Customer Reviews

Sabbatical.

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sailing up the chesapeake bay. John Barth brings us sailing once again, this time with the tale of married ex CIA-and-deeper-operative-turned-tell-almost-all-expose-writer Fenwick (descendant of Francis Scott Key) and literary prof Susan (descendant of Edgar Allen Poe), aboard their ship Pokey, while they wrestle with all of the things that can come between the introduction of the gun in Act I and its being fired in Act III, between the act and its resolution, things like birth, death, loyalty, rambunctious nephews, seamonsters. There are common themes here, sure, but for this reader, Barth's talent ensures that the style transcends gimmick. The story never gets too horribly muckied up while he plays around. In fact, sometimes his bold this-is-what-i'm-going-to-make-happen-next-and-this-is-why entrances/intrusions actually increase our appreciation/wonder for his craft. The man is telling you flat out how he plans to manipulate your senses of awe and delight, and thus warned, you're still blown away when he actually goes ahead and does it. Barth is an uncommon magician, in that he has no secrets, and yet he is no less magical

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

A newspaper article mentioned Barth in passing and a used book rack supplied Sabbatical. It's hard to draw reference points for Barth with Sabbatical, but it I suppose a nautically-minded, Cold War-centric Umberto Eco is the best I can do. The book is firmly fixed in the pantheon of post-modern metafiction, that much is certain.

The story (if there is one) follows the (mostly) sailing adventures of Susan Fenwick Turner and Susan Seckler, a comfortably bourgeois writer-turned CIA operative turned writer, and an uncomfortably elite writing professor (professors writing about professors, so it goes), descendant from F. Scott Key and Edgar Allan Poe, respectively. Barth's story is crammed with metaphors and allusions so thick they literally make your head bulge while you're trying to follow the story. At times impressive in breadth, there's not always a matching depth, and, I suspect, many go ignored by those of us lacking Ph.D.s in literary theory and semiotics. Barth is more interested in viewing life through a seafaring lens than spinning a yarn, though several back-stories concerning bikers, rape, Vietnamese poetry, Iranian intelligence, CIA, Latin American intrigue, and identity politics seep in and take form.

Heavy-handed metaphors overwhelm the enthusiastic Barth reader--upstream, downtream, sperm and ova, etc. The excessive self-referential footnoting, while appreciated and edifying, soon becomes intrusive and tiring. Where is Barth going? What is his point? I'm pretty sure it's somewhere at the bottom of the sea, along with the many mysteries in Fenwick's life. Still, at the rather exciting start, and other points throughout the book, complemented by his thoroughly confident seaman's narrative, Barth fascinates and inspires.

I loved "Tidewater Tales" and was enormously impressed so went looking for other John Barth books and found "Sabbitical". The names are different but the story (or one of the stories) and I still enjoyed it. However I was hoping to find something from the author explaining why write "Sabbitical" first and then retell the tale as part of "Tidewater Tales", although I now know why the Talbots boat is called "Reprise"

This is the second work that I have read by this author. The first was very stupid and so I thought I give him a second chance. The reviews on this book sounded encouraging. So I got it and I read it. Initially, the story seems to be interesting and it feels like he might go somewhere. However, all the major things that occur in his book have no connection to one another and in no connection to any theme or plot. For example, while there sailing they find a mysterious island where someone shoots at them and they hear voices but cannot find any person. They also see an actual sea monster that comes up and then leaves. They are also solicited by the CIA. They are also looking for two relatives that work for the CIA that disappeared. Do not think that any of the events listed above means anything more than I just described. They simply happen and the author offers no explanation. There are no allusions to them later on. So what was the point? The list of things to happen goes on and on. What is most annoying about this but is that none of these items has anything to do with any other item and none of them are resolved in any way. The book simply ends with a author decided that he could not make any point of anything.

This book is a waste of time. It's not that enjoyable to read on the way either.

I was left feeling that the author feels that he is so important that he should be listened to no matter what he says even if it is mediocre. That's what this novel is.