Particularize Books In Favor Of The Floating Opera and The End of the Road
| Original Title: | The Floating Opera and The End of the Road |
| ISBN: | 0385240899 (ISBN13: 9780385240895) |
| Edition Language: | English |
John Barth
Paperback | Pages: 442 pages Rating: 4.03 | 1960 Users | 117 Reviews
Representaion Toward Books The Floating Opera and The End of the Road
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.
Itemize About Books The Floating Opera and The End of the Road
| Title | : | The Floating Opera and The End of the Road |
| Author | : | John Barth |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 442 pages |
| Published | : | March 11th 1997 by Anchor Books (first published 1958) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literature. American. Novels |
Rating About Books The Floating Opera and The End of the Road
Ratings: 4.03 From 1960 Users | 117 ReviewsAssessment About Books The Floating Opera and The End of the Road
I read these two books in college and had the opportunity to meet John Barth at a book signing in the mid-eighties. He looked like a good author should: blazing eyes, etc. I told him I loved the two books so much. He said, "I wrote those when I was just about your age. It would be interesting to see if you liked them so much in twenty years." Then I told him I was going to read The Sot Weed Factor next. He said, "Don't waste your time on more of my books--there are too many good ones out thereThe Floating Opera and The End of The Road are John Barth's first two novels repackaged in one volume. Both novels are about a love triangle and the contemplation of suicide. The Floating Opera is set in the early 1930s and is a novel-length explanation of why the narrator decided to kill himself one day in 1937 and the events that changed his mind. The End of the Road is contemporary to the time it was written (1954) and also considers the question of suicide. While The Floating Opera kept my
John Barth is the kind of writer who, if you are not a writer, makes you want to write or, if you are trying to be a writer, makes you want to stop completely, as you feel that you could not possibly explore things more thoroughly and eloquently as he can. In short, he is a joy to read.His characters are at once logical and absurd, universal and absolutely inhuman. They are at once everything that the reader wants to be and everything that he or she finds ridiculous. In this sense, though they
Both of these are great. Not life-altering, earth-shattering, genre-revolutionizing great, but well worth your time. There are plenty of glimmers here of what would later become Barth's signature brilliance. And if you don't already know what that might be, I'd hate to spoil it for you with blandishing definitions. Barth is as fun as serious literature gets."Though it is too much to expect that I should become solemn about it, certainly the direction of this day's rationalizing was an awesome
I was first introduced to John Barth in HS when we were assigned to read The Floating Opera.Our teacher gave us the book and the first reading assignment and told us all not to act on anything we read, but instead to be ready to discuss it tomorrow in class.My father, seeing the book, and knowing it was taught at the school, as he was also a teacher, mentioned that he had John Barth as his Freshman Comp teacher at Penn State. He never understood as a then Engineering student how he wound up in
My first experience with John Barth was with his collection of short stories "Lost in the Fun House." I was magnified by his finesse with language and, although I didn't feel that all of those stories were successes (and what writer's ever are?), he left me spellbound as to the potential of future fiction. Having come across him through one of my favorite authors David Foster Wallace and his story "Westward the Course of Empire Takes it's Way," which was a response to Barth's short story from
I have always been a fan of End of the Road and now that The Floating Opera is experiencing a resurgence, I wanted to read it. As many people have said before me, Barth is a gifted storyteller, and he is intelligent and witty. He is also very good a co-opting literary styles and making them his own, in this case the narrator is a novice writer who through his inexperience breaks narrative conventions as he understand them, and still manages to tell a compelling story.Todd Andrews is a likable
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