Barth for Beginners
Webmaster’s Note: I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so let me begin by saying that I did not write this. And despite the fact that the author and I disagree on the merits of LETTERS, I will say that this is an excellent introduction to the works of Barth. If nothing else, read Mr. McCormack’s first paragraph. So true!
Posted by Mal McCormack on November 13, 1998
Most visitors to this section seem to be panicked literature students facing a dissertation on an unfamiliar author rather than seasoned appreciative readers. This is a pity because that is not the best way to approach John Barth’s works. While these may indeed be valid objects of study (though Lost in the Funhouse is something of an unhealthy academic obsession) there is infinitely more glory in reading them simply as terrific tales written in brilliant English by an underrated master. They are meant — shock! horror! — to be enjoyed.
How might an innocent best start this pretty serious enjoyment? I can recommend my own experience which, while not entirely chronological, luckily dealt with the various serial characters, author included, as and when they cropped up. So, for what it’s worth, here’s a workable scheme as I stumbled across it. I have thrown in some random thoughts, but this is not meant to be either a critique or an analysis.
Barth for Beginners
Start with The Sot-Weed Factor (1961). This frenetic mock-18th century tale abounds in heroes, villains, fools, plots, counter-plots and, above all, humour. A word of caution: if you can’t handle the vastness here then give up now because you have just dicovered Barth is not for you and probably never will be. But I was fortunate. I read this book by accident back in the mid-60s while listlessly seeking a remedy for ennui, and was forever hooked.
Proceed now to Giles Goat Boy (1967). If you are under the age of 40 first watch a few old newsreels or movies to get the feel of the Cold War days. And contemplate some photographs of JFK and the lovely Jackie. At first glance this story seems as different as can be from TSWF, but absurdism and surrealism are taken to even dizzier heights without ever coming close to losing the reader.
By now I was such a devoted Barthite I was compelled to track down his two earliest published works, The Floating Opera (1956) and The End of the Road (1958). And I was disappointed by these slim novellas with their curiously flat and rather unpleasant 50s feel. Nevertheless they remain recommended reading since their protagonists resurface in later stories, are much fleshed out therein, and become far more complex, interesting and entertaining. But I doubt if many Barth fans would return to these books except under extreme academic duress.
There follows something of a fallow period, we now know not unconnected with Barth’s own life problems. He sets aside the preparation of his largest, most ambitious work so far and chooses instead to publish Lost in the Funhouse (1969) and Chimera (1972). These are fascinating volumes, but for very different reasons. LITF is my least favourite Barth book. Apart from a few exceptions such as “Ambrose His Mark” and “Menelaiad” it is pungent in self-pity, misanthropy and black despair; albeit heavily and rather badly disguised by an overly self-conscious “postmodernism” (other people’s phraseology). As indicated, I think it is a great mistake that this uneasy volume has been hijacked by academics: it is atypical, a blind alley, and it leads thank goodness nowhere. Insights to the psychopathology of depression have been done before, and since, and better.
Chimera marks a return to form (psychologists will easily discern a change for the better in Barth’s mental health and emotional fortunes) with a brazen foray into mythological constructs. Three tales here: one is a variation on the Scheherezade theme (to be expanded magnificently in a later book); the others are fabulous, impertinent and hilarious takes on classical Hellenic figures. This book indicates his direction from now on; and scholars, I think, should take more notice of it than LITF. This one very cleverly leads somewhere worthwhile.
But 1980 is THE glory year, for that is when LETTERS is published. Critics with inelastic minds have complained that this masterpiece is virtually unreadable, but LETTERS in my opinion is Barth’s pinnacle, and subsequent books don’t quite match up to it (I hope JB never reads this). For me it has personal significance. Professional preoccupations had seen me drift away from Reading As Pleasure; but I vividly remember the sultry sweaty night I was driving out on yet another duty errand when the radio excitedly blurted ‘ … Barth is published, and the Word is … LETTERS!’
I know of nothing in modern western literature quite like LETTERS. It wasn’t a commercial success, but surely that says something about the taste of the reading public; or the influence of literary critics; or both. In this sprawling, astonishing, delighting saga Barth cruises quite extraordinary altitudes in human imagination and English language usage. Characters from previous fictions are worked up, over, out; all in outrageous fashion. David Edelman found this story “tedious” and I feel appropriately sorry for him.
OK. Next comes Sabbatical (1982), first in a series of yarns set mainly in a boat, on the water, and about a loving couple (this theme becomes persistent — vide infra). For me the hero is rather less Barthian than we might have expected, and I find him a trifle awkward, But perhaps that’s just me. There might be more of the author in the lady of the boat. And Barth is now healed enough to incorporate some of the experiences of his first marriage without splashing around too much blood.
But The Tidewater Tales (1987) seems to be the book that Sabbatical was a trial piece for. Its’ big, complex, enchanting, mysterious. Barth also makes quite heavy commentaries on matters ecological and political, but these lose some of their impact on a non-American like myself who has never clapped eyes on the Chesapeake. This story might also tempt you to take a serious look at some of Barth’s own favourite authors, just as a bonus.
It gets every bit as good when The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991) turns spacetime inside out more slickly than science fiction ever did, and our author/hero re-engages with Scheherezade, often in arousingly earthy ways. Again, Barth weaves in titillating autobiographical wisps and threads to produce a tale that’s tough, poignant, and one to keep coming back to.
The best piece of advice in Apocalypse Now is ‘Never get off the #%*&@! boat!’ Well we haven’t, and we’ve just reached Once Upon a Time (1994). I like this story very much, perhaps because it seems more autobiographical than any other, and every dedicated reader loves to imagine that he is seeing something real, if only a glimpse and a carefully controlled one at that, of his favourite author. If such touches are meant to be touching, well … they succeed. There are some barefaced, intimidating and almost arrogant exercises of the wordsmith’s skill in this book, but in the end you are again left bound as much to the author as the narrative.
On with the Story (1997) is the final volume so far, a clutch of short fiction pieces. I haven’t yet read it — I haven’t been able to obtain a copy! I live in Australia. We fervently hope and quite reasonably assume that there aren’t any great similarities with LITF.
I haven’t mentioned The Friday Book and Further Fridays on purpose. Barth as academic, historian, critic or social commentator is always good value. But Barth as Author is simply peerless.
Now, it is a melancholy fact that time and circumstance erode the personal library; and moreover many Barth books are currently out of print. But the Baby Boomers are beginning to die off and their collections are already turning up in secon-hand bookstores. That’s how I keep my shelves re-stocked.
Oh. And I got almost all the Pynchon that way too.
Mal McCormack
Melbourne
Australia