The End of the Road

By a strange coincidence I read this right after Bernard Malamud's A New Life, which is, like this one, a very bitter comedy about a grammar teacher in a small college becoming part of a love triangle. Unlike Malamud's hopeful dreamers, Barth's guy is a different and difficult creature: sort of an existentialist narrator, but one who doesn't assume that his own apathy says anything about the world in general. His life has been short-circuited by manic depression, but since he knows he can't trust his feelings, he sometimes ends up being the most clear-sighted and humane character around. Barth indulges in some vicious satire of Objectivist supermen, and of behaviorist psychiatry: the narrator's doctor prescribes meaningless activities show more just to ensure that he doesn't stop moving. show less

הפעם השלישית שאני קורא את הספר. זכרתי את הקריאה הראשונה לפני כשישים שנה אבל לא זכרתי שקראתי אותו שנית לפני כשבע שנים. רק להדגים מה קורה לזכרון שלי בשנים האחרונות. אין לי הרבה מה להוסיף על הביקורת הקודמת ועל השפעתו של ג'ון בארט עלי. אומר רק שגם בקריאה השלישית נהניתי מכל רגע ונראה לי שהערכתי יותר מאשר קודם את הוירטואוזיות של בארט. את המעברים שלו מדיון פילוזופי אקזיסטנציאליסטי, לסלפסטיק מאני ולבסוף לטרגדיה אמתית show more שמביאה דמעות לעיניים. סופר גדול. show less

Sometimes buying a book because you like the cover just.... doesn't work out. John Barth's second novel, written in the late 1950s, mashes together black comedy, nihilism, ham-fisted philosophical positions, and brutal treatment of women into a weirdly readable book that will make you feel gross and unsatisfied at its conclusion.

Jacob Horner, our narrator, is a graduate student who has a bit of a break with reality and finds himself with all his possessions in a train station, unable to decide which ticket to buy. He is paralyzed there for days when The Doctor finds him and brings him to his unorthodox "farm" for psychological treatment. Part of this treatment involves getting a job as a grammar teacher at a small town teacher's show more college in Maryland (I said this was unorthodox). Jacob becomes friends with another teacher at the college, Joe Morgan, and his wife, Rennie, despite an initially bumpy meeting. So far so good. The Ripley-esque nature of Jacob's disconnection from society and the dark comedy and very mid-century psychiatrist business is all fine.

We quickly learn that Joe Morgan is a walking philosophical experiment in absolute rationalism. This also makes him very boring and boorish. He has also pretty much traumatized Rennie with a combination of philosophical and literal beat downs into questioning her every feeling and bending herself into his world view. Although Jacob has no personality of his own, can't make choices, and sees both sides of every question, he and Rennie are practically pushed into having an affair. Prior to and concurrent with his affair with Rennie, Jacob also somehow manages to start up a relationship with a teacher at the local high school, whom he seduces, sleeps with, insults, assaults, ignores, uses, and then hits. When Rennie discovers she is pregnant and either man could be the father, Joe's philosophical and the Doctor's psychological experiments collide in an awful and graphic ending that I really could have done without.

This was made into a movie in 1970 with Stacey Keach as Jacob Horner and James Earl Jones as the Doctor. Much like the book, the movie seems to be a pretty dated and dreary time capsule dabbling in philosophy, disaffection, and sexism, and dropping in abortion to add a little sensationalism and "currency."

Not a great one. I do still love this cover, though. show less

זה הספר השני שבארט כתב והשני שאני קורא שנית לאחר כחמישים שנה מהקריאה הראשונה. זה ספר יותר טוב מהאופרה הצפה וכנראה שמשום כך גם זכרתי ממנו יותר, בפרט את הסוף המצמרר. זה ספר קר, אכזרי ומצמרר שאני חושב שהשפיע עלי לא מעט. למעשה אני חושב שלבארט היה תפקיד לא טריויאלי כלל בעיצוב האישיות שלי ומה אני חושב על עצמי ועל אנשים ועל איך ולמה הם עושים דברים.

This book was a surprise--a romp for the first hundred pages, and a far more serious story for the rest of the novel. I enjoyed the philosophical discussions of the characters and really got involved in their problems.

This is a dark...very dark comedy, showing how application of extreme existentialism and relativism combined with a will to dominate others can destroy. This is the story of three people: Horner, who is a blank slate, Morgan, who is an extreme existentialist, and Rennie, married to Morgan, and who is a super-rationalist who is easily manipulated. There is a fourth person, as well, the Doctor, who is, in a sense the puppet master, beginning and ending the series of events. This novel is powerfully written, very depressing, and very thought-provoking.

An overall odd book....an odd slightly troubled fellow, treated by a slightly creepy, quacky under-the-radar doctor, makes friends with an obsessive married couple and the further unraveling of their very odd lives picks up the pace. I really did not like any of the characters in this book, and my 3 stars may be generous, yet i still anxiously followed along, wondering where it could possibly be heading - oh.....I get it.....the end of the road.........