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The Floating Opera

1956John Barth

3.8/5

Whether to Exit if Not Entranced? That is the QuestionTime is a river. And all the world's a stage...in this case, on a steamboat, a showboat, no less, plying up and down the river. Life itself is an entertainment, a comedy, a circus, a play, an opera performed on this floating stage, hence a floating opera. To top it off (so to speak), all men and women are merely players in their own shows, although they might also be spectators in the shows of others. They have their exits and their entrances. Some exit by their own hands, while others remain entranced, alive.Which players are right? To be or not to be, to live or not to live, enquires the Bard, as channelled by John Barth.A Primer in the Moral and RefinedDespite his undertaking, Barth's vessel doesn't just stick to the channel. He navigates a meandering stream, much in the style of Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy".This was his first novel, completed when he was just 24, but it betrays a mastery of his craft. It purports to be the work of a literary ingenu, who is concerned that the plot might sail in and out of view, but it's extremely carefully planned, plotted and executed. He "simply carries out [his] premises completely to their conclusions." It's a delightful piece of meta-fiction, even if it contains more evidence of realism than its successors.Like "Adam's Original & Unparalleled Floating Opera" (the source of the novel's title), Barth's work boasts DRAMA (!), MINSTRELS (!), VAUDEVILLE (!), a gas-driven Calliope (!)(aren't they all?) and a Panithiopliconica (!), as well as promising to be Moral & Refined!A Would-Be Annihilist Stares Into the AbyssBarth cites not just Shakespeare and Sterne as influences, but James Joyce, the Brazilian novelist Joachim Machado de Assis and Albert Camus. The latter informs both the style and the concerns of the novel. Indeed, it's structured as a philosophical inquiry into issues both profound and profane, such as life and death, cause and effect, free will and determinism, friendship and parenthood, adultery and adventure, mortality and suicide, anarchism and Marxism, sophistication and cynicism, stoicism and existentialism.The first person narrator, Todd Andrews, in many ways a comic, smiling nihilist (once bent on destruction of both Self and Others), explains:\ "My Inquiry is timeless, in effect; that is, I proceed at it as though I had an eternity to inquire in..."So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. "A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life."\ Barth very eloquently summarises two key preoccupations of civilisation: contradiction and time.I Found a Reason (In Parentheses)En route along the river, Todd resolves the tension. Having stared into the abyss, he manages to conclude (if not necessarily prove rationally) that life is worth living, even if it might ultimately be meaningless. In other words, the fact that life might be objectively meaningless doesn't mean it can't be subjectively meaningful. (Or to further parenthesise, just because there might be no "reason" to live doesn't mean there is a "reason" to die.)This conclusion would be reason enough to read Barth's novel, but he also gilds his entertainment with abundant exuberance, a wry sense of humour and shrewd story-telling.

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