John Barth (1930–2024)

Ebenezer considered for a moment and then agreed. "So be't, but no more teasing. I shall administer to you the severest test of the rhymer's art: the slipperiest crag on the rocky face of Parnassus!"
"Administer at will," said Burlingame; "if 'tis a point of rhyme I swear there's none can best me, for I have learned old Mother English to her very privates. But say, let's make a sport of't, would you mind? Else t'were much the same to win or lose."
"I've naught to wager," Ebenezer said, "nor show more sould you wager if I had, for the word I mean to speak hath not its like." Then he had a happier thought: "Stay, how far yet is that ferry you spoke of?"
"Some five or six miles hence, I'd guess."
"Then let us wager the ride of our mounts, if you've a mind to. If you cannot rhyme the line I give you, you must walk from here to Cambridge ferry; if you can, 'tis I shall walk. Done?"
"Well wagered," Burlingame said merrily, "And I'll add more: who loses must not merely walk, but walk behind old Roan there, that ever gets the bumbreezes near midmorning. 'Twill add a spice to the winner's victory!"
"Done," agreed the poet. "I had in sooth observed the mare was flatulent."
Burlingame nodded. "'Tis her advanced years, I suppose: a certain windiness of the arse doth e'er afflict an elder lady. E'en my Portia, who is no shoat, hath cooled me on occasion."
"Enough," declared Ebenezer, "Let us on with the trial. I shall muse you a line, and you must rhyme it. Not a Hudibrastic, mind, but a perfect match."
"Is't mosquito?" asked Burlingame, "I'll say incognito."
"Nay," the Laureate smiled, "Nor is it literature."
"'Twould be bitter-that's-sure," his tutor laughed.
"Nor misbehaviour."
"Thank the saviour!"
"Nor importunacy."
"That were lunacy!"
"Nor tiddlywinks."
"Twould gain thee little, methinks!"
"Nor galligaskin."
"Was I askin'?"
"Nor charlatan."
"Thin as tarlatan!"
"Nor Saracen."
"'Twould be embarrasin'!"
"Nor even autoshediastic."
"Then it ought to be fantastic!"
"Nor catoptromancy."
"That's not so fancy!"
"Nor procrustean."
"I should bust thee one!"
"Nor is it 'Picadilly Bombast'."
"You'd be sick-o'-filly-bum-blast!"
"Nor Grandma's Visit"
"Then man, what is it?"
"'Tis 'Month'," Ebenezer said.
"Month?" cried Burlingame.
"Month," the Laureate repeated. "Rhyme me a word with month. 'August is the year's eighth month.'"
"Month!" Burlingame said again. "Tis but a single syllable!"
"Marry then, twill be easy," Ebenezer smiled.
"August is the year's eighth month." Burlingame began to show some alarm as he searched his store of language.
"No lisping, now," Ebenezer warned. "Don't say 'Whoe'er denieth it ith a Dunth', or 'Athenth thee not, then count it oneth'. That will not do."
Burlingame sighed. "And no Hudibrastics, you say?"
"Nay," Ebenezer confirmed. "You mayn't say 'August is the year's eighth month, And not the tenth or milli-onth'. Ben Oliver tried that once in Locket's and was disqualified on the instant. I want a clear and natural rhyme."
"Is there naught in our language?" Burlingame cried.
"Nay," the poet declared, "as I warned you ere you took the wager."
Burlingame searched his memory so thouroughly that perspiration beaded his forehead, but after twenty minutes he was obliged to yield.
"I surrender, Eben; you have me pat." Most reluctantly, under his protégé's triumphant smile, he dismounted, and taking his place behind the aged roan, prepared to meet the odious consequences of his gamble.
"In future, Henry," Ebenezer boldly advised, "hold not so grand an estimate of your talents, and do not engage with poets in their own preserve. If I may speak with candor, the gift of language is vouchsafed to but a few, and though t'is no great shame not to have it, t'were folly to pretend to't when you have it not."

And having delivered himself of this unusual rebuke, Ebenezer began to hum a tune for very satisfaction. At the first slgiht elevation in the terrain over which they travelled, the roan mare, already wearied, broke wind noisily from the effort of climbing. Burlingame growled a mighty oath and cried out in disgust, "What sort of vocabulary is't, that possess nary noun or verb to match the "onth" of 'August is the year's eighth month?"
"Do not rail against the language," Ebenezer began, " 'tis really a most admirable tongue..."
He halted, as did Burlingame and the roan. The two men regarded each other warily.
"No matter," Ebenezer ventured, "The trial was done."
"Ah nay, Sir Laureate!" Burlingame laughed. "Mine is done, but thine is but begun! Down with you, now!"
"But 'onth'," Ebenezer protested - nevertheless dismounting. "'Tis not an English word, is't? What doth it signify?"
"Tut," said Burlingame, remounting his young gelding, "we set no such criterion as significance, that I recall. 'To match the onth..' is what I said: 'onth' is the object of 'match'; objects of verbs are substantives; substantives are words. Get thee behind you roan!"

Ebenezer sighed, Burlingame laughed aloud, the roan mare once again broke wind, and on went the travellers towards Cambridge, Burlingame singing lustily:

"How wondrous a Vocabulary
Is't, that possesseth nary
Noun nor Verb the Rhyme of which'll
Stump the son of Captain Mitchell!" show less

An amazing piece of work, The Sot-Weed Factor is an hilarious satire set in the 17th century and written in a style that reflects that time. The many plot twists keep the reader going, and the colorful vocabulary is part of the fun. In one section, there are several pages devoted to a verbal name-calling battle between two women who come up with about a hundred synonyms for the word "prostitute." There are long conversations filled with double entendre, unbelievable boasts, and of course show more there's Ebenezer Cooke, one of the funniest characters one will ever encounter in a novel. show less

can't remember who it was who described Barth's writing as "self-consuming meta-fiction", but it definitely fits. But in a good way. This book, like some others before it (e.g., Once Upon a Time), narrates the fictional story of the writing of the book itself. The narrator, George I. Newett, is writing the book to complete the work of his lost friend, Ned Prosper, who may or may not have existed (within the story). You can't tell whether the story is being drawn from real life or real life show more is being drawn from the story. At one point in the book, Newett's wife and fellow writer, Amanda, jabs the theme in deep, saying, "So, then: Are we fictitious too . . . ?"

It's not all postmodern styling. There's a very good story here, and it grows on you. "Every Third Thought" refers to the reconsiderations after "on second thought", and the subtitle, "A Novel in Five Seasons", refers to the seasons of George Newett's (and Barth's) life, and his marriage with Amanda. He is in his second "Fall" (the first centered on an actual fall on a vacation -- hence a "trip and fall" -- with Amanda, visiting Stratford, home of Shakespeare).

Newett's second Fall parallels Barth's own, both author and character approaching their eightieth years as Barth was writing the book. I won't spoil the ending. The one thing I'll say about it is that it is sadly honest.

Barth has always played at this disappearing boundary between living a life and writing a story. I know it can be tedious at times, especially to un-indoctrinated readers, and it's coupled with a lot of alliterative stylings, puns, and the like. In the end though, Barth is living and telling a compelling story. show less

I really thought we’d heard John Barth’s last with Every Third Thought. So I was surprised (and glad) to see this. He must have thought the same, since he called it Postscripts.

Barth is now in his nineties but, at least through the writing of this book, he’s keeping to his daily discipline of morning writing, with Fridays dedicated to reflection and rumination of the sort gathered here. This belongs with the probably unplanned trilogy: The Friday Book, Further Fridays, and Final show more Fridays. Like any good trilogy, it had to have a part four.

It reads like a selective memoir, with often very short essays on whatever occurred to Barth to write about. Some are memories, some are flights of attention deficit, some are accounts of events or of talks given by Barth throughout his life. There is even his recall of a dream.

All in all, you’re going to enjoy this if you’re a Barth fan. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who is new to his writing — nothing would seem significant, and much self-parody and so on would be lost to the wind.

Barth names his four main influences, or “navigation-stars”: Homer’s Odysseus, the Arabian Night’s heroine Scheherazade, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It’s interesting that he picks out not just authors or even particular works, but characters in those works. Scheherazade especially stands out as such a major influence on Barth’s own style — where the telling of the story is part of the story itself, something repeated and pushed close to if not over the limit in some of Barth’s writings. Scheherazade is woven throughout the essays here, just because her character is so woven into Barth himself.

And we get Barth’s views on some of his contemporaries, including Robert Coover and Donald Barthelme (both held in high regard as friends as well as fellow writers).

There is also the irresistible Barthian compulsion to make fun of language, like talking of his WWII veteran brother Bill (“G.I. Bill”) taking advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend college, or fashioning a sort-of-story called “This is Not a Story,” inspired by Magritte’s “Ceci n'est pas une pipe.”

Barth is nothing if not self-conscious, and this at times is his self-consciousness running completely free.

He makes fun of himself, for example, as the author of the notorious möbius strip “short story” in Lost in the Funhouse, “Once Upon a Time There Was a Story That Began.” If you follow Barth’s directions, to cut the title out and connect its corners as he says, you get an actual möbius strip that bends the title into a self-referential infinite loop.

That kind of stuff had its day, and Barth, despite his insistence that he is just a story-teller, has always been an experimentalist. Some of it worked and some of it, at least to me, was just freakin’ tedious.

As he says here, “Nobody in her/his right mind will put up with this meta-crap much longer, so let’s give it one last try . . . “ So he does.

I’m not going to give the book 5 stars, just because I just couldn’t recommend it as a stand-alone work, especially to someone not that familiar with Barth’s writing. For readers who have followed Barth since The Floating Opera and the other early novels, it’s kind of weirdly indispensable. show less