≡ [PDF] The SotWeed Factor John Barth 9781903809501 Books

The SotWeed Factor John Barth 9781903809501 Books

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The SotWeed Factor John Barth 9781903809501 Books

A worthy contender for the title of Great American Novel, Barth's masterpiece is a work of astonishing virtuosity and range. Among American novels, in terms of sheer linguistic brilliance, it is surpassed only by Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and Melville's matchless Moby Dick.

Here is Barth's opening sentence: "In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taught with similes stretched to the snapping point."

Sounds more like poetry than prose, doesn't it?

You can read plot summaries elsewhere on Amazon, but this book is really about language and Barth amply demonstrates his utter mastery of 17th century English.
He also has a wicked sense of humor and the book is laugh-out-loud-funny, especially the journals of Henry Burlingame and Captain John Smith involving Pocahontas which are written like this:

"With as much of grace as I cd muster, i accepted Hicktopeakes offer, whereupon he shew'd me a door of his howse, the wch he said. open'd upon the chamber of the Queene. Then he lay'd him self down next the fyre and slept, onely fitfully as well a man might, that hath granted leave to another to go in unto the wife of his bed."

That is about as tame as these journals get, so I'll not risk offending the prudish by quoting the more graphic passages.

As with any 756 page tome, there are some longueurs, but, on a second reading, they can be safely skipped.

The new Dalkey Archive edition has a weighty, substantial feel of quality and features a dark print type that is very easy to read.

I hope you'll give The Sot Weed Factor a look, because, for me, two back-to-back initial readings won't be nearly enough.


Tags : The Sot-Weed Factor [John Barth] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.,John Barth,The Sot-Weed Factor,Atlantic Books,1903809509,Modern fiction,Fiction

The SotWeed Factor John Barth 9781903809501 Books Reviews

don't hear much about this novel or John Barth much these days - he is the father of American post modernism (I think I got the jargon right) - but his novels (and short stories) are very funny even when gloomy. This one is one of the funniest - and if you are into history and/or the Chesapeake Bay this is the book for you (come to think of it, that's true of just about everything he wrote. Post modernist write stories about writing stories and Barth carries this to the nth degree and further (think Mobius Strips). So it gets uproariously meta. (my introduction to John Barth was when I picked up a paper back at an airport book store - a random pick - it was Giles Goat Boy - an absolutely outrageous book - so I read everything else he did)
THE SOT-WEED FACTOR is one of those books that had been in the back of my mind for over 30 years. It kept popping up in lists of great novels, here and there, and always that intriguing title, THE SOT-WEED FACTOR. What the heck did that mean? Well, finally, after all these years, I got around to reading it, and I found out. And I'm glad I did.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR is a very unusual novel, and it took me some time to finish it. It is written in the linguistic style of the Eighteenth Century, an historical, satirical novel, a parody of the 18th-century picaresque novel. Though sometimes serious, it is frequently -- no, most of the time -- hilarious, tongue in cheek, bawdy. The novel is full of mistaken identities, false identities, and the plot takes twists and turns and roundabout detours -- to the point that at times it had my head spinning trying to figure out who was who and what was what.

The main character is Ebenezer Cooke, something of a dandy boy, a wanna-be poet. He seeks to become the poet laureate of the Maryland colony. So THE SOT-WEED FACTOR traces his journey from London to Maryland in the new colonies, and all the adventures and misadventures that befall him kidnapped by pirates, then kidnapped by Indians, the loss of his father's estate in Maryland,

"love for a former prostitute; stealthy efforts to rob him of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and an extraordinary gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities." [from back cover of Anchor Books edition]

Well, sot-weed is what they called tobacco in those days, and a factor was a businessman, a middleman who buys something to resell. Cooke's father owns a sot-weed plantation, Malden, in Maryland, and it is Ebenezer's goal to go to Malden, and to write an epic verse praising the colony. He is given the title, Poet Laureate of Maryland by the third Lord Baltimore in London. However, once in the colonies, he is shocked by the vulgar, brutish ways of the colonists, and turns his pen from praise to ridicule.

I should point out that Barth based his novel on a real person, Ebenezer Cooke, who, in fact, did write a poem entitled 'The Sot-Weed Factor,' which was published in London in 1708. The rest is all Barth.

THE SOT-WEED FACTOR is very funny, very inventive, and deserved of its 'modern classic' status.
A worthy contender for the title of Great American Novel, Barth's masterpiece is a work of astonishing virtuosity and range. Among American novels, in terms of sheer linguistic brilliance, it is surpassed only by Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon and Melville's matchless Moby Dick.

Here is Barth's opening sentence "In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taught with similes stretched to the snapping point."

Sounds more like poetry than prose, doesn't it?

You can read plot summaries elsewhere on , but this book is really about language and Barth amply demonstrates his utter mastery of 17th century English.
He also has a wicked sense of humor and the book is laugh-out-loud-funny, especially the journals of Henry Burlingame and Captain John Smith involving Pocahontas which are written like this

"With as much of grace as I cd muster, i accepted Hicktopeakes offer, whereupon he shew'd me a door of his howse, the wch he said. open'd upon the chamber of the Queene. Then he lay'd him self down next the fyre and slept, onely fitfully as well a man might, that hath granted leave to another to go in unto the wife of his bed."

That is about as tame as these journals get, so I'll not risk offending the prudish by quoting the more graphic passages.

As with any 756 page tome, there are some longueurs, but, on a second reading, they can be safely skipped.

The new Dalkey Archive edition has a weighty, substantial feel of quality and features a dark print type that is very easy to read.

I hope you'll give The Sot Weed Factor a look, because, for me, two back-to-back initial readings won't be nearly enough.