- Hardcover: 416 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Oct 23 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618131655
- ISBN-13: 978-0618131655
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.1 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 717 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Technical ingenuity is a hallmark of Barth's work, and his latest novel relies almost entirely upon it. A M”bius strip of a narrative, the novel begins with the discovery by Ditsy, a transgendered boat captain, of a computer disk containing a novel, Coming Soon!!, by Johns "Hop" Johnson, an aspiring novelist whose specific aspiration is to use this novel, with its hypertextual accoutrements, to get into the Johns Hopkins creative writing program. Hop's novel concerns a Novelist Emeritus, John Barth, who is retiring from Johns Hopkins and writing a last "narrative," Coming Soon, which involves both a writing student named Hop Johnson and Ditsy's discovery of the Coming Soon floating computer disk. In both narratives, Hop is a member of the Arkangel Players on a showboat plying the Chesapeake Bay under the moniker The Original Floating Opera II, referring to Barth's first novel. Furthermore, the crew/cast is investigating the origin of Edna Ferber's Showboat, which was inspired by an earlier Chesapeake showboat, the James Adams Floating Theater. Unfortunately, the display of metafictional conceits that subtends the novel does not make up for clunky writing and uninspired characters. Hop Johnson, the Novelist Aspirant, seems to write, think and talk just like the Novelist Emeritus, which subtracts from the internecine authorial quarrel that is this novel's main interest. There is much gap filling (for example, we are given condensed reports of the news, from 1995 to 1999), and for large stretches the enterprise is seemingly propelled mainly by the need to fill pages with words. Readers are advised to turn to the original Floating Opera and leave this massy addendum to Barth's academic acolytes.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
"This tale of novelists Aspirant and 'Emeritus,' of Unoriginal Floating Operas, and of the possible End et cetera" marks the return after ten years of one of the grand old men of postmodern fiction a status that, charmingly, he does not seem to take too seriously. Indeed, one of the central functions of the novel is to spoof his own career and the experimental writers who have followed in his wake. The two central characters are an older novelist just retired from an academic career who is setting out to write his last novel but is suffering a bit from writer's block and a young M.F.A. student who believes that the future lies in electronic fiction that allows the reader to decide how the story should proceed by choosing from a variety of scenarios. The latter also happens to work on a showboat on the Chesapeake, The Original Floating Opera II, which becomes in a reprise of the fictional mentor's first novel, Barth's own first novel, and the Edna Ferber classic Show Boat the focus of their independent yet intertwined efforts to create a novel for the new millennium. In the end, however, it is not the story that matters but the perspective on the nature of the literary profession in this modern age and on the career of one of its most eminent members. Unfortunately, despite its charm, wit, and erudition, it is not likely to attract a mass audience. Highly recommended for collections of serious fiction in both public and academic libraries.
- David. W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
- David. W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow!,
By
This review is from: Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative (Paperback)
As always, I'm blown away and inspired when I read Barth. If I can ever do anything half as well as he can write, I'll be a success! I was sad at the end to think that this might be his final offering (although you can spend a lifetime re-reading his work), but now that the collection 10 Nights and a Night is out I'm over the heartbreak. I think my next readerly Voyage will be back to The End of the Road and On With the Story (again)!
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good ol' Barth,
By "doreilly10" (Santa Rosa, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative (Paperback)
I wonder about that "post-modern" label. Why can't stories be left to stand or fall on their own merits? I'll leave the categorization to the academics. I'm just a guy who likes a good read, and this is one. Mr. Barth returns to showboats several decades after "The Floating Opera," with a little reluctance, apparently. Sometimes it seems the story is nothing more than a series of devices stacked upon each other like a house of cards, but Mr. Barth manages to keep the flimsy structure from collapsing under its own weight. Much like "The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor," Mr. Barth starts off unevenly (perhaps because of the strange stage he has to set), then really takes off with a great middle. The story ultimately meanders (like a tidewater creek?) and then just sort of peters out. Still, this is a very worthwhile read, if only for the world-weariness of our humble narrator.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still Barth, after all these years...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Coming Soon!!! (Hardcover)
...which is all you need to know.The man has nearly half a century of literary history, all of it jam-packed with the most mind-bending experimental and metafictional gymnastics the literary community has ever had the delight to call its own. Consider that for a moment: half a century. That piece of knowledge in hand, you know right off you can disregard out of hand the one-star review of any reader calling this yet "another bloated and tiresome (Barth) book." If one is well read in the Barth canon, and has found it wanting, same one could easily have given Barth a pass thousands of pages ago. Barth has never pretended to be anything less than egomaniacal and pretentious. And for that, I thank him, for he stands out magnificently from the body of even the postmodern pantheon. Some people simply don't like, don't appreciate, or don't "get" Barth. It should take only one book to figure out if you're among them. Then, what of the book's own merits? I tell you this: this is by no means the place to begin your journey into Barth if you've not read him before. In fact, to read this anyplace among them but last (assuming you're made of stout engouh stuff to make it through them all) would be tragic. It's a 300 page, self-indulgent, metafictional going-away party. It's not merely writing about writing; it's writing about Barth's strange and fascinating literary journey. And what a journey it's been. Ere you pass the threshold, be prepared to accept the following: this book will be pretentious; it will be literary for literary's sake; it will drip with self-reference; it will be twisted, perverse, convoluted, and obscure. If you're familiar enough with Barth to have made it through Floating Opera, Sot-Weed, Giles, Funhouse, et al, and to have loved the whole mad lot, then you're certain to enjoy this bizarre farewell from the master manipulator. If you haven't, don't bother.
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