Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Bantam (1975), Paperback, 819 pages
Description
This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece. This modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting . . . to roam the world since Candide." "A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded) this satire of the eighteenth-century picaresque novel--think Fielding's Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy--is also an earnest picture of the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it makes its unsteady way in the world. It's the late seventeenth century and Ebenezer Cooke is a poet, dutiful son and determined virgin who travels from England to Maryland to take possession of his father's tobacco (or "sot weed") plantation. He is also eventually given to believe that he has been commissioned by the third Lord Baltimore to write an epic poem, The Marylandiad. But things are not always what they seem. Actually, things are almost never what they seem. Not since Candide has a steadfast soul witnessed so many strange scenes or faced so many perils. Pirates, Indians, shrewd prostitutes, armed insurrectionists--Cooke endures them all, plus assaults on his virginity from both women and men. Barth's language is impossibly rich, a wickedly funny take on old English rhetoric and American self-appraisals. For good measure he throws in stories within stories, including the funniest retelling of the Pocahontas tale--revealed to us in the 'secret' journals of Capt. John Smith--that anyone has ever dared to tell." --Time… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
Well-loved books from my past
Rating: 5 golden stars of five, with a rapturous yodel cluster
The Book Description: Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly
My Review: The book description is a bit weak-kneed, but I can't find a better one, and I detest writing the book reports with a passion.
A couple months ago, I started a re-read of this book that did not go well. I sighed. I snorted. I rolled my eyes, and cut up rough whenever we got into the book's faux-antique Englysshe. I was responding to it like it was a phauntaiysee nawvelle with majgickq and other such borderline-criminal goins-on. I put it aside, and I forgot it, except to renew it online from the Port Washington liberry.
Damn me anyway! Why can't I listen to my REAL self?! John Barth, my Real Self murmured, John Barth of The Floating Opera and this book which you adored thirty years ago, he deserves better than this, to which Angry Self replied, “Shut up you! Seven hundred plus pages of this phauntaaahsticall-ness will make us homicidal! Why not encourage me to read Dickens or Tolkien if all you want to is encourage me to massacre random strangers? Silence! Begone!”
Damn me! What an ass! I read the first six chapters and tossed the book aside! But...I did keep renewing it....
And today, today with two days left on my final renewal, to-goddam-day I pick the book up again. And I read the first paragraph/line. And oh damn me! Damn me! How beautiful, how simply and completely perfect it is, and how I wish I could boil Angry Me in oil!
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-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.
Oh. Oh oh oh oh. I just had a crisis.
Now I *could* just power through the seven hundred-plus remaining pages in the next two days, ignoring all other beings and duties...to the detriment of our carpets, as the dog would be on her own re: eliminatory functions, and the complete bumfuzzlement of my houseys as I would not be showing up at the station to fetch them...but it's not on. It's just not. This isn't a book to be got through, it is a book to be appreciated, savored, delighted in.
I will await the tides of fortune washing a copy of my own back up on the shores of my private liberry. It is worth the wait. The rapturous narcosis of my first immersion has returned. Thirty years are as but a moment. John Barth is still there, his words as gorgeously deployed as ever they were.
Delightful. Delightful.
Damn me anyway!
Rating: 5 golden stars of five, with a rapturous yodel cluster
The Book Description: Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly
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chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke experiences capture by pirates and Indians; the loss of his father's estate to roguish impostors; love for a farmer 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. A hilarious, bawdy tribute to all the most insidious human vices, The Sot-Weed Factor has lasting relevance for readers of all times. My Review: The book description is a bit weak-kneed, but I can't find a better one, and I detest writing the book reports with a passion.
A couple months ago, I started a re-read of this book that did not go well. I sighed. I snorted. I rolled my eyes, and cut up rough whenever we got into the book's faux-antique Englysshe. I was responding to it like it was a phauntaiysee nawvelle with majgickq and other such borderline-criminal goins-on. I put it aside, and I forgot it, except to renew it online from the Port Washington liberry.
Damn me anyway! Why can't I listen to my REAL self?! John Barth, my Real Self murmured, John Barth of The Floating Opera and this book which you adored thirty years ago, he deserves better than this, to which Angry Self replied, “Shut up you! Seven hundred plus pages of this phauntaaahsticall-ness will make us homicidal! Why not encourage me to read Dickens or Tolkien if all you want to is encourage me to massacre random strangers? Silence! Begone!”
Damn me! What an ass! I read the first six chapters and tossed the book aside! But...I did keep renewing it....
And today, today with two days left on my final renewal, to-goddam-day I pick the book up again. And I read the first paragraph/line. And oh damn me! Damn me! How beautiful, how simply and completely perfect it is, and how I wish I could boil Angry Me in oil!
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-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.
Oh. Oh oh oh oh. I just had a crisis.
Now I *could* just power through the seven hundred-plus remaining pages in the next two days, ignoring all other beings and duties...to the detriment of our carpets, as the dog would be on her own re: eliminatory functions, and the complete bumfuzzlement of my houseys as I would not be showing up at the station to fetch them...but it's not on. It's just not. This isn't a book to be got through, it is a book to be appreciated, savored, delighted in.
I will await the tides of fortune washing a copy of my own back up on the shores of my private liberry. It is worth the wait. The rapturous narcosis of my first immersion has returned. Thirty years are as but a moment. John Barth is still there, his words as gorgeously deployed as ever they were.
Delightful. Delightful.
Damn me anyway!
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LibraryThing member mrgan
Where to begin describing—let alone commenting on—this postmodern take on the 18th-century farce novel. It is, on its surface, an old-fashioned tale of an overeducated young man's travels and lessons in how the real world works, reminiscent of Voltaire's 'Candide' and, more recently, Toole's 'A
While the language, the plotting, and the characters fit this style quite well, this is clearly a modern novel; it winks at the reader throughout and it plays with form in unexpected ways. Don't be surprised when a simple argument between two prostitutes turns into a six-page list of insults, real and made up, in English and French.
The humor here is juvenile, as base as the lewdest of Shakespeare, and lewder. The plotting is outrageously artificial, full of convenient turns and coincidences and revelations. The characters are fluid, changing their motives, reactions, and even appearances every which way. This all fits the book's implied "age", but it's also thoroughly enjoyable to read.
Between all the gross-out jokes about breeches and members, there's a lot of clever (and even touching) insight into the human condition here. And on top of it, while Barth clearly wrote The Sot-Weed Factor as a tour-de-force exercise in jamming into a novel literally anything and everything he could possibly think of, he didn't forget to make each page fun to read.
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Confederacy of Dunces'. While the language, the plotting, and the characters fit this style quite well, this is clearly a modern novel; it winks at the reader throughout and it plays with form in unexpected ways. Don't be surprised when a simple argument between two prostitutes turns into a six-page list of insults, real and made up, in English and French.
The humor here is juvenile, as base as the lewdest of Shakespeare, and lewder. The plotting is outrageously artificial, full of convenient turns and coincidences and revelations. The characters are fluid, changing their motives, reactions, and even appearances every which way. This all fits the book's implied "age", but it's also thoroughly enjoyable to read.
Between all the gross-out jokes about breeches and members, there's a lot of clever (and even touching) insight into the human condition here. And on top of it, while Barth clearly wrote The Sot-Weed Factor as a tour-de-force exercise in jamming into a novel literally anything and everything he could possibly think of, he didn't forget to make each page fun to read.
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LibraryThing member mschif
The ultimate spoof on historical fiction. Detours and digressions, characters with ever changing personae, long, winded descriptions, and a hero who never gives up keep the reader laughing and tempted to pull their hair out at the same time. Takes place in 17th century London and colonial Maryland.
LibraryThing member miketroll
An expansive tale of fornication, walking the plank, rape and more rape among the early settlers in North America. This is a big book in every sense, indulging itself in farcical interludes, philosophical diversions and amply presenting the delights of the English language as spoken and written in
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the 18th Century. Show Less
LibraryThing member skylightbooks
Hilarious novel by one of the masters of mid-twentieth century metafiction. A 17th century mock epic that satirizes the conventions of historical fiction by dragging its Job-like protagonist through a series of betrayals, confusions, and frauds. Includes an amazing 4 page long name-calling marathon
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that is laugh-out-loud funny. -Charles Show Less
LibraryThing member EnglishPatient
I read this book 40 years ago when I should have been revising for A levels. I've been meaning to re-read it ever since but I keep putting it off because I want to save it up for a special occasion.
Big and bawdy with a galaxy of wildly eccentric characters who keep popping up again and in
Expect strange looks from fellow-travellers if you read it on public transport as you struggle to stifle the laughter. Absolutely loved it; never yet met anyone else who had even heard of it.
Big and bawdy with a galaxy of wildly eccentric characters who keep popping up again and in
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increasingly impropbable circumstances, its hapless protagonist blunders from one accident to the next. Expect strange looks from fellow-travellers if you read it on public transport as you struggle to stifle the laughter. Absolutely loved it; never yet met anyone else who had even heard of it.
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LibraryThing member Othemts
After nearly a decade of procrastination, I finally got around to reading Barth's lengthy tome in which colonial Maryland and 17th century writing are parodied for all they're worth. The story is kind of a reverse Candide, the protagonist Ebeneezer Cooke making a muddle of things in his innocence
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and in his pursuit of his beloved pox-ridden prostitute. This book is vulgar, kind of a top-this contest of sexual misadventures - rape, bestiality, incest, - you name it. Not to say this was a bad book, it wasn't laugh-out-loud funny, but entertaining satire and seeped in historical record as well. The journals of Captain John Smith were especially entertaining. On the other hand, Barth seems to get lost in language, the overblown texts, and pages and pages of story-telling. So, I don't know if it was worth the wait, but I'm glad to be finished. Show Less
LibraryThing member Esta1923
The 'BIG' Barth! Years have passed but I still recall the impact of this novel. We read it. Told friends to read it. Talked about it, REread it. It remains one of our era's most interesting and fascinating books.
LibraryThing member dougwood57
Another reviewer calls The Sot-Weed Factor Barth's spoof on historical novels, but Barth also attempts to mockingly simulate the so-called picaresque novel of the 18th century. There are several problems with the book. First, the books, he mocks such as Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews are far
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better than The Sot-Weed Factor. Barth’s book is otiose, self-indulgent, and absurdly long. The reader gets the joke, and then gets again and again from Barth ad nauseam. The reader becomes stupefied and at some point Barth’s self-indulgence becomes actively stupid. I read the book once in college and thought I’d give it a try again several decades later. (It is interesting to note that several reviewers recall what a wonderful book this was when they read it 40 years ago and rank it highly without having revisited it pages.) It could have been a very good book had someone – an editor? – limited Barth to about 250 pages instead of the 768 pages in the Anchor edition. No author ought to imagine they are beyond need of a good editor and no publisher should let them get away with it – both happened here. Take a pass and read the originals or, if you must, give Barth about 250 pages of your time and then move on to something else. Show Less
LibraryThing member actonbell
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
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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 there's Ebenezer Cooke, one of the funniest characters one will ever encounter in a novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member Larxol
Caution: extremely funny.
LibraryThing member marfita
This used to be my favorite book. There's an ominous start. I still quote from it, but find it almost impossible to read past a certain point because of what I call "The Lucy Factor." I hate to see people being stupid, probably because I really hate being stupid myself. I used to cringe when "The
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Lucy Show" was on. To show how carelessly I read this book the first time, I never figured out what "sot-weed" was. It wasn't until the second read that I realized it was tobacco. What a silly bunt. The book is sprawling, epic, and bawdy. Just right for a pretentious teenager. Show Less
LibraryThing member behemothing
"But though the black man had heard their inquiries with worshipful attention, his eyes had shown more love than understanding; all they could get from him was his name, which - through it was doubtless from no civilized tounge at all - sounded variously to Ebenezer like Drehpunkter, Dreipunkter,
The Sot-Weed Factor, page 302.
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Dreckpächter, Droguepécheur, Droitpacteur, Drupègre, Drêcheporteur, or even Despartidor, and to Bertrand invariably like Drakepecker."The Sot-Weed Factor, page 302.
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LibraryThing member DanielSTJ
An interesting book. However, it wavers and meanders to the point that, by the 3/4 point, it loses much of its spark. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining, funny, and witty read. I am not usually a comedic fellow, but this one struck a chord in me. I felt that it had a lot to offer for a writer, a
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reader, and anyone that appreciates comedy. Show Less
LibraryThing member jonfaith
Joel bought me something several years ago for xmas. I already owned it. He kept that copy and asked, teeth gritted, what I wanted. I suggested this and read it over the holidays, particularly one hungover party at my parents'. Punning and ribald, it must be situated just below Pynchon,
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specifically Mason and Dixon. It is disquieting how polarizing otherwise literate people are concerning Mason and Dixon. One should read the Sot-Weed Factor if at all concerned with the undulating comic possibilities of the Pox. Show Less
LibraryThing member mslourens
Stopped reading after 10%, because the story goes too slow and the old English speech was too hard to follow.
LibraryThing member snash
A ribald farce full of twists and turns, fluid identities, multitudes of plots with some gems of wisdom sprinkled in.
LibraryThing member jonbrammer
There are many things to quibble about with Barth's hugely ambitious tale of Ebenezer Cooke - first of all, the number of coincidences that pile up at the end almost cause a narrative trainwreck - thankfully, the ending is satisfying without being pat. The Sot-Weed Factor is a satire of the big,
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wordy 18th Century novel, and references abound to Defoe, Jones and Sterne. Barth is not afraid to plumb the depths of scatological humor - there are many jokes involving bodily functions, and somewhat more problematic, rape. Even so, it would be prudish to mount a serious criticism of this novel - its sheer ambition and sense of fun are too disarming. This is required reading for all residents of Maryland - good luck trying to filter historical fact from fiction! Show Less
LibraryThing member hcubic
A wonderful and inventicw comic novel
LibraryThing member ternary
Outlandish. Uproariously funny. Very clever.
Duplicity to the point where the reader doubts even her own identity, shameless coincidences of familial relationship, and an absurd, tangled skein of intrigue in which right and wrong are as constant as the weathercock. All this, set to swamp infested,
Duplicity to the point where the reader doubts even her own identity, shameless coincidences of familial relationship, and an absurd, tangled skein of intrigue in which right and wrong are as constant as the weathercock. All this, set to swamp infested,
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pox afflicted, corrupt, noisy, lewd, violent, unreasonable, colonial Maryland in prose to which all of the same adjectives apply. Show Less
LibraryThing member therebelprince
Forever one of the highlights of my literary life.
Subjects
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1960
Physical description
819 p.; 7 inches
ISBN
0553104713 / 9780553104714
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