Once Upon a Time - A Floating Opera

by John Barth

John Barth, a moderately successful novelist just turned sixty, decides to take a sail on Chesapeake Bay with his wife, but a tropical storm forces them deep into the Maryland tidal marshes. Lost, Barth takes out his dinghy to search for a way home, but becomes embarked instead on a quest through the murkier regions of his own memory--a semi-memoir, staged as an operatic cruise through desire, vocation, despair, love, marriage, selves, and counterselves.

Genres: Fiction, American

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

John Barth briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, received a bachelor of arts in 1951 and composed The Shirt of Nessus , a thesis for a Magister Artium in 1952.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, distractions, stories, and lists, such as two prostitutes, who exchange lengthy insulting terms. The disillusioned fictional Ebenezer Cooke, repeatedly described as an innocent "poet and virgin" like Candide, sets out a heroic epic and ends up a biting satire.
He moved in 1965 to State University of New York at Buffalo. He visited as professor at Boston University in 1972. He served as professor from 1973 at Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1995.
The conceit of the university as universe based Giles Goat-Boy , a next speculative fiction of Barth comparable size. A half-goat discovers his humanity as a savior in a story, presented as a computer tape, given to Barth, who denies his work. In the course, Giles carries out all the tasks that Joseph Campbell prescribed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Barth meanwhile in the book kept a list of the tasks, taped to his wall.
The even more metafictional Lost in the Funhouse , the short story collection, and Chimera , the novella collection, than their two predecessors foreground the process and present achievements, such as seven nested quotations. In Letters , Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.
Barth meanwhile also pondered and discussed the theoretical problems of fiction, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion," first printed in the Atlantic in 1967, widely considered 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) 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.

Reviews

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you don’t enjoy the postmodern self-reflexive metafiction, then stay the hell away from this.

Also, it should probably be consumed after some familiarity with Barth’s earlier work, as there are many references to his other books. Going in cold, you won’t have a clue about the middle third of this and won’t care. It’s very autobiographical, but also a ton of fictive fun. A story about story-telling and a particular storyteller, playing with words, playing with the relationship between author and narrator, playing with the concepts of lives and the stories of lives, tearing down the walls and then building them back up again. And the musicality of his screwy syntax carries it all along with a certain completely unique rhythm – he was a jazz drummer once, after all.

It’s been a long time since I read this, and it was just as delightful the second time. I feel some more Barth re-reads coming on, because this stuff makes me happy. In fact, I’d like nothing better than to indulge in a full-blown Barth-binge right now, but will probably have to settle for a more sensible diet, given my schedule and other TBRs. But I’m short-listing his first seven to get to fairly soon, five of which will be re-reads. For me, this stuff never gets old.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Q. What do you write when you’ve got nothing to say?
A. A memoir.
Q. What happens when even that gets boring?
A. Quit.
Enjoyable nonetheless.

[David]

Barth uses faute de mieux for the first time on p.49, and manages at least a dozen repeats before the end. The thing is, he’s aware of this repetition, and even gently mocks himself for doing it. It’s one of the quirks of his writing that I really began to notice in this year’s re-evaluation—with annoyance instead of my more common earlier neutral reaction. Once Upon a Time is/isn’t an autobiography and it is fictional except where it’s factual (though some of the facts are invented). The novel is, ultimately, about a writer finding his vocation:

What drives this opera is vocation; the ineffable, indispensable uppercase Calling. Life-experience—shaped by memory and shaping memory, molding imagination and by imagination moulded in coaxial esemplasy—is called forth into language by the fortuitous confluence of innate gift, assiduous practice and training (especially self-training), and temperamental vocation: the Calling, in itself nothing, but without which nothing. (143)

Similarly, “I felt the first stirrings of ... Vocation. Blessed innocence! . . . now I had critics and teachers to counter any illusions about my competence, if not about my vocation” (260, 262).

It’s not all so philosophical, but that is the root of the book.

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sort of autobiographical fiction, this is not exactly what one expects of a good John Barth novel. It has the feel of an author in search of material more than a master in control of his craft. It does have some interesting details about the context of his earlier novels though.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this novel was something like watching a magician who, before she performs any tricks or sleight of hand, first explains in detail and demonstrates to the audience how the trick is performed before actually doing the deed and continues to offer explanations in the process. How entertaining would that be? Well, depending on how you answer that might give you some inkling of whether this is a book for you. I found the whole self-conscious, post-modern, ironic, "hey reader, I'm onna let yous in on what Ima doin' here" schtick rather annoying. I don't read novels to be reminded that I'm reading a novel, and while I am fine with a first-person narrator who dominates the tale, it grew a little tiresome to me to have that narrator coming along behind every narrative segment with an epistemic eraser of sorts, lest you be tempted to suspend disbelief for more than a few paragraphs at a time. There is a certain egoism in falling all over oneself to disclaim egoism, especially when the subject of the novel is--oneself. So if post-modern metafiction is not your bowl of fruit, skip this one, but if it is, and especially if you are familiar with Barth's oeuvre, then you might really enjoy this lark. What redeemed it (partially) for me was Barth's considerable erudition, which he puts on display frequently enough to engage those who enjoy the interplay of ideas as much as any other good story.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite Barth novel.