Contemporary Fiction

[Steven]

	SWFactor was edited by the author.  I can sympathize with the desire  
to improve something previously written...but it's a crap shoot.   
Barth also re-wrote the ending to his first novel -- but that was in  
order to return it to its original form.  I think both Sot-Weed and  
Giles deserve a place at the table of Great American Novels.   
Capitalization mine.  Letters, the would-be masterpiece that occupied  
him through his 40s, his effing 40s is the way he expressed himself,  
I think, is fatally flawed by that female character that supposedly  
ties it all together.  Not his best work, but I loved his re-cap of  
the Bray character from Goat-Boy.  Also, the fake forwards to GB and  
the 'author's response' are mini-masterpieces of rhetoric.

	


On Sep 14, 2006, at 12:48 PM, Ya Sam wrote:

> Well another example of this wish to be there and at the right time  
> is the first edition of Barth's 'The Sot-Weed Factor' that I  
> managed to get relatively cheap. It's unique because the following  
> editions have been, as you know, cut. Maybe the editing did it more  
> good than bad, but somehow I felt cheated when I leraned that the  
> library copy I was reading was not the original text. So now I may  
> at least imagine what it was like, reading the first edition of TSWF.
>

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