Chimera was published by Random House in 1972, and it won the National Book Award for Fiction (shared with John Williams’s Augustus). The book consists of three linked novellas — “Dunyazadiad,” “Perseid,” and “Bellerophoniad” — each retelling a classical myth in a way that simultaneously tells the story, comments on the act of telling it, and explores the artist’s anxiety about creative exhaustion.
“Dunyazadiad” reimagines the Thousand and One Nights from the perspective of Scheherazade’s sister Dunyazade, introducing a modern storyteller (transparently Barth himself) who travels back in time to give Scheherazade the stories she needs to survive. “Perseid” retells the Perseus myth as a midlife crisis: the hero, past his great deeds, seeks immortality through the story of those deeds — but discovers that the story requires constant revision. “Bellerophoniad” follows Bellerophon’s attempt to replicate Perseus’s heroic pattern — and his discovery that imitation guarantees failure.
The unifying theme is the relationship between life and story: how myths shape the lives of those who inhabit them, and how the attempt to live according to a mythic pattern produces both meaning and absurdity.
Collecting Chimera
First edition (Random House, New York, 1972): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Without jacket: $8–$20