The Floating Opera, by John Barth
Title: The Floating Opera
Author: John Barth
Original publication date: 1956
Number of pages: 252
Todd Andrews, a middle-aged lawyer living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, narrates this loosely structured account of his life and its most important occurrences. Though Andrews frequently jumps backwards and forwards through time, he always comes back to a momentous June day in 1937 - the day in which he decided to commit suicide. Yet, as he discloses to the reader in the first chapter, he ultimately chose not to kill himself. Therefore, the novel is framed as an investigation of what made Todd Andrews desire to commit suicide in the first place, and then what made him change his mind.
I normally don’t gravitate to this type of book, so when I received it as my second
books1001 assignment, I was a bit apprehensive. Luckily, this novel is extremely readable, and Todd Andrews, while not actually likeable, is at least an interesting protagonist; I found myself quite willing to indulge his digressions and little games with the reader. The other characters in the novel are uniformly unpleasant, yet Andrews observes them with a good-natured cynicism that is often extremely funny. I also liked the vivid descriptions of the Maryland setting, as well as the frequent digressions on legal issues. However, the ultimate pointlessness of Andrews’ narrative - a pointlessness which he would absolutely concede - kept me from truly enjoying the book as a whole. It wasn’t a bad read by any means, but I doubt I’ll read anything else by John Barth.
Does this book belong on the list of 1001 books to read before you die? The jury's still out, but it did present me with a lot of food for thought, so I suppose you could do worse!