Manuscript of "The Literature of Exhaustion"
Cover of The Atlantic, August 1967, containing "The Literature of Exhaustion"
Page from The Literature of Exhaustion and The Literature of Replenishment, with John Barth's notes
Cover of The Friday Book, with New York Times advertisement
Cover of Further Fridays, and cover of Final Fridays

“The Literature of Exhaustion” was first delivered as a lecture, then printed in The Atlantic, then republished in The Friday Book, the first of three books of essays named after Barth’s habit of writing non-fiction on Fridays. Like Lost in the Funhouse, “The Literature of Exhaustion” and a later essay, “The Literature of Replenishment,” demonstrate Barth’s interest in the historical transformations of literary forms—from an oral to a printed tradition to new “intermedia” arts. In “The Literature of Exhaustion,” Barth declares that art must change as culture changes—not just its subjects but its techniques. Still, the writers he loves best are those who use innovation to carry out the writer’s age-old task: “to speak eloquently and memorably to our human hearts and conditions.”