A master novelist, with characteristic verve and playful flourishes, presents his life, staged as a sort of operatic cruise through memory, desire, vocation, and that life's adventures, despairs, loves, marriages, selves, and counterselves. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The author's latest "excursion through time's funhouse" is an enjoyable rumination which takes the form of a three-act opera, complete with two entr'actes and numerous "arias" and recitatives. It even opens with a "Program Note," which describes the book as "a memoir bottled in a novel." Indeed, its protagonist is a 60-ish writer of fiction named John Barth, author of such playfully imaginative novels as Giles Goat-Boy and The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor . He and his wife take a Columbus quincentenary sail on Chesapeake Bay, but a tropical storm forces them deep into the Maryland tidal marshes, where they get lost. Later, when Barth takes the dinghy to look for a passage back to open water, he finds instead what he trepidatiously recognizes to be "a threshold"--the spot, in Joseph Campbell and Lord Raglan's schematic analysis of hero myths, where the hero begins his wandering. In the metaphysical zone he now enters, Barth encounters his estranged twin sister and his longtime friend and "counterself" Jerome Schreiber, who lead him on an extended literary version of "This Is Your Life." Barth's engaging scheme allows him to "revisit" his other novels--a theme he explored so well in Letters . His writing, as always dense with ideas and wordplay, is a joy to read. There is nothing simple or single-minded about Barth's vision, however, and casting himself in a redefined hero-role is just one aspect of this book. One curious detail is its subtitle: In Barth's first novel, The Floating Opera , the nihilist protagonist pours his life into an aquatic opera house, which, in the end, he attempts to blow up. What Once Upon a Time suggests is that the process of memoirization can be not only an act of self-preservation, but also one of self-destruction.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In Barth's 12th book, a middle-aged writer and his wife sail into a time warp in the "Chesapeake Triangle," a Tidewater version of the Bermuda Triangle. Presented as "a memoir bottled in a novel," the book focuses on Barth's development as a writer. Highlights include his childhood on Maryland's isolated Eastern Shore, his introduction to literature as a book-shelver in the Johns Hopkins library, and his pivotal role in the burgeoning postmodernist movement. Several chapters are devoted to Barth's influential early novels, especially The Floating Opera (1956), whose nihilistic ending was changed at the publisher's insistence, then later restored when Barth's career took off. Apart from its documentary value to literary historians, the book's main strength is its evocation of life on the Eastern Shore in the Thirties and Forties. Recommended for larger collections of postmodernism.
--Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like the tide, Barth's stories cleanse and refresh our life,
By A Customer
This review is from: Once Upon a Time: A Floating Opera (Paperback)
I suppose it is inevitable that, as the post-war boomers approach the big six-zero over the next decade, we will see a tidal flood of tender, soul-searching narratives. Boomers want to understand rather than simply experience life, and most have been frustrated by life's refusal to obey our expectations. John Barth seems to have made such soul searching his life work, and I seem to have followed him book for book, life experience by life experience over the years. A clever "academic" writer (read: "he writes like a dream but his wit sometimes overwhelms the story"), Barth has addressed boomer experience and frailty . Seeming to be five to ten years ahead of boomers, his books have ranged from the tragedy resulting from a terribly botched abortion (long before we openly spoke of this horror), through the visionary and usually misguided quest of the idealist (Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goatboy), the terrible pain of realizing one is an adult (the clever but exhausting Letters), to more leisurely and accessible mid-life reassessment as protagonists take "voyages" on the emotional seascape of middle age (Sabbatical, Tidewater Tales, Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, Once upon a Time...). Each five years or so, I eagerly await his newest offering, devour it, and then feel frustrated when his literary games seem to detract from his story. But, then, each time I realize (as if for the first time), the essential nature of his writing. Like the age-old games from which his writings spring (the quest/redemption stories of the Iliad and Oddessy, the "doomed" prophet stories of the Old and New Testaments, the mistaken identity games of Shakespeare and thousands of authors since, and the metaphor of story as voyage and voyage as growth from Chaucer, 1001 Nights, etc), Barth plays his games to remind us that the act of story telling *is* the experience, it *is* the reason we read: the experience of hearing ghost stories around the camp fire remains with us long long after we have forgotten the actual story. And then I remember that, as a reader, I have no more "right" to expect neatness and closure in a Barth story than I have the right to expect neatness and closure in my own life. Try as we might, our own work, our own story is always in progress. And like Barth's beloved Tidewater, the ebb and flow of our own story defies our attempt to capture to master it. In the end, life and Barth's stories remain as delightfully cleansing as the tide itself. KRH www.umeais.maine.edu/~hayward
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MEMORABLE STORY RELATED IN FLAWLESS PROSE,
This review is from: Once upon a Time: A Floating Opera (Hardcover)
It begins with program notes, holds an overture, three acts, arias, and concludes with an episong. It is an opera of sorts - best of all, it is from supreme storyteller John Barth, National Book Award winner for "Chimera." A sixty-some writer of fiction and his wife embark on a late season cruise on Chesapeake Bay. Suddenly a tropical storm hurls them into tidal marshes and our protagonist's past. In the mystic strata in which he now finds himself, our writer meets his twin sister and friend and "other self.," Jerome Schrieber, who takes him on a biographical sail re-exploring his life. As always, Barth is a superb companion on any voyage, writing as only one of the most accomplished authors of his generation could. His mastery of technique and the written word make this a novel that is thoroughly enjoyed and will be long remembered. - Gail Cooke
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