The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor [Paperback]

John Barth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 2001

National Book Award winner John Barth offers a rambunctious story full of narrative high jinks in this lively, inventive epic. Journalist Simon Behler finds himself in the house of Sinbad the Sailor after being washed ashore during a seagoing adventure. Over the course of six evenings, the two take turns recounting their voyages, merging medieval Baghdad and twentieth-century Maryland in a brilliantly entertaining weave of stories within stories.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Just when you may have concluded, like Queen Scheherazade's husband, that you've "heard them all," Barth ( The Tidewater Tales ) proves again how original and entertaining he is. Like many of the author's previous works, his latest blends fantasy, mythology, existentialist wit, bawdy humor and metafictional conceits. But though his opening words declare, "The machinery's rusty," the new novel is a testament both to Barth's undiminished generative powers and to his maturity of vision. In the elaborate plot, a "fifty-plus," "once-sort-of-famous" New Journalist named Simon William Behler is mysteriously transported to the medieval Baghdad of Sindbad the Sailor. Behler--known variously as "Somebody the Sailor," "Baylor" and "Sayyid Bey el-Loor," falls in love with Sindbad's daughter Yasmin and gets enmeshed in Arabian intrigues. The intrigues revolve around such nagging questions as the intactness of Yasmin's virginity, the veracity of Sindbad's tall tales and the whereabouts of a wristwatch Behler needs in order to return home. All this is dealt with in the course of six evenings of storytelling at Sindbad's dinner table. Barth creates whole and engaging characters with his usual wealth of wordplay, allusion and satire. But the novel's greatest achievement is how it connects the conventionally realistic story of Behler's 20th-century life with the outsize and metaphorical world of Sindbad, reflecting in the process on the nature of stories, dreams, voyages and death. BOMC selection; major ad/promo; author tour .
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Simon Behler--or Baylor, as he refers to himself in his countless best-selling books of New Journalism--falls overboard during a cruise retracing the legendary voyages of Sindbad the Sailor and is pulled from the water by contemporaries of the real Sinbad. Trapped in the distant past but never at a loss for words, Behler--or Bey el-Loor, as he is now known--amuses his new friends with his exotic tales: boyhood on Maryland's Eastern Shore, first love, early literary success, marriage, and divorce. Intricately, almost obsessively structured, Barth's latest novel is written in the mature, relaxed, stubbornly long-winded style of The Tidewater Tales (Putnam, 1987). He breaks no new ground here, but fans will enjoy his virtuoso recycling of familiar themes. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/90.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; First Edition edition (November 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061813171X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618131716
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,342,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A polarizing, brilliant, pornographic, and worthwhile fight, April 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (Paperback)

As I glanced over the previous reviews of this book I was struck (once again) with my own oscillating love and hate for this book. To begin with I must admit I believe this to be one of Barth's greatest novels and Barth himself to be (when at his best) one of the "technically" greatest writers of all time. He is also one of the most supremely aggravating novelists ever to put pen to paper. Yes, he deserves much of the somewhat narrow-minded criticism applied by my fellow reviewers. And yes, those who gush uncritically about this book (or most of his others) are likely letting him get away with more than he has earned.

Yes, this book SHOULD strike the reader as sexist (male chauvanistic is not really accurate) and yes, it would strike me, at least, as quite surprising if a woman were able to swallow this piece of literature without at least some digestive malaise. But (although, I speak as a male) I think it should be said that it is pretty evident (Barth's narrator admits it more than once) that Barth is really writing about his "Muse" and not literal women. The voyages of the story are the narrator's life voyages of lost and found identity and the various female characters are really one shape shifting "Lady Soul", sister, and twin. And yet, to me, this does not excuse Barth's utter usurping of these female characters. They are "men's women", not characters with any autonomous femininity and do not rightfully belong to the world of Woman or the female imagination.

In fact, I found the book to have a flavor of pornography, albeit pornography suited to a somewhat more sophisticated, middle-aged man's tastes. Half of the time I read, I balked at this lack of emotional complexity and conflict with the Other and its substitution with mid-life crisis/adolescent fantasy. But (again a but) This book is about the opposing poles of Reality and Fantasy and how one might identify their own humanity and self while moving between these poles. So one voice in me would say--That's just a cheap male fantasy-- and another voice would say--Barth knows this and has made it specifically so. And the first voice would chime in--Why is every "voyage" or stage of his life so sex-obsessed as if nothing but sex is formative.

My only reply to that is a bit intellectual and probably insufficient: in the journey of self-discovery and identity forging for a man(at least) there is a significant stage of battling with self and other which is psycho-sexually symbolic, polar, and erotically charged. It has always been portrayed this way--from folk tale to ancient alchemy to medieval romance to psychoanalysis. Barth may be trapped in his complexes and obsessions, too trapped to see all the limitations of his vision, but, on a symbolic level, his seven journeys are an important if often misunderstood (mostly by women, I'm sorry to say) part of a man's life. My only ultimate disappointment was that both Barth and his middle-aged Behler seemed to be hung up in this "psychosexual" stage a bit too long into the age of "wisdom," and that the book ends before either of them looks back on it all with a wistful but comprehending demystification.

So for psychological maturity: three stars. But, damn if this isn't maybe the most brilliantly written piece of quasi-pornography ever. It may not be his best book, but it may be his "best-written" book. The prose is frankly amazing (though not at all for either the casual or non-literary reader) and the overall creation is a master symphony where themes arise and disappear, transform, stir subterraneaously and echo with such virtuosity I was utter blown away. At times, it's a bit long-winded, but it's finally a very tight and complexly wound narrative that makes for an exquisite piece of literary art. For that, five stars at least.

Oh, and is it racist? I don't really think so. Barth is fully aware that he is not creating a legitimate Arabian world. He is more performing a tap dance with a very fantastic and very fictional and mystical world of the occidental imagination--thus the one reviewer's claim of "orientalism." Barth frequently uses the "exploded stereotype" as if to make sure we all know we are not in a world of three dimensions, but a world that exists only on the page, a world born on the page that can only move to another page and never stand up fully formed out of the book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe Barth's greatest novel, January 19, 2000

By 

John Domini (Northwestern University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (Hardcover)

"Somebody the Sailor" is the great work of Barth's later career, maybe his greatest story ever. The novel is full of feeling, above all; like all his best work since "End of the Road," it makes a profound and emotional feminist argument. It creates at least three splendid women characters, while exposing the cultures and systems that limit them. And it does this within a splendid, ever-ingenious plot -- straddling fantasy and relaism, utterly devoid of cliche or secondhand thinking -- that comes finally to the powerful subject of mortality, of coming to terms with our own demise. Brilliant, provocative, soulful, far-reaching, this book will outlast nine-tenths of Amazon's current stock.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This tale about tales is a whopper!, January 31, 2004

By 

Dan Witte (Chicago area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (Hardcover)

John Barth is one of America's greatest writers, a story teller on par with Twain and Steinbeck, Boyle and Bellow. As far as I can tell, however, none of them ever wrote a story about story telling, which is what Barth has done in this fantastical epic. Simon Behler (if that is, in fact, the name of the identity- and perspective-challenged narrator), for whom water has always played some central role in his life, appears to have swum through a rip in the time/space and reality/fantasy continuum, where he ultimately arrives at the doorstep of the fabled Sinbad The Sailor, and his captivating daughter Yasmin. Invited in, he and Sinbad swap tales of their respective, fantastic voyages in front of myriad household members and prospective investors for Sinbad's proposed seventh voyage, all of whom doubt the origins and suspect the motives of our narrator. Except, of course, for the delicious Yasmin, who, it turns out, has a mysterious and inexorable connection to Simon.

While this is a tale filled with mystery and adventure, love and sex, betrayal and death, and an endless supply of conflict, the underlying theme is the role that stories play in our lives, both as literal archives and moral instruction. Barth's trademark wordplay makes every passage worth a second and third reading, and his characters are impressively believable given their unbelievable context. Like his other masterpiece, "The Sot-Weed Factor," this is a sprawling and ribald epic, showcasing the enormous intellect and imagination of an American master in his prime.