Review the Sotweed Factor or a Voyage to Maryland a Satyr

I finished the audiobook version of John Barth's novel The Sot-Weed Factor  final calendar week. I'd tried to read the novel a few times in the past, never getting past page 56 of my Bantam mass market edition, which runs to 819 pages. That's a long book. The unabridged audiobook runs just over 36 hours. That's a long fourth dimension. Besides long, actually, for what Barth has to offering here, merely before I get into that, I'll give a tip of the lid to the excellent production values and the wonderful vox talent of Geoffrey Centlivre, who is by turns expressive, wry, pathetic, abstracted, or understated, depending on what Barth'south prose calls for. He understands the novel and does an estimable job translating it.

The Sot-Weed Factor enjoys the reputation of being Barth's finest work (although let me merely get ahead and disagree with this generalized assumption that I've attributed to no one in item and say upwardly front that the novel is ultimately a tedious overlong drag and anyone interested in Barth is amend off starting with Lost in the Funhouse). The novel parodies a number of literary styles — Bildungsromans, picaresques, Künstlerromans, adventure stories, histories, romances, and serialized narratives in general. Adopting the language (diction, tone, syntax, form and all) of 17th century prose, Barth tells the story of Ebenezer Cooke, a real historical effigy whose 1708 verse form "The Sotweed Factor, or A Voyage to Maryland, A Satyr" is considered past some literary historians to be the first American satire.

Barth'southward Ebenezer is an innocent soul à la Voltaire'due south Candide (hero of another picaresque that has the decency to be funnier, sharper, and, ahem, much, much shorter), a would-exist poet whose spurious claims to existence "Poet Laureate of Maryland" come constantly nether fire. Ebenezer attributes his creative powers (which are dubious at best) to the metaphysical virtue of his virginity; one of the major conflicts of the plot of The Sot-Weed Factor is poor Ebenezer defending his reddish from the various whores and ne'er-do-well who populate the book. And there are a lot of these whores and ne'er-do-wells: rascals and pirates and pimps and thieves and slavers and sluts of every stripe shuffle through The Sot-Weed Gene, underscoring several of Barth'due south themes — innocence versus experience, perception versus reality, virtue versus vice, and stability versus flux.

In my reading, this last theme — the instability of identity, particularly American identity — is the major thrust of The Sot-Weed Factor. Only before going into this idea, I suppose I should share at least some of the plot, or at least try to summarize it, which is almost impossible, every bit it shifts and slants and reverses in every chapter. In the involvement of making a (very) long story short, dearest reader, and making my chore a bit easier, I'll infringe from Don D'Ammassa's summary (he'south got a dandy Barth folio for those inclined)—

The story is set up during the 17^th Century.  Ebenezer Cooke is the son of a well-to-do British gentleman who owns property in the Maryland colony in the New World.  Ebenezer and his sister are tutored past Henry Burlingame until his sudden dismissal while they are in their late teens.  Ebenezer is sent off to boarding school, where he finds it difficult to class a bail between himself and his environment, eventually retreating into poetry.  He is too afflicted by an extreme form of indecisiveness in which he is literally frozen in place, some times for hours on end, incapable of making a decision.  His brainchild from the world is reminiscent of Jacob Horner and Todd Andrews, although exaggerated even further.

The plot grows apace more complicated.  Ebenezer is apprenticed in London, where he fails to prosper.  He becomes infatuated with a prostitute, despite his own militant virginity; his poor prospects are so conveyed to his father, who ships him off to the family unit holdings in the colonies.  Ebenezer decides to asking a commission from Lord Calvert, governor of Maryland, to become its official Poet Laureate, believes that he has been awarded that honor, and sets out for the new world.  In the course of that journeying, he rediscovers Henry Burlingame, who has taken on some other identity, is kidnapped past pirates, walks the plank, and eventually reaches country.

The complication and twisted sense of humour that ensue cannot be adequately described in a few words.  Secret identities are revealed, coincidences flourish, absurd situations follow in rapid sequence.  Ebenezer is honored and disgraced, is captured by angry natives and threatened with decease.  He discovers pieces of a secret periodical of the adventures of John Smith and Pocahontas, and helps Henry Burlingame discover the truth about his own origins.  There is considerable bawdy content, much of information technology surrounding the mysterious procedure past which John Smith managed to sexually satisfy Pocahontas.

I'm impressed with D'Ammassa'south concision here—he neatly puts together the major elements of a sprawling, fat novel. As y'all may come across from D'Ammassa's summary, The Sot-Weed Cistron is all about the instability of place, the lack of solid ground in swampy Maryland, the discontinuity of historical narrative, the inability of art to overcome reality, and the rapid reversals of fortune and identity that might occur in a New World. Information technology's all "assy-turvy," to use i of the character'due south terms.The Sot-Weed Gene here shows its post-modern bona fides; there's a constant inconstancy, a doubling of people, places, things, and and so a trebling. Ebenezer's Old World romantic virtues—his insistence on the metaphysical value of his virginity and the power of his feeble poetry—are not just contested merely obliterated (only poor Eb's too bullheaded to see this). Barth reworks American history, dismantling and satirizing the Pocahontas narrative, and emphasizing the plight of the native Americans, enslaved Africans, and indentured Europeans in this brave new world.

The book is also a dismantling of literary history, a jab at metaphysical poesy and identity narratives like Tom Jones or the work of Dickens. While Ebenezer spouts the loftiest supplications to his airy muse, Barth keeps his humor stuck sloppily in the toilet. The Sot-Weed Cistron surpasses whatever ribald work I've ever read. The book is larded with dick jokes, fart jokes, jokes well-nigh diarrhea, jokes about sex and venereal diseases then on—information technology culminates with (equally D'Ammassa points out above) a riff on 17th century Viagra. In short, Bath focuses well-nigh of his keen literary powers on the kind of sophomoric japes that might go along Bevis and Butthead'southward attention. Again, information technology's all "assy-turvy."

Barth'due south toilet humor is at times funny, but it becomes tiresome over the book's long elapsing, especially when it's often the sole reward for long expanses of poorly-conceived exposition. I found myself bored to tears at times listening to The Sot-Weed Gene, and had to strength myself to go along in its final tertiary, a claiming that became easier when the narrative finally picked upward a bit. Just a flake though. The volume's major problem is not its bloat though, or its saggy exposition, or even its redundant fart jokes. No, these feel more a symptom than a crusade, and I think they are symptom of a too self-satisfied (or self-satisfying) author; over its 800+ pages (or 36+ hours), The Sot-Weed Gene reveals itself as the literary equivalent of a very vivid writer jacking off to his own research. In what must be the worst example of unrestrained writing I've ever seen (or heard, I suppose), Barth allows two of his characters, catty women arguing, ane English, one French, to trade insults with each other, all various euphemisms for "whore." This procedure goes on for minutes in the audiobook version and for 6 goddamn pages in my Runted edition and, like much of the details in this fat animal, does piddling or nothing to add to the narrative. Information technology'south as if in his research Barth has dug upwardly dozens and dozens of lovely piffling blowsy slurs and can't carry to edit a single one. If  the process rewards Barth, information technology does little for the reader.

But if literary diarrhea is the fashion of the book, and then I gauge it mirrors one of The Sot-Weed Cistron's many rude motifs. Personally, I wish I had my fourth dimension back. There'south slap-up value in reimagining the origin of America (I remember immediately of Terence Malick'due south The New Globe or Toni Morrison's A Mercy or even some of William Blake'south work), but Barth's narrative seems too self-indulgent and unrewarding to make any real claims to democratic (or, if I'thousand feeling harsh, artistic) insight. Perhaps The Sot-Weed Factor is the kind of novel that remains indivisible from its grade, and perhaps to a contemporary reader like me this class is just too flabby and flaccid to spark spirit. As I've tried to communicate here, Barth has a sharp intellect and he's more than capable of performing a wry, wise, and oft funny analysis of early American history. Only he indulges too much in his own sophomoric games and winks likewise often at the reader. It'southward amazing that such a long volume could feel so hollow.

harrissudge1947.blogspot.com

Source: https://biblioklept.org/2011/08/05/the-sot-weed-factor-john-barth/

Bagikan Artikel ini