A Style and Its Origins

Howard Barker's alter-ego Eduardo Houth first materialised as the photographer of publicity images for Barker's theatre company. The Wrestling School, one among many fictional identities assumed by him to screen a range of his activities, including set and costume design. Writing of himself in the third person and in the historic tense, Barker/Houth achieves a fluency and an uncommon measure of objectivity, though objectivity is scarcely part of the intention. The result is a unique exercise in self-description, partisan but without the shrill self-justification so common in authentic autobiography. Barker/Houth's "A Style and Its Origins" is a literary creation, as befits its authorial origins; it is also a document of total originality and a rich source of dramatic and aesthetic history.