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Giles Goat-Boy

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 1,001 ratings · 74 reviews

In this outrageously farcical adventure, hero George Giles sets out to conquer the terrible Wescac computer system that threatens to destroy his community in this brilliant "fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex" (Time)....more

Paperback, 748 pages

Published August 18th 1987 by Anchor (first published 1966)

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Dec 07, 2009 Nate D rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: a dumpster

Recommended to Nate D by: a dumpster

Shelves: post-modernism, postwar-re-de-constructions

Ack. Aghh. Though winning a fair measure of benefit-of-the-doubt on sheer absurdity, Giles Goat-Boy seems ultimately to have been a rather pointless shaggy-goat story: a seeming philosophic survey-course that, after oscillating between improbable extreme positions, leaves the reader right back at the start and no better for it. Or considerably worse for have staggered through 700 pages (not counting extravagant introductory material) to re-reach that position. To be fair: Barth is a clever satir...more Ack. Aghh. Though winning a fair measure of benefit-of-the-doubt on sheer absurdity, Giles Goat-Boy seems ultimately to have been a rather pointless shaggy-goat story: a seeming philosophic survey-course that, after oscillating between improbable extreme positions, leaves the reader right back at the start and no better for it. Or considerably worse for have staggered through 700 pages (not counting extravagant introductory material) to re-reach that position. To be fair: Barth is a clever satirist, he has composed several remarkable set-pieces here, and his words and word-play are often worthy diversion in their own right. But ultimately this novel seemed to fall well short of justifying its epic existence. Or its exceedingly trivial post-modern gestures: the disputed authorship games that bookend the story itself are as uninteresting as they are irrelevant.

And all this even saying nothing of Barth's more regrettable and eye-roll-inducing positions, which I had hoped he would ammend at some point: notably, he lays out pretty blatantly that physical attractiveness is the fundamental merit available to any women, neatly eclipsing all other considerations. We can forgive a women for being unpretty as an athelete for being unatheletic, but they're the same kind of failing, essentially. And then that taken further to include the great virtue of being a passive, willing sexual subject whenever called upon. To say nothing of the novel's great amount of frivolous rape, or the overwhelmingly animalistic urges of the two prominent black characters (he throws in, late, a counterexample, but it's an afterthought). ACK. Just ACK.

I am sorry to have wasted your time writing extensively about this ~~awful~~ frustrating book.

Prior entries follow, in chronological order:

...

I found this book in the trash outside my appartment. Will it be good?

...

And so: a satirical messianic rollercoaster through mid-century American sociology and politics. Shakespeare may have said that all the world was a stage, but he never tried to build a detailed scale model of it using only theatrical terminology; here Barth's ridiculous task seems to be constructing an elaborate mythology of the contemporary world (of the 1960s) using only collegiate concepts and language. As a vast survey of conflicting characters and ideas, it's hard to place Barth exactly, but the book is certainly dated (usually meaning that it can be theologically frustrating though Barth's heart seems to be in the right place; occasionally meaning that I have actual fundamental objections to his characterizations). Still, it is bizarre and entertaining and clever, and appeals to my basic approval for the reframing of reality as surrealist mythos (here a kind of legendary saga of a student raised by goats to disassemble the threat of nuclear holocaust, or rather threat of mind-destruction by deadly and all-powerful supercomputer. yep.)

...

Note on legendary saga sub-type: Like Zardoz, this is a story of an outsider, the force of whose-outsiderness is strong enough to remake a society. What are these called?

Note on socio-linguistic accuracy: Like The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, this story has little or no interest on the cultural, psychological, or neurolinguistic effects of actually having been raised by goats. I'm looking at you Jessica: be warned.(less)

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Jul 20, 2012 Rob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, pomo-fiction, favorites

Another odd book. I greatly enjoyed reading it, but I enjoyed the early stretches much more than the later ones, and after turning the last page, I was left completely unsure whether to declare the book good, bad, or otherwise. I don't think I would recommend it to anyone, yet at the same time I want to run around breathlessly telling people about its many virtues.

In any case, I need to read more stuff by John Barth. All I knew about him before reading Giles Goat-Boy was that he was one of the e...more

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Aug 17, 2007 Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Pursuers of intellectualism

Giles Goat Boy, as with most of Barth's writing, cannot be summated by anything short of a novel in itself. It is a farce on heroic tales, riddled with metaphors and allusions as thick as the diction therein, with enough mass to leave a reader spending hours picking apart each sentence. This is not a bad thing by any means, as the work can be read fluidly first - then meticulously, to fully benefit from Barth's genius.

The Cold War, Homeric Epics, Religion, Sex, and the pretentious atmosphere of...more

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Feb 13, 2008 Virginia rated it 1 of 5 stars

what. the. fuck.

normally i don't get pissy about books i don't completely understand. but seriously. this is too much. plus it was way way way way too long. and too much gratuitous sex/weird words used to describe gratuitous sex (which i don't normally mind either, but this was so out of control it got boring). plus, like the floating opera, it's weirdly racist: the black men are horny half-animals and the women are seductresses. i take that back. not weirdly racist. just flat out racist.

redeemi...more

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Feb 24, 2008 Billy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dude...you think with all the raping in this book you wouldnt need a dictionary to look up every 5th word but alas it aint so. so besides learning a shit-ton of new words, this book is kind of a play off of the world slightly futuristic slightly medieval except countries are universities and Giles Goat Boy is pretty much some sorta prophet tryin to throw a rock in the system but half the time hes just followin his goat-like urges. heh. its long, and pretentious as all hell with the words...but y...more

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Oct 09, 2011 Congodog rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Modern Bible.

Anyone that did not revel in the absurdly clear tale told in this primal romp needs to be gone from this exercise. Barth set the tone for many of us (circa 1965) as we prepared to limp through the momentously bad joke: existence.
Scary, unadorned humans running in circles, gathering as much money and corporeal comfort as possible in the shortest amount of time on the backs of others while foreshadowing their fear of the dark with gods of the conveniently unreachable sort, make a...more

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Sep 13, 2010 Kent rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-contemporary

This book truly exhausted me. It's my first novel by Barth, and so I'm afraid most of my impression is ill-informed. As a reader, I enjoyed the science fiction fable element to it. What was the Cold War? How could you possibly write about how ridiculous both sides were, while still exhibiting cognizance of your reliance on that ridiculous country to save you from annihilation. And if that's not enough, pretend that a Messiah arrives to fix everything. What would the world look like through the e...more

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Jul 15, 2010 ICPL Staff Picks added it · review of another edition

Shelves: john, staff-picks-blog

When reviews came in of his Sot-Weed Factor (which I highly recommend) John Barth read how his hero’s adventures seemed to follow the archetypal patterns described by Joseph Campbell and Lord Raglan. Intrigued, Barth studied up, then set out to satirize the Hero (think Moses, Oedipus, Davy Crockett).

The result, insanely ambitious, fiendishly clever, intimidatingly erudite, and thoroughly indecent, is Giles Goat-Boy. Giles, fathered on a virgin by a computer, raised as a goat, sets off to save th...more

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Jan 15, 2013 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, merkins, voluminous

Like Rob, I have emerged in a post-posttape daze, staggering about not sure what to think and whether to rate this old-skool postmo razzlematazzlical performance in the uppers or the lowers. The last Barth I read was Lost in the Funhouse, which I dismissed as dated experimental wankeroo (Barth was the keenest postmodder of the lot, and this collection reads like the marking of territory), and before then the excellent The Sot-Weed Factor (which bears no notable resemblance to Sorrentino’s 1983 n...more Like Rob, I have emerged in a post-posttape daze, staggering about not sure what to think and whether to rate this old-skool postmo razzlematazzlical performance in the uppers or the lowers. The last Barth I read was Lost in the Funhouse, which I dismissed as dated experimental wankeroo (Barth was the keenest postmodder of the lot, and this collection reads like the marking of territory), and before then the excellent The Sot-Weed Factor (which bears no notable resemblance to Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral) and the hairpulling Coming Soon!!! where Barth proves he can still run rings around Dave Eggers and all the bepermed whippersnappers now in their mid-forties (the fact Barth outlived DFW proves for him the funhouse was a goshdarn hoot).

Giles Goat-Boy is the most inventive, loopy, and acronym-heavy of the four, although it didn’t disprove my suspicion Barth’s work is trapped in the masculine mores of sixties academe. The first part, or “tape,” (the story is, implausibly, all spoken by GILES into tapes handed to Barth in the preface), is chock with ribald larks and a network of satirical plots and comic characters that keeps the story’s ventricles pulsing, although it soon becomes clear—beside the obvious “quest” narrative—making sense of the other strands is a pointless exercise. The second tape finds the novel more tedious for that lack of focus, although patient reading yields page-by-page rewards.

Mainly, for a book bursting with such erudition and evident metatextual heft and subtextual smartness, GG-B is the silliest, daftest novel I have read since the last JM Coetzee. Barth is the only writer I have read who writes about rape with a tittering comic jauntiness, and the three rapes of the dreadful female character Anastasia, and the overall pervy, creepy aura surrounding all references to sex, seems to be a constant in his work, and threatens him with the “dated humorists” pile alongside Elkin. It is unlikely I would recommend this to anyone except hardcore postmod Trekkies (who are the only people likely to read it anyway), but there are more ideas and innovative riffs on one page of this thing than a dozen other novels, so this is not an invitation to dismissal. (less)

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Oct 05, 2012 Paula added it

Full Review: http://kmzphotoblog.com/2012/10/06/gi...

To be fair, it has been a a long, long time since I tried to read this book. I didn't put it in the "Books so bad I never finished them" category, because I don't know whether I liked it or not. I'm not sure I understand it. There were parts that I understood. There were parts that I'm sure I'll understand when I'm older, because my initial understanding gave me philosophical nightmares so bad that I considered not registering for my first sem...more

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Jan 04, 2009 terrycojones rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read Giles Goat Boy in about 2000. I was 37 and I'd spent a lot of my life reading books. So you can imagine how infrequently I had the thought "this is the strangest book I've ever read". That's what came into my head several times during GGB.

It's also a masterpiece. An extended flight of fancy, totally bizarre, anticipating various aspects of our modern computational world. Best of all, it's a deadly anti-academic humor. It helps to have spent years in academia (particularly if academia drov...more

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Nov 23, 2008 Vivien added it Recommends it for: people who like stories about goat boys and messiahs

Recommended to Vivien by: I bought it on a whim in New Orleans

"Self-knowledge is always bad news." Ain't that the truth- one of the most useful quotes I've read all year. Otherwise, the allegorical set-up of this book is at first entertaining, then onerous, and finally obstructive. I'm still reading it, but I expect I will lose interest for once and all in about 50 pages. We'll see.

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Dec 15, 2008 ivan is currently reading it

I read about 3/4 of this about 10 years ago, but was left a bit cold by what struck me as, essentially, a one-note conceit (however thoroughly sounded).

Now, though, I work in an academic setting and am a bit more familiar with the politics, so I'm checking back to see if it's any more rewarding.

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Jul 01, 2012 wally rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: barth

giles goat boy, 1966...there's a foreword to doubleday anchor edition by barth...a contents...a publisher's disclaimer and a cover-letter to the editors and publisher...all that before page one of the story...actually..looks like the "cover-letter" begins the story...or..no...signed j.b.

anyway...this is only the 2nd or 3rd...?...from barth for me...The End of the Road perhaps the 1st and most memorable...read back in...'86 '87? in a sense, i am jacob horner.

there's this title page;
r.n.s.
the rev...more

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Jun 27, 2008 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars

An exercise in literary onanism.

Just like this site.

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Nov 10, 2008 Avis Black rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: worse-than-bubonic-plague

Barth is a revoltingly stupid author.

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Jun 12, 2012 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: after-joyce, john-barth

MJ Nicholls inquires:

"I have been tempted to read this for some time, but Nate's review put me off. What do you make of his thoughts?:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/..."

The first part.
I am an not an impartial commentator on John Barth's work. I owe my entire seven year postmodern reading binge to him, all of which began with The Sot-Weed Factor. By way of his essays Barth introduced me to his generation of postmodern fictionists: Gass, Gaddis, both Barthlemes, Coover, et al, all of th...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Phil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-library, fiction, post-modern

What can one possible say of this novel? It is by far one of the most interesting pieces of American Literature of its time. One would want to consider it as science fiction or fantasy, all the while never feeling quite satisfied with either distinction (distinctions which are in themselves scrutinized in the story and possibly its most earnest (though disinterested) message). One thing for sure though is that with this novel Barth breaches that point of no return in meta-fictional irony that in...more

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Nov 15, 2010 Mark marked it as to-read

Shelves: fiction

A preface to my review: I began reading this book late on a Sunday night and got only halfway though the "Author's Letter" that supposedly accompanied the manuscript when Barth sent it to his publisher. (In the letter he describes having met George Giles's son, who gave to Barth the "syllabus" that comprises the novel.) Then I went to bed and proceeded to dream about the book, multiple times. I would dream about it, wake up, go back to sleep, dream about it again, wake up again, etc., etc. In on...more A preface to my review: I began reading this book late on a Sunday night and got only halfway though the "Author's Letter" that supposedly accompanied the manuscript when Barth sent it to his publisher. (In the letter he describes having met George Giles's son, who gave to Barth the "syllabus" that comprises the novel.) Then I went to bed and proceeded to dream about the book, multiple times. I would dream about it, wake up, go back to sleep, dream about it again, wake up again, etc., etc. In one of the later dreams I dreamed I met John Barth at a bookstore, where he signed my copy of the book and talked to me about the book's provenance. At this stage in my life I don't remember many of my dreams, and I haven't had recurring dreams about one subject in a single night since I was a kid, constantly dreaming during the night before Christmas about what might be waiting for me under the tree the next morning (to name just one happy example). These dreams about Giles Goat-Boy were stressful, in as far as they kept interrupting my sleep, and when I finally got up to go to work Monday morning I was exhausted. I don't mean to imply that these dreams point to a larger meaning of the book or its importance in the literature of the world (I'm not a proponent of the belief that our dreams are meaningful in such ways), but I have to say the oddest part of all this is that I hadn't even begun reading the book's first chapter yet. I wonder: if the frontmatter had this kind of effect on my subconscious mind, what will the rest of the book do to me?
* * *
Well, 100 pages in, I had to give up. The creativity within the preface wasn't present in the text itself. At least not as far as I'm concerned. The metaphors in this book seem to be the point of the book, rather than being just the structure of the book. Perhaps if I'd read this book when it was published I would've appreciated it more, as an illustration of the times. But, in 2010, the characters are not compelling, the story plods along at too slow a pace, and I have several bookcases of books I'd rather be reading. So I'll keep my bookmark where it is in this one, but I don't think it will move again. Alas.(less)

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Jun 13, 2008 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

A wholly original story even though it is less than subtle as allegory. Barth certainly succeeds in delivering his not-so-original points of view on Fascism, Communism and the Cold War. They may have been original at the time of writing, but I doubt it.

The most interesting aspect of the novel is how the author uses the University as a substitute or microcosm for the world at large. Certainly his view here is a little more original and is somewhat a foreshadowing of how the university system has...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Dennis rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If this book has one problem, it's that it's dated and it shows. To really appreciate this book, you have to put yourself in the mindset of the early 60's when the Cold War was gaining more and more force, beatniks were still relevant and rape was no big thing (or at least a possible laughing matter), and even blacks could be made fun of as well as Christianity. Putting it all into the perspective of a university campus which represents the world, and adding a parallel with Oedipus Rex was brill...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Ruth rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

c1966: I have to admit that this novel was completely over my head. I had some vague idea that this was actually about the Cold War in some metaphorical/allegorical way but I am never quite sure whether it was as good as all the top flight reviewres claimed it is. I am beginning to think that I really am a philistine at heart just as all those nuns kept telling me. I have seen this book described as fantasy but I think this may be a bit of an insult to Tolkein. I personally like the review by Mi...more

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Apr 11, 2012 Ron rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, political_fiction

Read years ago--in college. Remember was put off by the artificial "university as the world" environment, though I recognized at the time that many students and faculty viewed college as the real world and everyone else as sell outs to the dollar, power, church, etc. (Didn't agree then.)

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Jun 09, 2009 Mike marked it as never-to-go-back-to

I got half way through this and have liked almost everything else I have read of Barth. This one seemed clever for clever sake and the characters were very one-dimensional. Too long, I have other books to get to and seemed overly repetitive.

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Sep 02, 2012 Antoinette Billington added it

Shelves: books-i-would-recommend

Read this at the age of 19 the summer of 1969. I was completely blown away by this book. Wescac eastcac, screwing coke machines. Very over the top. Allegorical. Loved it then. Haven't re-read

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Oct 25, 2009 Josiah rated it 4 of 5 stars

One minute you want to burn this book and the next you think it is genius. I don't recommend it to anyone. This is a mythological comedy chock-full of rape and hubris.

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Mar 14, 2013 Michael Lawrence rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read and liked this book so much in college that I taught it in Freshmen English. As far as I know, no one in that class committed suicide as a result.

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Apr 09, 2012 Will rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love how fantastical and weird and hilarious this book manages to be while maintaining the allegory throughout the entire epic story. Vintage Barth.

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Sep 24, 2011 Rollin Traver rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book an extremely long time ago but remember it being a hilarious and wonderfully absurd farce. I think I will put it on my re-read list.

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Sep 08, 2011 Joseph Morgan added it

I loved it when I read it 40 years ago. I want to re-read it before commenting. However, I recall most particularly the parody of Oedipus Rex.

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About John Barth

"John Simmons Barth (born May 27, 1930) is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.

John Barth was born in Cambridge, Maryland, and briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, receiving a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 (for which he wrote a thesis novel,...more "John Simmons Barth (born May 27, 1930) is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.

John Barth was born in Cambridge, Maryland, and briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, receiving a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 (for which he wrote a thesis novel, The Shirt of Nessus).

He was a professor at Penn State University (1953-1965), SUNY Buffalo (1965-1973), Boston University (visiting professor, 1972-1973), and Johns Hopkins University (1973-1995) before he retired in 1995.

Barth began his career with The Floating Opera and The End of the Road, two short novels that deal wittily with controversial topics, suicide and abortion respectively. They are straightforward tales; as Barth later remarked, they "didn't know they were novels."

The Sot-Weed Factor, Barth's next novel, is an 800-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland based on the life of an actual poet, Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote a poem of the same title. The Sot-Weed Factor is what Northrop Frye called an anatomy — a large, loosely structured work, with digressions, distractions, stories within stories, and lists (such as a lengthy exchange of insulting terms by two prostitutes). The fictional Ebenezer Cooke (repeatedly described as "poet and virgin") is a Candide-like innocent who sets out to write a heroic epic, becomes disillusioned and ends up writing a biting satire.

Barth's next novel, Giles Goat-Boy, of comparable size, is a speculative fiction based on the conceit of the university as universe. A half-man, half-goat discovers his humanity and becomes a savior in a story presented as a computer tape given to Barth, who denies that it is his work. In the course of the novel Giles carries out all the tasks prescribed by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Barth kept a list of the tasks taped to his wall while he was writing the book.

The short story collection Lost in the Funhouse and the novella collection Chimera are even more metafictional than their two predecessors, foregrounding the writing process and presenting achievements such as seven nested quotations. In LETTERS Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.

While writing these books, Barth was also pondering and discussing the theoretical problems of fiction writing, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion" (first printed in the Atlantic, 1967), that was widely considered to be a statement of "the death of the novel" (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1979) wrote a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment," to clarify the point.

Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterisation and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling."

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barth (less)

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“Self knowledge is always bad news.” — 2 people liked it

“And never mind that the lessons he meant to be helpful, his students always make people miserable with, and flunk anybody that disagrees with them!” — 1 person liked it

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