Tales of the Eggplant
Barthomaniacs Admit They’re Hooked on ‘Sot-Weed Factor’ And ‘Lost in the Funhouse’
Webmaster’s Note: I recently won an auction on eBay for a first edition hardcover of Chimera. On opening the book, I was startled to see a Wall Street Journal clipping dated January 24, 1973 flutter to the floor. The article with the above-mentioned title sat a mere Consumer Price Graph away from the front page masthead. I found it amusing enough to reprint here. Original title: “A Group of Scholars Gathers by Eggplant For… Yes. Well, Wow.”
Update: Yes, the Society for the Celebration of Barthomania is still active. Read the Society’s response to this page I received over e-mail.
By RONALD G. SHAFER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Copyright by the Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON — There’s an air of excitement these days around the Society for the Celebration of Barthomania. Members say they soon will actually meet the “Esteemed Object of Our Celebration.”
Barthomania, as everyone surely knows, is the hysteria over the satirical, and somewhat bawdy, novels by John Barth, who writes best-sellers such as The Sot-Weed Factor. And, of course, the 20-member Society is a group of mostly federal workers so enamored of Mr. Barth’s “very funny” books that they organized to make him their Esteemed Object. The Society’s membership requirements are simple: a knowledge of Mr. Barth’s works, “a capacity to drink and laugh out loud and $10 dues — not necessarily in that order.”
The Barthomaniacs meet monthly here over lunch at Marrocco’s Restaurant, where they are collectively known as “the eggplant group.” The eggplant is the Society’s totem, or spiritual symbol, because in The Sot-Weed Factor this herb is a key ingredient in a recipe for boosting sexual potency. So it is only fitting that a plastic replica of the eggplant’s purple fruit should repose on the meeting table before the Barthomaniac-in-Chief.
Just how the Chief is chosen isn’t clear, however. Indeed, “it is the essence of the spirit of Barthomania not to have a respectable reason,” according to Gerald George, one of the Society’s founders. But the leader must come from the ranks of the Grand Master Barthomaniacs, a select group limited to those who have:
Read Mr. Barth’s first five novels (from Floating Opera in 1956 to Lost in the Funhouse in 1968), submitted a “learned paper” on an appropriate topic (sample: “An Inquiry Into the Significance of the Ascending Length of John Barth Novels”) and made a pilgrimage to the “Broad Choptank River” near Cambridge, Md., the sacred birthplace (May 27, 1930) of John Barth.
“Yes. Well, Wow.”
The Society’s four Grand Masters are easily identified at meetings because only they may wear colorful regalia. One Grand Master sports a copy of the official red cap and sash of the French Academy — which makes him look like Lawrence of Arabia in a business suit. Another master wears a scholar’s cap and sashes in “aubergine purple and Grandmaster green.”
The official Keeper of the Eggplant takes minutes of each meeting, and a copy is sent to John Barth himself. Until recently, Mr. Barth has been an English professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo; later this year, he’s coming to Baltimore to join the faculty at Johns Hopkins University. Each meeting opens with members chanting, “with gusto,” the society’s motto, which consists of four written responses it has received from Mr. Barth. These are, in their entirety:
“Yes. Well, wow.”
“Right on.”
“Surely… goodness. Mercy.”
“The Society are (sic) not unloved.”
Then it’s on to serious business, sort of. The Society gives awards for “excellence in Barthomania.” One award went to a high school teacher in Minnesota who presented one of Mr. Barth’s bawdier works as a play, and who was immediately fired.
The group sells bumperstickers, reading: “JOHN BARTH FOR GRAND TUTOR.”
And the Society even dabbles in politics. In 1970, it endorsed a candidate for the Maryland legislature who promised that, “once safely elected,” he would introduce a bill to create an official John Barth Day. He lost.
“Co-Mingling at High Noon”
But the big news at a recent Society meeting was that the Esteemed Object of Our Celebration will be in Washington Jan. 29 for a reading at the Library of Congress. Last week the eggplant keeper flashed the news: An unprecedented “co-mingling of the SCB with the EOOOC” is set for Marrocco’s at “high noon” next Monday.
John Barth himself finds all this adulation “a personal delight” to him and his wife; the “very witty” meeting minutes “just break us up,” he says. Although his name isn’t exactly a household word, Mr. Barth’s novels — including his latest, Chimera — are not unloved by critics. In polls, they have rated Mr. Barth one of America’s outstanding authors of what one biographer has described as “seriocomic fiction.” Giles Goat-Boy, for instance, is the story of a young man raised as a goat.
But Mr. Barth views his coming face-to-face meeting with the Society “with very mixed feelings.” “Part of the fun,” he explains, “has been not meeting them.” On the other hand, “It seemed impolite to say no.”
Surely… goodness. Mercy.