Sot-Weed

[Charles Albert]

I needst protest here...

What you describe was also my introduction to Barth...and at the time I
tried Floating Opera House but abandoned it within a couple of pages...

The indifference remained steadfast in the face of numerous plist
references to Sot-Weed through the decades. Last year, a copy remained,
predictably, on the shelf after the locusts had swarmed through the local
Borders as it lay dying. For 4 bucks, it would, at worst, serve adequately
as a bargain trivet.....

I find the work far more than a collection of fart and rape jokes. The line
running from "Hoist on his own petard"  to the campfire scene in "Blazing
Saddles" is proof that flatulence will always remain funny, and Barth
deserves some praise for his scatological creativity. Perhaps it is just
the perpetual juvenile in me which marveled at Sowter's fecund deployment
of the "swiving from a to z" meme. With respect to rape, the callous sexual
exploitation described is in justifiable service to the
narrative,historically consistent - and often gender blind.

Sot Weed isn't The Fan Club, the interest in which was driven entirely by
prurience. The connective tissue is the progress of the Laureate naif
through the lessons delivered by a cast of unseemly interlocutors, who,
with remarkable consistency, illustrate verities with an enviable
pedagogical precision by means of french postcards....

It is quite possible that much of my enjoyment is flavored by an abiding
affection for the Blackadder series...Can't help seeing many of the book's
characters manifesting as Edmund, Percy, Baldrick, Lord Flashheart, Big
Sally/George, various crones - even The Black Bishop of Bath & Wells.

love,

cfa







On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 11:54 AM, Krafft, John M. <krafftjm at muohio.edu>wrote:

> I should probably stay out of this: why dis other peple's idea of fun? But
> ...
>
> Way back when I was just getting into Pynchon, the big guys claimed Barth
> was the real thing, an intellectual('s) novelist, unlike Pynchon. I found
> Barth intriguing, challenging, often funny, but often smug and tedious.
> (Can anybody read Goat-Boy these days? Maybe: I admit I haven't since 1973
> and don't intend to.) When M&D came out, several reviewers complained that
> we didn't need Pynchon's go at something Barth had done better a generation
> earlier. So I reread (even taught!) Sot-Weed, and was ... disappointed. How
> could I ever have found all those fart jokes and rape jokes amusing? I
> still occasionally think about possibly doing something with Letters
> someday, but maybe it won't reread well either.
>
> John
>
>
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