In his renowned essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" John Barth admits he praises writers like Robbe-Grillet and Borges because they challenge the epistemology of realism and "remind us of the fictitious aspect of our own existence" (30). Darth's own works demonstrate a similar distrust in the conventional, exhausted values of realism and an attempt to refurbish literature with fresh themes and techniques. His first novel The Floating Opera (1956) definitely lacks the high experimentalism of his subsequent novels but it is the theme of the repudiation of stable points of reference which defines its author as a truly postmodern writer still in the threshold of his literary experience. By revealing the fragmentary nature of life and art and the inconsistency of human existence Barth asserts in this work the idea that identity and reality are products of our imagination. an idea which becomes a central motive in his aesthetics.  

In his renowned essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" John Barth admits he praises writers like Robbe-Grillet and Borges because they challenge the epistemology of realism and "remind us of the fictitious aspect of our own existence" (30). Darth's own works demonstrate a similar distrust in the conventional, exhausted values of realism and an attempt to refurbish literature with fresh themes and techniques. His first novel The Floating Opera (1956) definitely lacks the high experimentalism of his subsequent novels but it is the theme of the repudiation of stable points of reference which defines its author as a truly postmodern writer still in the threshold of his literary experience. By revealing the fragmentary nature of life and art and the inconsistency of human existence Barth asserts in this work the idea that identity and reality are products of our imagination. an idea which becomes a central motive in his aesthetics.