John Barth has spent much of his working life as a professor of literature and creative writing. During his twenty-two year teaching career at Johns Hopkins, Barth distributed his manifesto on fiction writing, “The Bare Bones of Literature,” as a first-day-of-class handout. “The Bare Bones of Literature” shows how seriously and closely Barth studies story mechanics.  Like his syllabi, articles, and opinion pieces, it robustly demonstrates his prowess at deconstructing narrative methods and possibilities. In return, Barth’s own work has been the subject of scrutiny and analysis by critics around the world.