John Barth
Paperback | Pages: 750 pages Rating: 3.75 | 1955 Users | 143 Reviews
Define Appertaining To Books Giles Goat-Boy
| Title | : | Giles Goat-Boy |
| Author | : | John Barth |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 750 pages |
| Published | : | August 18th 1987 by Anchor (first published 1966) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literature |
Commentary Concering Books Giles Goat-Boy
MJ Nicholls inquires:"I have been tempted to read this for some time, but Nate's review put me off. What do you make of his thoughts?:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/..."
The first part.
I am an not an impartial commentator on John Barth's work. I owe my entire seven year postmodern reading binge to him, all of which began with The Sot-Weed Factor. By way of his essays Barth introduced me to his generation of postmodern fictionists: Gass, Gaddis, both Barthlemes, Coover, et al, all of that generation with which David Foster Wallace was so exercised, what with all of the metafictional games and the profusion of irony and erasure of trust in an author. DFW's "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" was written in the margins of Barth's story "Lost in the Funhouse." (Barth: "For whom is the funhouse fun?" DFW: "For whom is the funhouse a *house*!?!") DFW's anxiety of influence never succeeded in overcoming his literary forbears even if he did exhaust the anxiety of trusting in an author once again.
Barth's books are arranged as accidental twins. His first two books belong to a pre-Barthian, existentialist phase while his third and fourth, Sot-Weed and Goat-Boy present Barth in his golden phase. The following two volumes, Lost in the Funhouse and Chimera, begin his long silver period of metaphictional hijinks, climaxing with LETTERS. Barth is my leisurely reading, the break to take when one wants to return to novels infused with narrative and narrative and more narrative, but not compromising 'passionate virtuosity.' Barth's muse? Let me introduce you to Scheherazade.
So, to the Goat-Boy. Upon publication of The Sot-Weed Factor reviewers persistently noted that it was structured according to the classical analysis of world mythology known as the Hero's Journey. Barth found this odd because he had never heard of the Hero's Journey. It goes something like this and some similar diagram Barth pinned up on his office wall as he began to intentionally write a parody of the Hero's Journey with Giles Goat-Boy. A shorter version of the Barthian parody of the Journey can be found in Chimera.
So, that's the synopsis of Goat-Boy. And it's masterfully written. My impression is that Barthians are divided in their preferences as to the classic, golden Barthian novel, some preferring the right-handed twin, others the left-handed. Mine is for the Factor, but I will not dissuade those who say that Giles is more fun.
The second part.
To MJ's question. If you enjoyed The Sot-Weed Factor, excepting the 17th century English, you will enjoy Giles. Nihilism and character torture are present. Quest is present. Cleverness is present. There is some of the later-Barthian suspicion of authorship, but it's mostly contained in that entertaining opening section. There is a universe qua University campus divided between East and West and some kind of cataclysm hanging over the University involving a computer and for which we will require some kind of Messiah/Hero who will need to come and save us all from. And lots of degradation. And in the most important part of the book, page center almost (but not at all now that I check the pagination), is a nicely done parody of our Greek and Oedipal tragedy.
But more importantly, Nate Dorr's review. My intention is not at all to disparage Nate's review or his reading preferences about which I know only very little. If he is a talented reader [edit :: he is.] we will heed his views.
But to frame the context within which Barth was undertaking Giles. This is a novel of exhaustion. The modernists such as Joyce, Faulkner, and Beckett had in some way exhausted the potential of the novel. Barth tried his hand at this modernist type of novel with his first two publications but somehow those boring, dead-ended modernists had to be over-come, stepped out of from beyond. His answer was to rewrite what had already been written, exactly that which had been exhausted. In Sot-Weed he did that by way of reworking an old poem, The Sot-Weed Factor; Or, a Voyage to Maryland, writing a picaresque, and recreating a 17th century English much as Pynchon did in Mason & Dixon and Vollmann does in Argall. With Giles, Barth returned to the most ancient form of story-telling and retells the story, saying 'what goes without saying,' re-saying what has already been said exhaustively. DFW found himself in the same relation vis-a-vis Barth as Barth did vis-a-vis Faulkner (his first failed attempts at novel-writing were terrible Faulknerisms).
The third thing.
From the comments section of Nate's review:
William: "tsk..tsk..tsk..the 'metafiction' super epics, all written by men. You think there might have been an issue with LENGTH motivating all that?"
MJ:"I watched a DFW interview today where he slays the "big books, big dicks" fallacy (pun intended)."
If I recall DFW's remark it was in response to a question about whether his having laid this 1100 page monster upon the world was his way of asserting his phallus upon the world. To which he responded something along the lines of, (embarrasedly) If that's what's going on it's coming from some part of me with which I really don't want to find out anything about.
Our age of the Twit seems to be threatening the continued existence of the mega-novel, the encyclopedic novel. Some may say that these works of mastery--Ulysses, The Recognitions, Gravity's Rainbow, Women and Men, Infinite Jest, et al--are nothing but manifestations of patriarchal oppression. Blah, blah. We'll have to have the conversation about patriarchy and phalli some other time. Indeed, most of these books are written by Men. But, can we include Miss MacIntosh, My Darling in this series of mega-novels? Who wouldn't love to see Ms Zadie Smith publish a 1200 page masterwork? However we account for the demographic of authorship, some of us regard these Lengthy novels as cultural milestones and fear the disappearance of this kind of possible world in which to dwell for weeks on end.
Is Giles Goat-Boy worth reading? Yes.
Declare Books Conducive To Giles Goat-Boy
| Original Title: | Giles Goat-Boy |
| ISBN: | 0385240864 (ISBN13: 9780385240864) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Appertaining To Books Giles Goat-Boy
Ratings: 3.75 From 1955 Users | 143 ReviewsAppraise Appertaining To Books Giles Goat-Boy
Giles from the Late Latin name Aegidius, which is derived from Greek αιγιδιον (aigidion) meaning young goat.John Barth brazenly turns Holy Gospels into a picaresque fable and the Saviour becomes a revolutionary nerd of the universal standing talking in the new-fangled recondite parables: It occurred to me to argue, then, more out of spite than out of conviction, that even his vaunted miserliness might be passèd, and its opposite flunked. Enos Enoch, it was true, bade men give all their wealthGiles Goat Boy, as with most of Barth's writing, cannot be summated by anything short of a novel in itself. It is a farce on heroic tales, riddled with metaphors and allusions as thick as the diction therein, with enough mass to leave a reader spending hours picking apart each sentence. This is not a bad thing by any means, as the work can be read fluidly first - then meticulously, to fully benefit from Barth's genius. The Cold War, Homeric Epics, Religion, Sex, and the pretentious atmosphere of
Finished this book 4 weeks ago, but better late than never. Id thought Id read Giles Goat-Boy a few years ago and didnt remember much of it because I just wasnt enamored, despite my lifelong devotion to John Barth. But when I got to page 100, I knew I was in virgin territory and had never seen the subsequent pages before. Apparently I had put this aside on that other attempt. And then I began to realize why. Because its a 700 page comic allegory, thats why! This is something you really need to
what. the. fuck.normally i don't get pissy about books i don't completely understand. but seriously. this is too much. plus it was way way way way too long. and too much gratuitous sex/weird words used to describe gratuitous sex (which i don't normally mind either, but this was so out of control it got boring). plus, like the floating opera, it's weirdly racist: the black men are horny half-animals and the women are seductresses. i take that back. not weirdly racist. just flat out racist.
The Modern Bible.Anyone that did not revel in the absurdly clear tale told in this primal romp needs to be gone from this exercise. Barth set the tone for many of us (circa 1965) as we prepared to limp through the momentously bad joke: existence.Scary, unadorned humans running in circles, gathering as much money and corporeal comfort as possible in the shortest amount of time on the backs of others while foreshadowing their fear of the dark with gods of the conveniently unreachable sort, make a
Ack. Aghh. Though winning a fair measure of benefit-of-the-doubt on sheer absurdity, Giles Goat-Boy seems ultimately to have been a rather pointless shaggy-goat story: a seeming philosophic survey-course that, after oscillating between improbable extreme positions, leaves the reader right back at the start and no better for it. Or considerably worse for have staggered through 700 pages (not counting extravagant introductory material) to re-reach that position. To be fair: Barth is a clever
Dude...you think with all the raping in this book you wouldnt need a dictionary to look up every 5th word but alas it aint so. so besides learning a shit-ton of new words, this book is kind of a play off of the world slightly futuristic slightly medieval except countries are universities and Giles Goat Boy is pretty much some sorta prophet tryin to throw a rock in the system but half the time hes just followin his goat-like urges. heh. its long, and pretentious as all hell with the words...but
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