Proving himself yet again a master of every form, Barth conquers in his latest the ruminative short essay—“jeux d’esprits,” as Barth describes them. These mostly one-page tidbits pay homage to Barth’s literary influences while retaining his trademark self-consciousness and willingness to play.
John Barth, a moderately successful novelist just turned sixty, decides to take a sail on Chesapeake Bay with his wife, but a tropical storm forces them deep into the Maryland tidal marshes. Lost, Barth takes out his dinghy to search for a way home, but becomes embarked instead on a quest through the murkier regions of his own memory-a semi-memoir, staged as an operatic cruise through desire, vocation, despair, love, marriage, selves, and counterselves.
The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama. Together they illustrate the beginnings of an illustrious career.
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