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232nd out of 1,045 books
—
4,207 voters
The Sot-Weed Factor
by
John Barth
Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem.
On his mis...more
On his mis...more
Paperback, 768 pages
Published
March 4th 2002
by Atlantic Books
(first published 1960)
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Oct 13, 2012
B0nnie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommended to B0nnie by:
Nathan "N.R." Gaddis
Shelves:
favourite-books
What a fun book. I'd like to compare it to Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream, but alas it's already been done. The song's plot is not all that far from what John Barth is up to in The Sot-Weed Factor, but Barth is far more (dare I say it) exhausting.
This is a mock history of the real life poet Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote the Hudibrastic poem "The sot-weed factor: or, A voyage to Maryland. A satyr. In which is describ'd the laws, government, courts and constitutions of the country, and also the buildings, f...more
This is a mock history of the real life poet Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote the Hudibrastic poem "The sot-weed factor: or, A voyage to Maryland. A satyr. In which is describ'd the laws, government, courts and constitutions of the country, and also the buildings, f...more
Well-loved books from my past
Rating: 5 golden stars of five, with a rapturous yodel cluster
The Publisher Says: Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke...more
Rating: 5 golden stars of five, with a rapturous yodel cluster
The Publisher Says: Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, Cooke...more
31 likes
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“To me she is a woman,” replied McEvoy. “To you she’s a hallucination.”
This novel was so delightful and delicious I nearly baked it in the oven
and covered it in chocolate icing. I also considered rolling each page and smoking them once they were read while dandied in black velvet knee breaches and a powdered white periwig. Yes, it’s that good.
An epic historical satire following the trials and tribulations of naïve,
virginal poet and tobacco factor Ebenezer Cooke, peopled with strumpets, gypsie...more
This novel was so delightful and delicious I nearly baked it in the oven
and covered it in chocolate icing. I also considered rolling each page and smoking them once they were read while dandied in black velvet knee breaches and a powdered white periwig. Yes, it’s that good.
An epic historical satire following the trials and tribulations of naïve,
virginal poet and tobacco factor Ebenezer Cooke, peopled with strumpets, gypsie...more
36 likes
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· see review
This book is kind of nuts.
In a good, hilarious way, I mean.
"I am Ebenzer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of this province."Ebenzer Cooke has been waving his title in everyone's faces. So have been many others. Maryland is infested with poet laureates called Ebenzer Cooke. Henry Burlingame, on the other hand, is singlehandedly filling many shoes as he goes on a Mission Impossible-esque spree of changing disguises. Joan Toas...more
"Well, I was once called the Traveling Whore o' Dorset, but I don't boast of't."
24 likes
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Dec 26, 2012
Mariel
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
for want of a name the shoe was lost
Recommended to Mariel by:
Shananabananafofana
We sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden tombs of Montezuma? Lookee, the day’s nigh spent; ’tis gone careering into time forever… We are dying men: i’faith, there’s time for naught but bold resolves!
It kills me when I go to the movies and I'm sitting next to some little kid that has to stu...more
21 likes
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This book is getting away from me, kind of like things in my life at the moment. It’s real good but I left it unread for too long. Fucking books I love them but they consume me. At bars I tell other drinkers, the serious and casual alike about books, I met women, go on dates, talk more about books then I do myself. I got this reading thing pretty bad, but I think it’s good for me. I wish life was like a novel, but it ain’t. I’m just rambling, been single longer then I’d like to admit, it could...more
9 likes
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Health Warning!
This novel is nothing like Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral. After extensive talks with leaders of the Nathan “N.R.” Public Evisceration & Associated Critical Dismantling-For-Jollies Corporation, we at the MJ Nicholls 20-Second Knocked-Off Reviews-for-the-sake-of-them Organisation & Affiliated Dunces Inc. would like to issue an apology for anyone who read a certain review of Blue Pastoral and emerged from the experience with the opinion this novel in any way resembled...more
This novel is nothing like Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral. After extensive talks with leaders of the Nathan “N.R.” Public Evisceration & Associated Critical Dismantling-For-Jollies Corporation, we at the MJ Nicholls 20-Second Knocked-Off Reviews-for-the-sake-of-them Organisation & Affiliated Dunces Inc. would like to issue an apology for anyone who read a certain review of Blue Pastoral and emerged from the experience with the opinion this novel in any way resembled...more
It's a toss up whether to give this 4 or 5 stars. In the end I went with 4 because giving it 5 would leave no clear category for books that are even better. I tend to ignore people who rate everything as a 5.
Having said that, The Sot-Weed Factor is a great read. In high school one of my classmates asked our wonderful English teacher for a list of books he'd recommend. I kept the list for years. There were probably 4 Barth titles on it and I eventually got to them.
The Sot-Weed Factor is perhaps m...more
Having said that, The Sot-Weed Factor is a great read. In high school one of my classmates asked our wonderful English teacher for a list of books he'd recommend. I kept the list for years. There were probably 4 Barth titles on it and I eventually got to them.
The Sot-Weed Factor is perhaps m...more
4 likes
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Years ago, as a big fan of Barth's Giles, Goat Boy, I picked up The Sot-Weed Factor with the hopes of having a similarly enjoyable read, only to find the dense, ersatz 18th-century prose style off-putting and laborious. I got through about 60 pages and put it aside.
This year, I decided to give it another go. Maybe it was because I knew what I was getting into, or maybe it was because my tastes had changed over the years, but this time I found myself in the presence of one of the very best books...more
This year, I decided to give it another go. Maybe it was because I knew what I was getting into, or maybe it was because my tastes had changed over the years, but this time I found myself in the presence of one of the very best books...more
The Sot-Weed Factor is an epic—a satirical, slandering and fantastical tale that follows the life of Ebenezer Cooke from his days wasting away at Cambridge and London to his forced exile to colonial Maryland circa the late 17th century. At the outset, Cooke is a dreamer subject to inaction and, though he has no product to match, he believes himself to be a fine poet. His life mentor is called Henry Burlingame, a slippery and scheming figure who assumes several guises throughout the tale—which sp...more
1 like
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I was introduced to this book almost by accident. It was the spring of 1995. I was a senior at Eastern Michigan University and taking a class on the evolution of the American novel as examined through the works of Melville, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway, Pynchon, Didion and Ellison. For our final, we were asked to choose a novel by a completely different author and deconstruct it in a 10-15 page mini-thesis of sorts.
I had been working nights behind the desk at a local fitness facility called...more
I had been working nights behind the desk at a local fitness facility called...more
Jun 17, 2010
Bob Arbogast
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
History buffs, Marylanders, Poets and Innocents
A true picaresque novel, “The Sot-Weed Factor” follows the trials and tribulations of one Ebenezer Cooke, the Poet and Laureate of Maryland. This is a randy, irreverent and truly satisfying book. Sblood, the thing is a long-winded, but it is also a rousing romp across two continents with all the intrigue and sex of a James Bond story. Of course, the thing is clever and intricate, but I wouldn’t have read the 800+ pages if it wasn’t also laugh-out-loud funny.
During the two weeks it took me to re...more
During the two weeks it took me to re...more
Reading this out loud, which is a good experience. Older novels were designed for reading out loud and this one is very at home with being in the style of the earlier period (17th century). Having trouble deciding its agenda. At times, it seems its interest extends no farther than being a historical novel, a novel written later as though it were written earlier - with little cuts in its interest, accordant with the true period in which it was written, but in no wise meant to undermine its genuin...more
This is John Barth at his most readable. I confess that not all his writing has pleased me as greatly as this and the Goat Boy did. Yet Barth is certainly one of America's finest writers and who are we to say that he should not concoct the odd experiment?
What to say about The Sotweed Factor? What to say about any sort of factor indeed, for the title lends a key by itself, in that Barth has managed to use outdated language in the most charming, even disarming fashion. Where our reading of Walter...more
What to say about The Sotweed Factor? What to say about any sort of factor indeed, for the title lends a key by itself, in that Barth has managed to use outdated language in the most charming, even disarming fashion. Where our reading of Walter...more
This may be the funniest book I have ever read. The story follows Ebenezer Cooke, who actually existed, and actually wrote a poem called The Sot-Weed Factor. The novel itself is Mr. Barth's imagining of what led Eben to write such a disillusioned satire about his terrible experience in Maryland. He is vexed along the way by a revolving door cast of characters, gets a lesson in Maryland history (my personal favorite scene, because it's basically about how Virginia and Pennsylvania have been tryin...more
This true American masterpiece is written like a 17th century literary novel. The style could well be Fielding, except that Barth is even more hilarious.At a time when minimalist novelists seem to be in vogue, I revelled in the intelligent richness of the elaborate quixotic tale woven by Barth. When a novelist can write as well as peers like Saul Bellow or V.S. Naipaul, then a maximalist style like Barth's is to be savoured. Poor chaste poet laureate, Ebenezer Cooke, encounters harsh reality at...more
A beast of an 18th century novel that happens to have been written in the 20th century.
An aspiring young British poet embarks to Baltimore colony in the latter years of the 17th century to compose an Iliad memorializing the New World and its people. He ends up writing about what a miserable shit hole of a swamp the place is and the scumbag scoundrels infesting it.
One of the smartest books I've ever read, and also one of the dirtiest. Both are embodied by the incredible character Burlingame, equa...more
An aspiring young British poet embarks to Baltimore colony in the latter years of the 17th century to compose an Iliad memorializing the New World and its people. He ends up writing about what a miserable shit hole of a swamp the place is and the scumbag scoundrels infesting it.
One of the smartest books I've ever read, and also one of the dirtiest. Both are embodied by the incredible character Burlingame, equa...more
So there I was, excitedly embarking on my reading list for 1960, expecting all things more modern. I checked The Sot-Weed Factor out of the library and hit a few barriers.
First off was the title. Sometimes I go around for years with a tantalizing title in my mind but without any conception of what the book is about. For example, The View From Pompey's Head, a 1954 bestseller by Hamilton Basso. I'd picked it up at a going-out-of-business sale at a local used bookstore, thinking it must be about a...more
3 likes
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A few years ago a creative writing teacher recommended that I read this book after writing a trite little fake-historical fiction short story about an artists' colony in Massachusetts Bay around 1636. The Sot-Weed Factor is the kind of book that makes you feel worthless as a writer for its sheer brilliance. I have quickly abandoned all hope of ever rewriting that narrative from 2008 ever again because John Barth has already written it in a way that will overshadow any kind of fiction that dare t...more
3 likes
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in the late 1600s, a british poet named ebenezer cooke wrote a scathing satirical poem about maryland and its inhabitants, but not much is known about his life story. this book is a fictionalized account of his experiences and how he came to be inclined to rake maryland and its people over the coals. it was easily one of the funniest books i’ve ever read. it’s written in this really lofty, high-flown king's english, which makes it feel kind of like you’re reading a charles dickens adaptation of...more
A sprawling and sarcastic tale about the founding of Maryland and the Colonies in general, The Sot-Weed Factor was hilarious in most parts, heart-wrenching in others, and endlessly frustrating in the foolish choices Barth has his characters make. The prose is written in a facsimile of colonial speech patterns which does take some getting used to, but once you gather the rhythms of the speech patterns it actually becomes quite enjoyable. I wouldn't recommend this book to everybody, but for people...more
![[P]](http://d.gr-assets.com/users/1368277303p2/3355797.jpg)
The Sot-Weed Factor ought to have been subtitled "or how an innocent man was introduced to the savage ways of the world." Like Candide, poor unfortunate poet Eben Cooke encounters just about every form of misfortune within the pages of this book. However, unlike Voltaire's tale, The Sot-Weed Factor is near 800 pages long and so the misery and pain he suffers becomes as attritional and relentless as the sort served up in some kind of art house movie [Requiem for a Dream, maybe. Or Miike's Auditio...more
5 likes
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(8/10) At first I was tempted to dismiss The Sot-Weed Factor as a well-crafted but unaffecting exercise in stylistic mimicry, much like Cloud Atlas. But as I kept on reading, I started enjoying it. And then I started really enjoying it. Barth has created eighteenth-century shilling-shocker that really was, moving the book along with ridiculous plot twists, dirty jokes, and sheer momentum and joy. Despite Barth's reputation for post-modern academic trickery, The Sot-Weed Factor is first and forem...more
Jan 22, 2009
Zachary
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
pretentious-maximalist-fiction,
fiction
Hilarious and wonderfully ribald treatment of the nature of innocence, identity and good works in the 'New World'. Barth's shining moments are his mimickry of 17th century poetry, the constant barrage of fart jokes, and his satirical retelling of the John Smith/Pocahontas story, in which John Smith doesn't come out looking as smooth has he did in his own version. A 'metafiction', consisting mostly of stories told by people Eben Cooke, the protagonist, meets on his adventures (a la Chaucer), this...more
Absolutely hysterical. I almost groaned and put the book back down when I realized it's done in the style of Tom Jones, but thank GOD I made myself finish the second chapter because right at the end John Barth slips something that made me shake my head and re-read the last paragraph at least five more times.
And that's the best way I can describe how to read this book. Be careful. If you go too fast or aren't paying attention you'll pass by some of the funniest lines you've ever laid eyes on.
My...more
And that's the best way I can describe how to read this book. Be careful. If you go too fast or aren't paying attention you'll pass by some of the funniest lines you've ever laid eyes on.
My...more
This book somehow came to my library in the late 1970s and I first read it in 1979. I had only vague recollections of it, but this time found it a fascinating and hilarious read. A fictitious tale based on a well-known poem of the same name by a genuine poet, Ebenezer Cooke, the entire book is written in the style and vernacular of the late 17th century. Reading it was especially enjoyable when I could sit in front of a computer and look up the unfamiliar words on the OED and locate the exact ac...more
I read this a long time ago, but I still consider it one of my all-time favorites. I was able to master the dialect in this one, while I got stymied by the math references in Giles Goat-Boy. I never made it through that one, which is supposed to be even better. This one, though, was one of those books that took some work, but gave back the rewards. It is clever and entertaining. It delves daringly far into some really primal archetypes. I haven't been able to work my way through it a second time...more
So! You like Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. Or you like The Pickwick Papers. Maybe you like both! Suffice to say you are pretty happy with a novel that romps. You like a book that meanders. You don't necessarily care what's going to happen at the end - you're just along for the ride.
&c., &c.
The Sot-Weed Factor is your book, in any and all of the above cases.
While I do like all of those things (in moderation), I can't give this one 4 stars (or more), because there were just too many times wher...more
&c., &c.
The Sot-Weed Factor is your book, in any and all of the above cases.
While I do like all of those things (in moderation), I can't give this one 4 stars (or more), because there were just too many times wher...more
“In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke…”
The Sot-Weed Factor hooked me from the first sentence.
John Barth's novel was inspired by a poem of the same name written by Ebenezer Cooke in 1708. The novel itself draws on official archives of Maryland, but its historical account is animated by a whirlpool of imagination.
The plot pivots and twirls with intrigue, counter-int...more
8 likes
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This was probably the most difficult of novels for me to rate. As the Chicago Tribune reviews – there are simply so many ways in which to read the novel that where one angle is lacking another fills the gap. Curiously enough though, much of the narrative has to do with just that.
As Barth comments, this novel was not simply inspired by his interest in the history of where he lived, but through the realization that his prior two novels (which I unabashedly adore) had less to do with nihilism than...more
As Barth comments, this novel was not simply inspired by his interest in the history of where he lived, but through the realization that his prior two novels (which I unabashedly adore) had less to do with nihilism than...more
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| the sot weed factor | 8 | 72 | Apr 11, 2013 02:24pm |
"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
More about John Barth...
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
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“My dear fellow,' Burlingame said, 'we sit here on a blind rock careening through space; we are all of us rushing headlong to the grave. Think you the worms will care, when anon they make a meal of you, whether you spent your moment sighing wigless in your chamber, or sacked the golden towns of Montezuma? Lookee, the day's nigh spent; 'tis gone careening into time forever. Not a tale's length past we lined our bowels with dinner, and already they growl for more. We are dying men, Ebenezer: i'faith, there's time for naught but bold resolves!”
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12 people liked it
“All men are loyal, but their objects of allegiance are at best approximate.”
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