The Floating Opera and The End of the Road

By: John Barth

Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau

The Floating Opera and The End of the Road are John Barth's first two novels. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on human emotions. Separately they give two very different views of a universal human drama.

©1997 John Barth (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Barth before he gets too full of himself

Don't get me wrong, I am a great fan of John Barth. He is however sometimes difficult to stomach, especially when he's trying to impress us with is voluminous vocabulary and outlandish plot twists. These two stories are his early works and are far more easy to get through than the Sot Weed Factor or Chimera when his Post-Modern style goes into hyper drive. Kevin Pariseau's voice is a perfect fit for Barth's rye humor and cynicism.

wonderful philosophical debut of a master

These two novels, the debut of John Barth along is thematically related follow-up, were very different from what I expected, often in a great way!

But first, I need to clear up another reviewers mistake, stating that the Final Chapter of End of the Line was missing, which IT IS NOT, thank goodness!

I found both of these to be much closer to a European philosophical novel of the post-war era then to Barth's later works, which I enjoy so much. without ruining the plot, I found myself often thinking of Camus and even laughed when a character mentions Sartre.

As different as these two books were from later works, that paralyzed feeling of and overstimulated mind shines through, especially in the floating Opera! I've always found that Barth plays with the idea of mental paralyzation as much as Pynchon does with paranoia, so it was really cool to see where that all began.

Both books address the idea of absolute values, or the lack thereof, hence a move from nihilism to existentialism, a creating of your own values, often in contradiction to each other. it is here that I see an almost foundational approach to postmodernism, which I find fascinating as an academic and reader alike!

I would recommend this to anyone interested in philosophy, literature or just having a good laugh while taking a look in the mirror, something not easily done. Hope you guys found this helpful!

love these books

been a while since I've reread these, the performance genuinely made it (maybe) even more enjoyable.

Thoughtful, funny, timely

More John Barth read by Pariseau... I can't get enough. Would especially love to have Giles Goat Boy.

Like a Nabokov shot taken with a line of Camus

Review #1 -- The Floating Opera (*****):

This seems like a novel destined to be made into a Coen brothers movie. Well, I guess a rather WASPy Coen brothers movie. IT is an absolute masterpiece of comedic nihilism. If sainthood, cynicism, and suicide aren't your gig -- you can always try nihilism -- or not.

Review # 2 -- The End of the World (****):

Consisting of two parts:

Part 1: Other titles considered by John Barth instead of 'The End of the Road'?

* Cuckolding an Existentialist
* The back//progress&advice//room abortion of absurdity
* Accidentally killed by too little love and too much dinner.
* Why Professors at small universities are bastards.
* My abortion with Sartre
* An existentialist triangle
* Thesis, antithesis, ergotrate.
* Misménage à trois
* Cornuto Matata

Part 2: [warning might contain spoilers if you are listening to this book fresh, with no previous experience with or knowledge of Barth's early, nihilist works] The reason I gave the performance only 2-stars was because the audiobook left out the LAST chapter of 'The End the Road.' Which, by-the-way, is kinda important because it is the END of the ROAD!!!. I know that abortion is a touchy subject, but leaving out the last chapter -- Chapter 12 -- leaves the book with the anticipation of an abortion, not the actual abortion. It is like doing Camus' the Stranger and leaving out the chapter that deals with killing the Arab. Kinda the whole point right?