A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1964) by Irish author James Joyce is a seminal coming-of-age narrative about a young man. It is regarded as a cornerstone of modernist literature and served as one of the inspirations for Barth’s Ambrose.

‘The School,’’ (1976) by Donald Barthelme, is a postmodern tale where clueless teachers fail to grasp reality, while third graders articulate themselves like sophisticated college professors.

Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov is a distinctive satire on literary scholarship. This novel, an intriguing experiment in narrative style, features a 999-line poem accompanied by detailed commentary.

Love in the Time of Cholera (1988) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an exemplar of Latin American magic realism, penned by one of Barth’s favorite authors.