The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth

The Floating Opera and The End of the Road by John Barth

From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse * John Barth's first two novels are both existential comedies featuring strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effects of an overactive intellect on the emotions.

"[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed, with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." --The New York Times

The relationship between these two darkly comic novels is evident not only in their ribald and philosophical subject matter but in their eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone. The protagonist of The Floating Opera is Todd Andrews, an orphaned war veteran who has been sleeping with his friend's wife. Todd awakens in the morning determined to commit suicide, having concluded that nothing in life has intrinsic value--but then spends the day methodically reasoning his way into disregarding that fact and remaining a part of the floating opera of life. 

In The End of the Road, a man named Jacob Horner finds himself literally paralyzed by an inability to choose a course of action from all possibilities. He begins an unconventional course of "mythotherapy" treatment at the Remobilization Farm, but his eccentric doctor's directives lead him into a tragic love triangle and from there to the nihilistic end of the road. Separately these two novels give two very different views of the universal human quest for meaning, and together they form the beginnings of an illustrious literary career.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385240895
ISBN 10	0385240899
Title	The Floating Opera and The End of the Road
Author	John Barth
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
Year published	1997-03-11
Number of pages	464
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.