In a comment to my last post, Dan clarifies what you're holding in your hand when you're holding a copy of The Sot-Weed Factor. His comment makes a lot of sense to me, and reaffirms my interest in reading the book as being much more straight-forward than I initially felt I was supposed to be reading it. Which bad reading probably stems from a Chicago Tribune blurb printed on the back of the book. (Would, though, that Neal Stephenson had not "been able to take himself seriously" when he wrote The Baroque Cycle.) (Do I seem bitter?) (I seem bitter, don't I.) (I'll let it go.) (Eventually.)
The whole satire question/connection isn't completely unwarranted. The book is based on (according to Barth's introduction) "what is generally held to be the very first American satire: a fierce and funny narrative poem whose title page...reads The Sot-Weed Factor: Or, a Voyage to MARYLAND, A SATYR." That the book gets its situation and themes in large part from a historical satire might lend a satirical edge to the book, but then, it's like, well, what is this book today satirizing? Were the "innocent being" and "heathenesque fallen culture" archetypes more pressing or present back in 1960? Am I, despite my intents, continuing to over-think the matter? Or completely missing the point? How much innocence can I possibly reveal in one post? Dunno.
(Motherfucking Neal Stephenson.)
Either way, it seems safe to read the book as a historical novel, playful in tone yet weighty in its subject matter, whatever the relevance to modern (or contemporary) society. Nice that I've figured out how I feel like reading the book now that I'm almost (fates willing) halfway through.
Of course, I'm just continuing to raise more questions than I answer. The question of modernism's been bugging me for a while now. Like, if this book is a (loose) tribute to historical novels, what's it doing that the source material would not or could not have done, if anything? Can I even answer those questions, being so ill-versed on the subject of historical novels as I am? Do the answers, as I suspect, lie in Eben's odd tendency to occasionally freak out like he's about to start violently acting out on his repressed sexual urges? Is the presence of "evil," psychologically contradictory intent in an supposedly innocent man the key to unlocking the secret connections between Sot-Weed and Barth's first two (seemingly so separate) novels? Would I ask and answer more questions if I wasn't so lazy and so far away from what few notes I've scrawled on the back of an envelope that I've left on my desk at home? Good question.
Maybe I'll start answering some of these questions, now that I'm done with the first season of Heroes, and I can go back to reading at least ten pages a night most nights of the week, but we'll see. If you need further proof of the fact that my mental engine isn't exactly knocking on all three cylinders when I'm reading this book, it's taken me nearly 330 pages to catch the fact that, oh hey, the relationship between Ebenezer and his servant Bertrand is totally Don Quixote. Duh, whatevs. Hilarious, allusive or not.
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