Barth wrote a famous essay just the year before these stories came out all in one volume. They had been written over a series of years, got a lot of exposure--called "The Literature of Exhaustion."

在写完这一卷故事的前一年,巴斯写了一篇著名的论文，在60年代，叫《枯竭的文学》

耶鲁公开课 - 1945年后的美国小说课程节选