Reception and Legacy
A 1958 Time magazine review called The End of the Road "that rarity of U.S. letters—a true novel of ideas". In the Chicago Review in 1959, reviewer David Kerner called it an "ideological farce", a genre he considered a "special type" with few contemporary examples. Kerner praises Barth's "coherence of ... allegory", "depth of ... feeling for ideology", and "excellence of intention", but argues that the work's realistic style is at odds with the farcical, two-dimensional characters, who lack a "human and social setting" to give them roundedness and credibility.
Jonathan Lethem wrote of the influence The End of the Road had on his novel As She Climbed Across the Table (1997), which also involves a love triangle in an academic setting. In Lethem's novel, the narrator, in a position similar to Joe Morgan's, experiences the dilemma of "losing a woman to a rival who", like Jake Horner, "refuses to provide any fixed identity to hate, compete with, or understand".
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Famous quotes containing the words reception and/or legacy:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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