The Floating Opera And The End Of The Road

Features of The Floating Opera and The End of the Road

From the author of National Book Awardnominated Lost in the Funhouse John Barths first two novels are both existential comedies featuring strange consuming love triangles and the destructive effects of an overactive intellect on the emotionsBarth ran riot over literary rules and conventions even as he displayed with meticulous discipline mastery of and respect for them The New York TimesThe 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 friends wife Todd awakens in the morning determined to commit suicide having concluded that nothing in life has intrinsic valuebut then spends the day methodically reasoning his way into disregarding that fact and remaining a part of the floating opera of lifeIn 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 doctors 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