Barth and The Sot-Weed Factor

Thought's on TSWF? How does it compare to the rest of his work? Is Giles Goat Boy as good, better, worse?

And am I a pleb/pseud for TSWF being my favourite book?

bump for John Borth

if it's your favorite book why are you asking how it compares to his other work?

Why is it your fave user?

Virtuosity of language, the ambitious (to put it lightly) interweaving off the characters and events, how well rounded/developed the protagonist is character-wise, and how funny the novel is.

Have you read it?

I'm 300 pages into this thing and I'm just exhausted. Why is everyone he meets fucking Burlingame?
Oh guess what? Betrand fucked up again and Eben almost tripped and landed in a girl.

Should I continue?

Barth was pretty much shit until he wrote Chimera, and then he was shit again. But I haven't read Giles Goat Boy or Floating Opera so I can't say for sure.

Floating Opera/End of the road was a fun read.

i hated his first two books loved sotweed enjoyed chimera and hated (could not finish) giles goat boy

I thought Veeky Forums would like this guy. His books are published through Dalkey Archive and I believe they are all pomo in the vein of Gaddis or Gass.

What's this guys problem?

what the fuck was Coode's problem?

I was disappointed. Plus the pirate rape kinda pissed me off, but i'm a sensitive boy.

>barth in the same vein as Gaddis
no, user. no. fuck no. god fuck no user. fuck.

Bump for wannabe writer's that have been reading John Gardner instruction manuals.

I know David Wallace loved Barth, as does Michael Silverblatt. Silverblatt seems to hold him above Gaddis and on the same level as Gass. I've read some of Lost in the Funhouse and have a hard time getting into it.

Gaddis is a vastly different sort of writer. Barth is essential the go-to stereotype of everything people assume all postmodern writing is like, but he's a lot more of an academic writer than nearly everyone else who's lumped under the umbrella of postmodern fiction.

Barth is like a less talented more exhaustive Nabokov imo

If you're 300 pages in that means you're at/around/past the point of all the confusion about getting onto the ship at the docks, with Slye and Scurry running about, correct?

If you didn't enjoy that at all, or the scene with Eben in the journal store, you probably won't like the rest much more.

Though you should read the privee journal sections at the very least, genuinely hilarious.

And as a note all my favourite scenes are in the latter half of the book, but I don't want to tell you to keep going if you really don't like the first 300

Seems like a loaded question, you sure Coode was real?

I only liked about 30% of the stories in LitFH. Petition was great, same with Night-Sea Journey

Well I know that ostensibly Giles Goat Boy is the most similar other work he has written, so if some cool anons tell me that they thought GGB was as good, or better, I would read it (sooner than I already plan to, cause it is a big time sink)

>Barth was pretty much shit until he wrote Chimera, and then he was shit again.

As someone who enjoyed Chimera but has yet to read any of his other stuff, this is pretty disheartening.

You may have a different experience, I did, I loved the Floating Opera and The End of the Road, and also enjoyed The Sot-Weed Factor

I suspect Barth, especially TSWF, was a primary influence and/or inspiration for Pynchon's Mason and Dixon.

you retards are supposed to read barth in chronological order up until letters. then do what ever you want.

Yeah and I adored that part. I adore the characters and story as well. For whatever reason the style just bogs me down and I feel exhausted after a single chapter.