"Why The Floating Opera? Well, that's part of the name of a showboat that used to travel around the Virginia and Maryland tidewater areas, and some of this book happens aboard it. . . But there's a better reason. It always seemed a fine idea to me to build a showboat with just one big flat open deck on it, and to keep a play going continuously. The boat wouldn't be moored, but would drift up and down the river on the tide, and the audience would sit along both banks. They could catch whatever part of the plot happened to unfold as the boat floated past, and then they'd have to wait until the tide ran back again to catch another snatch of it, if they still happened to be sitting there. To fill in the gaps they'd have to use their imaginations, or ask more attentive neighbors, or hear the word passed along from upriver or downriver. Most times they wouldn't understand what was going on at all, or they'd think they knew, when actually they didn't. Lots of times they'd be able to see the actors, but not hear them. I needn't explain that that's how much of life works. . ."
This edition presents the complete text of John Barth's first novel, including those passages deleted in previous editions and "the original and correct ending to the story," which was changed as a condition of the book's first publication.
Written in 1955 when the author was twenty-four, The Floating Opera makes it clear that Barth was always peculiarly Barth. This novel is part of the same cloth that made The End of the Road, The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy.
Description:
"Why The Floating Opera? Well, that's part of the name of a showboat that used to travel around the Virginia and Maryland tidewater areas, and some of this book happens aboard it. . . But there's a better reason. It always seemed a fine idea to me to build a showboat with just one big flat open deck on it, and to keep a play going continuously. The boat wouldn't be moored, but would drift up and down the river on the tide, and the audience would sit along both banks. They could catch whatever part of the plot happened to unfold as the boat floated past, and then they'd have to wait until the tide ran back again to catch another snatch of it, if they still happened to be sitting there. To fill in the gaps they'd have to use their imaginations, or ask more attentive neighbors, or hear the word passed along from upriver or downriver. Most times they wouldn't understand what was going on at all, or they'd think they knew, when actually they didn't. Lots of times they'd be able to see the actors, but not hear them. I needn't explain that that's how much of life works. . ."
This edition presents the complete text of John Barth's first novel, including those passages deleted in previous editions and "the original and correct ending to the story," which was changed as a condition of the book's first publication.
Written in 1955 when the author was twenty-four, The Floating Opera makes it clear that Barth was always peculiarly Barth. This novel is part of the same cloth that made The End of the Road, The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy.
In other words, it is irresistible!