Sot-Weed Factor
Published on 10. October 2023
806 pages
978-1-62897-430-0 (ISBN)
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 details
Person
John Barth is our most celebrated postmodernist. From the appearance in 1956 of The Floating Opera, his first published book, through the essay collection Final Fridays, released in 2012, he has published at least two books in each of the seven decades spanning his writerly life thus far. Thrice nominated for the National Book Award-The Floating Opera, Lost in the Funhouse, and Chimera, which won in 1973-Barth has received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. A native of Maryland's Eastern Shore, he taught for twenty-two years in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He now lives in Florida with his wife Shelly.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Foreword to the Anchor Books Edition
- Introduction by Max Besora
- Part I: The Momentous Wager
- 1. The Poet Is Introduced, and Differentiated from His Fellows
- 2. The Remarkable Manner in Which Ebenezer Was Educated, and the No Less Remarkable Results of That Education
- 3. Ebenezer Is Rescued, and Hears a Diverting Tale Involving lssac Newton and Other Notables
- 4. Ebenezer's First Sojourn in London, and the Issue of It
- 5. Ebenezer Commences His Second Sojourn in London, and Fares Unspectacularly
- 6. The Momentous Wager Between Ebenezer and Ben Oliver, and Its Uncommon Result
- 7. The Conversation Between Ebenezer and the Whore Joan Toast, Including the Tale of the Great Tom Leech
- 8. A Colloquy Between Men of Principle, and What Came of It
- 9. Ebenezer's Audience With Lord Baltimore, and His Ingenious Proposal to That Gentlemen
- 10. A Brief Relation of the Maryland Palatinate, Its Origins and Struggles for Survival, as Told to Ebenezer by His Host
- 11. Ebenezer Returns to His Companions, Finds Them Fewer by One, Leaves Them Fewer by Another, and Reflects a Reflection
- Part II: Going to Malden
- 1. The Laureate Acquires a Notebook
- 2. The Laureate Departs from London
- 3. The Laureate Learns the True Identity of Colonel Peter Sayer
- 4. The Laureate Hears the Tale of Burlingame's Late Adventures
- 5. Burlingame's Tale Continued, Till Its Teller Falls Asleep
- 6. Burlingame's Tale Carried Yet Farther
- the Laureate Reads from The Privie Journal of Sir Henry Burlingame and Discourses on the Nature of Innocence
- 7. Burlingame's Tale Concluded
- the Travelers Arrive at Plymouth
- 8. The Laureate Indites a Quatrain and Fouls His Breeches
- 9. Further Sea-Poetry, Composed in the Stables of the King o' the Seas
- 10. The Laureate Suffers Literary Criticism and Boards the Poseidon
- 11. Departure from Albion: the Laureate at Sea
- 12. The Laureate Discourses on Games of Chance and Debates the Relative Gentility of Valets and Poets Laureate. Bertrand Sets Forth the Anatomy of Sophistication and Demonstrates His Thesis
- 13. The Laureate, Awash in a Sea of Difficulties, Resolves to Be Laureate, Not Before Inditing Final Sea-Couplets
- 14. The Laureate Is Exposed to Two Assassinations of Character, a Piracy, a Near-Deflowering, a Near-Mutiny, a Murder, and an Appalling Colloquy Between Captains of the Sea, All Within the Space of a Few Pages
- 15. The Rape of the Cyprian
- Also, the Tale of Hicktopeake, King of Accomack, and the Greatest Peril the Laureate Has Fallen Into Thus Far
- 16. The Laureate and Bertrand, Left to Drown, Assume Their Niches in the Heavenly Pantheon
- 17. The Laureate Meets the Anacostin King and Learns the True Name of His Ocean Isle
- 18. The Laureate Pays His Fare to Cross a River
- 19. The Laureate Attends a Swine-Maiden's Tale
- 20. The Laureate Attends the Swine-Maiden Herself
- 21. The Laureate Yet Further Attends the Swine-Maiden
- 22. No Ground Is Gained Towards the Laureate's Ultimate Objective, but Neither Is Any Lost
- 23. In His Efforts to Get to the Bottom of Things the Laureate Comes Within Sight of Malden, but So Far from Arriving There, Nearly Falls Into the Stare
- 24. The Travelers Hear About the Singular Martyrdom of Father Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J.: a Tale Less Relevant in Appearance Than It Will Prove in Fact
- 25. Further Passages from Captain John Smith's Secret Historie of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake: Dorchester Discovered, and How the Captain First Set Foot Upon It
- 26. The Journey to Cambridge, and the Laureate's Conversation by the Way
- 27. The Laureate Asserts That Justice Is Blind, and Armed With This Principle, Settles a Litigation
- 28. If the Laureate Is Adam, Then Burlingame Is the Serpent
- 29. The Unhappy End of Mynheer Wilhelm Tick, As Related to the Laureate by Mary Mungummory, the Traveling Whore o' Dorset.
- 30. Having Agreed That Naught Is in Men Save Perfidy, Though Not Necessarily That Jus est id quod cliens fecit, the Laureate at Last Lays Eyes on His Estate
- 31. The Laureate Attains Husbandhood at No Expense Whatever of His Innocence
- 32. A Marylandiad Is Brought to Birth, but Its Deliverer Fares as Badly as in Any Other Chapter
- 33. The Laureate Departs from His Estate
- Part III: Malden Earned
- 1. The Poet Encounters a Man With Naught to Lose, and Requires Rescuing
- 2. A Layman's Pandect of Geminology Compended by Henry Burlingame, Cosmophilist
- 3. A Colloquy Between Ex-Laureates of Maryland, Relating Duly the Trials of Miss Lucy Robotham and Concluding With an Assertion Not Lightly Matched for Its Implausibility
- 4. The Poet Crosses Chesapeake Bay, but Not to His Intended Port of Call
- 5. Confrontations and Absolutions in Limbo
- 6. His Future at Stake, the Poet Reflects on a Brace of Secular Mysteries
- 7. How the Ahatchwhoops Doe Choose a King Over Them
- 8. The Fate of Father Joseph FitzMaurice, S.J., Is Further Illuminated, and Itself Illumines Mysteries More Tenebrous and Pregnant
- 9. At Least One of the Pregnant Mysteries Is Brought to Bed, With Full Measure of Travail, but Not as Yet Delivered to the Light
- 10. The Englishing of Billy Rumbly Is Related, Purely from Hearsay, by the Traveling Whore O' Dorset
- 11. The Tale of Billy Rumbly Is Concluded by an Eye-Witness to His Englishing. Mary Mungummory Poses the Question, Does Essential Savagery Lurk Beneath the Skin of Civilization, or Does Essential Civilization Lurk Beneath the Skin of Savagery? -but Does Not Answer It
- 12. The Travelers Having Proceeded Northward to Church Creek, McEvoy Out-Nobles a Nobleman, and the Poet Finds Himself Knighted Willy-Nilly
- 13. His Majesty's Provincial Wind- and Water-Mill Commissioners, With Separate Ends in View, Have Recourse on Separate Occasions to Allegory
- 14. Oblivion Is Attained Twice by the Miller's Wife, Once by the Miller Himself, and Not at All by the Poet, Who Likens Life to a Shameless Playwright
- 15. In Pursuit of His Manifold Objectives the Poet Meets an Unsavaged Savage Husband and an Unenglished English Wife
- 16. A Sweeping Generalization Is Proposed Regarding the Conservation of Cultural Energy, and Demonstrated With the Aid of Rhetoric and Inadvertence
- 17. Having Discovered One Unexpected Relative Already, the Poet Hears the Tale of the Invulnerable Castle and Acquires Another
- 18. The Poet Wonders Whether the Course of Human History Is a Progress, a Drama, a Retrogression, a Cycle, an Undulation, a Vortex, a Right- or Left-Handed Spiral, a Mere Continuum, or What Have You. Certain Evidence Is Brought Forward, but of an Ambiguous and Inconclusive Nature
- 19. The Poet Awakens from His Dream of Hell to Be Judged in Life by Rhadamanthus
- 20. The Poet Commences His Day in Court
- 21. The Poet Earns His Estate
- Part IV: The Author Apologizes to his Readers
- The laureate composes his Epitaph
- About the Author
