The Diary of A.O. Barnabooth

Here is the prototype of the 20th-century jetsetter, a fabulously wealthy 24-year-old on a free-for-all Grand Tour through the European capitals. Barnabooth is a naive yet brashly opinionated South American who casts about for a new identity with an almost scientific rigor -- an intensity all the more humorous for the swings between self-delusion and revelation that are so faithfully recorded in a diary that is destined from the start for publication. Barnabooth is essentially a character from Wilde advanced into the 20th century, full of optimism for the future, scorn for the musty generation just passed, and yet subject to the erosion of confidence that marks the psychologies of the characters of Gide, Proust, and Kafka. This is a book that transforms the "novel of education" with a new persona and employs a "stream of consciousness" interior monologue in perhaps its first modern instance. As Justin O'Brien has noted, "[Barnabooth] suffers a progressive loss of illusions]. . . And every time he approaches a decision or a judgment he interrupts himself to dissect his thought and determine just what percentage of vanity, of self-deceit, or of affectation has entered into it."