The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor Review
Webmaster’s Note: This review was originally published in a January 1991 issue of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter with an accompanying interview, also by me. Somebody has been heralded as Barth’s return to the kind of Fabulism that he made so popular with Giles Goat-Boy and Sot-Weed Factor in the ’60s. It’s probably his best book since Chimera.
I also attended a reading of Barth’s at Johns Hopkins around the time of the book’s release. The only pertinent detail I remember about the reading was Barth voicing his regret that he had not asked the cover designer to paint a wristwatch on the woman lounging in the foreground as a symbol of the book’s central anachronism.
“This is a work of fiction and the characters and events are imaginary,” runs the disclaimer of John Barth’s latest novel, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. “The author is, however, indebted to the nautical explorer Tim Severin, who appears in this book as a fictional character…”You would expect as much from Mr. Barth.In the past thirty-five years of his career, the acclaimed Hopkins alumnus has literally turned the laws of storytelling inside-out. What other author can correspond with his characters by mail, write a story that is both the shortest and longest in the history of literature, and still come away with a National Book Award? After all that, turning real people into fictional characters is a cinch.Yet Barth’s talents extend far beyond these metaphysical leaps and narrative tricks. His prose is packed full of word games and alliteration that make it a delight to read. Try this sentence aloud, for instance, from Somebody the Sailor: “Thus we passed some seasons in reciprocal love and benign incomprehension, which Time might have turned corrosive had not catastrophe saved Time time by quickly turning the next page of my story.”
Or this one: “So: the chap who, late in this story, will set all-but-solo sail sidewise for serendipity will be that other, self-styled Sindbad, that nobody whom folks called (for convenience’ sake) the Landsman…”
There’s plenty more where these came from. Barth can pull them out of thin air right when you think that you’re set for a dry descriptive passage and set you back on your feet.
Another trademark of Barth is his knack for coming up with a wild, unpredictable roller-coaster of a plot. Characters constantly change identities, new problems keep popping up around every corner, and you’re never sure exactly what’s going on until the end. In the new book he keeps the story-telling machinery so well concealed that even the most avid Barth readers won’t be able to see what he’s got up his sleeve next.
The plot of Somebody the Sailor runs like this:
Sindbad the Sailor (of The Thousand and One Nights fame) is preparing to set out on his seventh and final voyage when a mysterious stranger arrives at his house. This stranger, a certain Simon William Behler or “Somebody,” is a former New Journalist from the Here and Now who has somehow managed to find himself in medieval Baghdad. Things are not what they seem, however: Somebody is all too familiar with the goings-on in Sindbad’s household, and the old Sailor himself is behaving mighty suspicious. What’s amiss?
To gain time and gather information, Somebody challenges Sindbad to a sort of story-telling contest. Each of them will recount the six voyages of their past (Sindbad’s literal, Behler’s mainly figurative) until they reach the present moment. Throughout the course of the book, the pair trade off stories until they gradually come together and become one.
Like the John Smith diaries in The Sot-Weed Factor or the myths of Chimera, Barth works best when he’s reorchestrating old tales to suit his purposes. Sindbad’s adventures, as one might expect, are the real gems of the novel. In Barth’s hands, his life becomes a ludicrous series of sexual encounters and warped proverbs. The Sailor’s guest Ibn al-Rashid describes them best in ironic Barth fashion: “The high ground of traditional realism, brothers, is where I stand! Give me familiar, substantial stuff: rocs and rhinoceri, ifrits and genies and flying carpets… Let no outlander imagine that such crazed fabrications as machines that mark the hour or roll themselves down the road will ever take the place of our homely Islamic realism.”
The more prosaic history of Simon William Behler, which takes up about half of the book, is not quite as captivating. That’s not to say that it isn’t good reading; but it doesn’t flow as easily as the fantastical half. I’ve always found Barth’s dialogue a bit forced and sometimes full of colloquialisms that don’t ring true. Even so, the reader’s interest never lags, and the author has plenty of surprises for us residents of the Here and Now.
That brings me to the biggest problem with Somebody the Sailor: like much of Barth’s material, it’s extraordinarily dense reading. Getting the most of LETTERS, for instance, requires a fairly thorough knowledge of the six books that came before it, an extensive vocabulary, and a good understanding of American history. While The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is more accessible than that, it’s still not the type of book you’d want to bring on an airplane; it’s best read on a long vacation when there are no distractions. Few people have the time necessary to tackle Barth’s stuff.
That, of course, is a shame. Just thumbing through the opening pages after the first read-around, you realize how much better Somebody the Sailor is on the second reading. If you can stay the course, Barth is still as good a navigator as ever, and The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is definitely worth the fare.