John Barth, a Novelist Who Found Possibility in a ‘Used-Up’ Form By merrily using fiction to dissect itself, he was at the vanguard of a movement that defined a postwar American style.

John Barth, Writer Who Pushed Storytelling’s Limits, Dies at 93 His sprawling and boisterous novel “The Sot-Weed Factor,” published in 1960, projected him into the ranks of the country’s most innovative writers.