Tabula Rasa

“Narrative, in short--and here they were in full agreement--was a love-relation, not a rape: its success depended upon the reader's consent and cooperation, which she could withhold or at any moment withdraw; also upon her own combination of experience and talent for the enterprise and the author's ability to arouse, sustain, and satisfy her interest--an ability on which his figurative life hung as surely as Scheherazade's literal....”

John Barth, Chimera, Mariner Books, $13.00