The Neverending Story IV: The Sot-Weed Factor

All other questions I've asked about The Sot-Weed Factor aside, if The Sot-Weed Factor is about anything, it's about story, and the telling of stories. Much, if not most, of the "action" of the story of this novel takes place off stage, either buried in history or somewhere else in the world, and is related to Eben, and the reader, through stories told by other people, either verbally, or in written form.

There's some great little metafictional moments along the way, such as this quote from Harvey Russecks, a "buck-skinned, thin-grinned, begrizzled old hermit of a fur-trapper":

"No pleasure pleasures me as doth a well-spun tale, be't sad or merry, shallow or deep! If the subject's privy business, or unpleasant, who cares a fig? The road to Heaven's beset with thistles, and methinks there's many a cow-pat on't. As for length, fie, fie!" He raised a horny finger. "A bad tale's long though it want but an eyeblink for the telling, and a good tale short though it take from St. Swithin's to Michaelmas to have done with't. Ha! And the plot is tangled, d'ye say? Is't more knotful or bewildered than the skein o' life, that a good tale tangles the better to unsnarl? Nay, out with your story, now, and yours as well, sir, and shame on the both o' ye thou'rt not commenced already! Spin and tangle till the Dog-star sets i' the Bay; a tale well wrought is the gossip o' the gods, that see the heart and point o' life on earth; the web o' the world; the Warp and the Woof...I'Christ, I do love a story, sirs!"

Of course, if Eben's story is also about anything else, it's about the battle 'twixt good and evil, a battle that takes place on the field of one's actions and one's intentions. It's a battle Mary Mungummory ("The Traveling Whore o' Dorset") neatly and succinctly sees being won by the forces of chaos:

"Methinks 'tis an itch for all we lose as proper citizens--something in us pines for the black and lawless Pit."

Which is a perfectly fascinating and fascinatingly appropriate quote when read in the context of Eben's own occasional tendency to desire "lawless" entrance into the "lawless Pit." Wink wink, nudge nudge.