The Floating Opera and The End of the Road

Anchor, 1997. Paperback. Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. From the author of National Book Award-nominated Lost in the Funhouse â?¢ John Barth's first two novels are both existential comedies featuring stran ge, consuming love triangles and the destructive effects of an overactive i ntellect on the emotions. "[Barth] ran riot over literary rules and conventions, even as he displayed , with meticulous discipline, mastery of and respect for them." --The New York Times The relationship between these two darkly comic novels is evident not only in their ribald and philosophical subject matter but in their eccentric cha racters and bitterly humorous tone. The protagonist of The Floating Opera i s Todd Andrews, an orphaned war veteran who has been sleeping with his fri end's wife. Todd awakens in the morning determined to commit suicide, havin g concluded that nothing in life has intrinsic value--but then spends the d ay methodically reasoning his way into disregarding that fact and remaining a part of the floating opera of life.  In 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 doctor's 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 illustriou.