The Floating Opera: 4.5
The end of the Road: 3 ( )

Always a great time with Mr. Barth! ( )

Rick's review of John Irving made me think of this writer and these two books.
# The Floating Opera (1957)
# The End of the Road (1958)
I believe they're both written at almost the same time, tell the same story with different characters, and have different outcomes. They're fabulous. In my old age, I've taken to reading books a second time -- something I never did nor understand before. I hope to stumble upon these soon in a used book store; the only place I do any serious book shopping. ( )

My first experience with John Barth was with his collection of short stories "Lost in the Fun House." I was magnified by his finesse with language and, although I didn't feel that all of those stories were successes (and what writer's ever are?), he left me spellbound as to the potential of future fiction. Having come across him through one of my favorite authors David Foster Wallace and his story "Westward the Course of Empire Takes it's Way," which was a response to Barth's short story from which the prior collection derived it's name, I needed to get more!

This was not a disappointment! It is never easy to tell if a writer of short stories (which was how I became introduced to him) would be a good novelist. Nevertheless I found these two stories just as spellbinding. As his first two attempts at becoming an author, they of course have their juvenile aspects to them and conventions that seemed forced - but I personally feel every author should be forgiven that in their early career when attempting to find their voice.

His ability to develop a protagonist of solid depth though is incredible. During a time when other authors were writing about the active individual in a rapidly individualizing time in American letters, Barth was able to create two characters of non-action; a progenitor to future meta-fiction. Although the anti-climax had already begun to emerge in literature, these two stories have the courage to force it upon the reader whereas others had only really had a dwindling down without exploiting the fact that the modern text need not satisfy, in fact must not satisfy, in a unsatisfactory world. I would even place these two novellas along-side Robert Musil's epic "The Man Without Qualities." Any extensive reader can admit that every topic has been written about - which is true - but what makes literature is it's ability to keep those "truths" of humanity alive in the collective consciousness in it's ever changing forms, which I feel these two stories effectively do. ( )

I liked "The Floating Opera" a lot when I read it in high school, but not so much when I re-read it later in life. The book is nihilistic and maybe that's a natural reaction.

Quotes:
"I needn't explain that that's how much of life works: our friends float past; we become involved with them; they float on, and we must rely on hearsay or lose track of them completely; they float back again, and we either renew our friendship - catch up to date - or find that they and we don't comprehend each other any more."

"So I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life." ( )