The Sot-Weed Factor (Anchor Literary Library)
EUR 11,63
A Masterpeice of Satire! - Perhaps most impressive of all of John Barth s picaresque classic is the fact that it succeeds on many levels. It is quite difficult to imagine anyone taking this novel completely seriously, however it can be read as an epic. Most likely it will be enjoyed as a brilliant satire providing most readers with innumerable passages that will have them laughing out loud. However one senses many philosophical statements and themes communicated through the characters preposterous actions and attitudes. It was the characters, in fact, that impressed me the most about The Sot-Weed Factor, while appearing at times ridiculous to the point of being hilarious, most readers will likely find a little bit of themselves in characters like Ebenezer Cooke, Henry Burlingame, etc. My favorite character was Ebenezer s servant whose name eludes me at this time. Barth has coined himself a smiling nihilist and this book is a fine example of this sentiment, though most readers will likely spend less time smiling and more time doubled over in laughter. A must-read!
Also has one of literature�s most remarkable characters - This is John Barth at his most readable. I confess that not all his writing has pleased me as greatly as this and the Goat Boy did. Yet Barth is certainly one of America s finest writers and who are we to say that he should not concoct the odd experiment?What to say about The Sotweed Factor? What to say about any sort of factor indeed, for the title lends a key by itself, in that Barth has managed to use outdated language in the most charming, even disarming fashion. Where our reading of Walter Scott might trip us up a bit today, with his curious references to scenes long past, Barth has been able to provide remarkable clarity within a text tinctured by an old-fashioned way of speaking.Apart from the ups and downs of one Ebenezer Cooke, whose adventures form the novel s main thread, there is a marvellous character, the like of which I ve not encountered elsewhere in literature, unless it was in Chris Scott s forgotten but not-to-be-despised, Bartleby. Burlingame is an unknown quantity in the text who pops up time and time again, and shows a mastery on the part of Barth which one feels is beyond mere words. It is both an ingenious and magical novel, with added historical interest for those who know aught about this period in America s colonisation. As someone once wrote about Bartleby, The Sotweed Factor is a comic monsterpiece as well as being a finely crafted and even, possibly, elegant novel from a consummate artist.
Hilarious, picaresque, bawdy tale - This true American masterpiece is written like a 17th century literary novel. The style could well be Fielding, except that Barth is even more hilarious.At a time when minimalist novelists seem to be in vogue, I revelled in the intelligent richness of the elaborate quixotic tale woven by Barth. When a novelist can write as well as peers like Saul Bellow or V.S. Naipaul, then a maximalist style like Barth s is to be savoured. Poor chaste poet laureate, Ebenezer Cooke, encounters harsh reality at every turn, including capture by pirates and Indians. His dreams drive him to ridiculous ends where his ambitions are constantly confounded by greater existential powers. The road to Heaven s beset with thistles, and methinks there s many a cowpat on t. The dialogue is delicious and well-constructed with an authenticity and wit and bawdy truth. You have to marvel at the construction of such credible characters as Joan Toast, Bertrand, Boabdil, Andrew, Pocahontas and the pirate captain. Barth s dialogue on various letters of the alphabet, the trading of ancient insults and the scene where Ebenezer fears drowning in Chesapeake Bay were uproariously funny. Barth obviously knows the Eastern Shore near the Choptank River intimately: it s a lovely setting for his novel. For any true lover of great American literary novels, The Sotweed Factor should be on your must-read list.
erudite historical farce- outrageously hilarious - based on real life individual ebenezer cooke from the seventeenth century, barth fabricates a stunningly rich, complex world for that character that is brilliantly funny, historically rigorous and contains some of the best writing of the century. passage after passage is filled with deeply authentic atmosphere and dialogue that is so true to an earthy kind of slang of the times that is leaves novel phrases ringing in your head for weeks. it can be read (at least) on a couple of levels, the simplest being a recounting of colonial maryland through the experiences and eyes (and interactions with many, many other characters) of cooke. at a deeper level it could be read as a philosophical confrontation of an individual life with the world at large. one of the most influential works of fiction i ve ever read.
America s greatest living writer - The novel that proves that post-modernity is only a viable philosophy when it makes you laugh. When I read the pretentious reviews of more aggressively famed authors, it is always pleasant to enjoy the wry smile of a Barthist. Our man always seems to have got there first and then said it better.