co-curators Matt Morton and Nate McNamara, both graduates of the Writing Seminars’ MFA program.
Dean wanted to pay homage to what she termed to be Barth’s “‘value-neutral’ approach to media” by including artists from a variety of mediums: spoken word, print, music and film. This broad embrace of formats was reflected in the connection, with its variety of written, spoken and musical entries.
During the readings the members of the panel imparted their own unique styles on the tone of the event. The texts varied from Alvarez’s poetic grit to Bell’s prose which switched from French to English; from Porterfield’s script following a heroin dealer around Harford Road to Scalia’s piece about racial injustice and the death of Emmett Till. Tinney, the final reader, evoked images of the Southern rainstorm amongst the spine of Maryland’s Appalachians.
After the readings the panel answered questions fielded by a moderator and the audience. Alvarez, when asked about Barth’s connection to the Chesapeake and whether or not it influenced the former, wrote that John Barth’s Baltimore was not the same as his. His background was decidedly more working class and centered around the port, which he tries to reflect in his writing.
Scalia, a graduate of Johns Hopkins, responded to a question regarding Baltimore’s prolific writers community. She thanked the large community of immigrants for influencing the city’s authors, including Barth. She pointed out that much of Baltimore’s arts community leads a dual life: They are artistic professionals.
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