“It always seemed a fine idea to me to build a showboat with just one big flat open deck on it, and to keep a play going continuously. The boat wouldn’t be moored, but would drift up and own the river on the tie, and the audience would sit along both banks. They could catch whatever part of the plot happened to unfold as the boat floated past, and then they’d have to wait until the tide ran back again to catch another snatch of it, if they still happened to be sitting there. To fill in the gaps they’d have to use their imaginations, or ask more attentive neighbors, or hear the word passed along from upriver or downriver. Most times they would’t understand what was going on at all, or they’d think they knew, when actually hey didn’t. Lots of times they’d be able to see the actor, but not hear them. I needn’t explain that that’s how much of life works[…]” (pg 7)
“NOW! Presenting the complete text with ‘the original and correct ending to the story,'” the cover of my paperback copy of The Floating Opera reads. For the weeks between when I purchased this book and when I began reading it, I did not know what that meant. I assumed it was “shtick”-Incorrectly, as it turns out.
Apparently, Barth, only 24 years old when he sought to publish The Floating Opera in 1955, consented to making certain revisions suggested by his publisher. In prefatory note to the revised edition which I read, Barth tells me critics lampooned some of aspects of the original publication which were in fact artifacts of the publisher’s revisions. This revised addition, thus, truly is the complete text with “the original and correct ending to the story.” I.e. not “shtick”…At least as far as I can tell with zero addition investigation.
So interesting-A director’s cut.
First allow me to describe the book’s cover art:
It is cartoonish drawing of three individuals seated, or otherwise positioned on what looks to be a wooden, or carpeted or thatched, floor-A woman between two men. The woman has her arms around the men at her sides; She is fondling the head of the man to her right. He, in turn, is fondling her breast. In her left hand, which is wrapped the other fellow, who is smoking a pipe: A wine or martini glass. On the floor beside the man to her left, an ice bucket with a wine bottle. On either side of the trio, two additional glasses, one upended.
OK, noted. So, shall I expect some sexual depravity? That’s about all I knew about this book before beginning to read it on my flight from Oslo to Reykjavik.
Before reading even one page I noticed my particular “edition” of the book included more than just Barth’s revisions to the original published edition-It also included the annotations of a previous reader. This person is a heavy annotator (like myself) and a heavy underliner (unlike myself), who I would have to contend with in some fashion.
Needless to say, this person annoyed me. I found myself annotating responses to their annotations, sometimes in acts of pure snark. I can recall one instance without even referencing the text: Reacting to the narrator’s indirect mention he was born in 1900, the previous reader scribbled “A 20th C man.”
I probably rolled my eyes upon reading-Surely such a detail is trivial.
Right?
Or is it?, it forced me to wonder.
I became aware of a theme that discomfited me: How would these annotations influence my reading? In general, I read for themes. I think in themes. For better or for worse, I don’t think so much about details as I do about what the details, “the parts,” assembled, convey as a whole. So, for example, what real significance could the fact that the narrator was born in 1900 mean? Maybe some event occurred which influenced culture in some broad way? But then the significance would be the event, not the year, no?
Anyway, you can see how this extraneous voice disturbed me, more or less.
But now, let’s get to the author’s text: The narrator tells us, quite early on (Page 1), he is new to writing, and many people (including friends) consider him eccentric and unpredictable.
“If other people (my friend Harrison Mack, for instance, or his wife Jane) think I’m eccentric and unpredictable, it is because my actions and opinions are inconsistent with their principles, if they have any; I assure you they’re quite consistent with mine. And although my principles might change now and then-this book, remember, concerns one such change-nevertheless I always have them aplenty, more than I can handily use, and they usually hang all in a piece, so that my life is never less logical simply for its being unorthodox.” Later, “You’ll not appreciate it [a position he held] before I’ve laid open the problem; and lay it open I shall, a piece at a time, after my fashion-which, remember, is not unsystematic, but simply coherent in terms of my own, perhaps unorthodox, system” (pg 15).
This passage also indicates-You may agree with me-The narrator may be too smart for his own good. Or rather, too smart for our own good.
Sort of a sociopath vibe?
Can we trust him? Strikes me as a guy who has a compelling explanation for everything. A preternatural self-consciousness. A plotter. For the last 16 years, we are told on page 5, the narrator has been engaged in this text in some capacity. He is working on an “Inquiry,” he tells us. “I’m thorough,” he tells us. An understatement.
Some questions I soon had:
What sort of person observes: “It seems to me that any arrangement of things at all is an order. If you agree, it follows that my room was as orderly as can be, even though the order was an unusual one?” (pg 9)
What sort of person recommends breaking habits as a habit? (pg 8)
An unusual person, certainly, but unusual in what way?
At the point I starting on this line of inquiry it was still early in the book. I’ll not dwell too much more. I’ll exercise some patience, see how things bear out. Or try to. After all, similar things could be said of Harrison Mack and his wife Jane, who, with the narrator (whose name is Todd) comprise the three figures in the cover art. If The Floating Opera were a braid, then one of interwoven strands would be the story of the equilateral love triangle (pg 18) which forms between these three. Harrison and his wife have well rehearsed arguments for why they should feel perfectly comfortable with extramarital affairs-Which they often feel compelled to reiterate, as if to reinforce.
Paraphrasing Harrison, page 30-31: We’re not stupid enough to be affected by things like jealousy or conventions. You can have sexual relations apart from love…. It’s like playing tennis. Just for the fun and exercise. Some guys would get jealous if their wife played tennis with another man, or danced with him…. The thing is, don’t make too much of it [Harrison tells Todd]. It gets all out of proportion…. Are any of us different [now, after the affair,] than we were?
As Harrison blathers, Todd seems completely unaffected-No indication he needs these reassurances. Yet, “don’t feel obligated,” Harrison keeps telling him. Or telling himself?
I wondered: Are Todd’s explanations to us similarly self-serving? Is he not narrating to “us,” the readers? Is this a diary or journal of sorts? Is this an Inquiry? If Harrison had written an Extramarital Affair Manifesto, would this text I am reading be analogous?
Of Harrison, Todd says, “Harrison’s intelligence, while somewhat disoriented and not really keen, was capable of convincing both of them that most social conventions are arbitrary. Yet I knew Harrison well enough to know that his emotions were often at variance with his intelligence.” (pg 32).
How does such statement reflect back on Todd, the narrator, I wondered? Is he not so steely and self-assured as he seems?
Furthermore, how does such a statement reflect back on anyone? So many of our anxieties derive from our inability to unscramble mixed signals from our intellect and feelings. Negotiating these “voices”-“Integrating the ego/supergo and id”-Is not an unusual phenomenon. We all do it, each a little bit differently, some more consciously than others.
How do you make sense of life? It would be easier to think of life as “a series of consecutive days” than something as grandiose as “an individual’s impression on the universe.” If not “easier,” then less consequential and intimidating, less like a commitment to something special or important.
Is it a perspective like that which has Todd living one day at a time? Consider the routine in which Todd begins each day-Writing a check for one day of rent at a time (pg 47):
“I pay my buck-fifty every morning-should I ever forget!-that I’m renting another day from eternity, remitting the interest on borrowed time, leasing the bed on the chance I may live to sleep on it once more, for at least the beginning of another night. It helped me maintain a correct perspective, reminds me that long-range plans, even short-range plans, have, for me at least, no value” (pg 49). “So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life (pg 50).
Many similar…Let’s call them…”soliloquies” are scattered within the book. I quite enjoyed them-They are refreshing-But over time they wore on my ability to empathize with the narrator. He has an answer, and explanation, for everything, doesn’t he?
And he flaunts it.
To be clear: He flaunts his intellect. Then, furthermore, he positions himself “above it all” by negating whatever he has just flaunted. Imagine his philosophy represented as a figure balanced on a tightrope strung between egocentrism and zen. The wind blows, as wind does, and sometimes figure leans one way, then another. A lengthy promotion of his perspective precede a shrug-An abrupt shift to an indifferent perspective. “But doesn’t really matter anyway, does it.”
He is a know-it-all who doesn’t really care whether he is right or wrong. How could anyone find such a personality empathetic? It is alienating in 2 distinct ways (he knows it all, doesn’t care about alternative perspectives; he doesn’t even care about his own perspective.)
But let me revise my previous statement: How could anyone find such a personality empathetic. What I meant, I suppose, is that he is such an unpleasant personality. Who would want to be around such a person? So superior, so indifferent.
But it’s actually quite easy to empathize with the perspective-If you give it some thought. Consider this quotation, taken out of context so as to make it more general: “The only explanation I can imagine is that out of any situation I can usually interpret a number of possible significances, often conflicting, sometimes contradictory” (pg 139). Not an easy sentence to read, so let me paraphrase: There are so many ways to make meaning of thing, some incongruent with one another.
Take is little further and then: How do you make sense of all this?
Of life. The meaning of it. It’s an unsettling question when you stop and think about it, and even more unsettling when you try to verbalize it-When you try to answer the question aloud, to write a response, to type one. The question is sublime. I’ll reiterate: It would be easier to think of life as “a series of consecutive days” than something as grandiose as “an individual’s impression on the universe.”
Certain events complement this abstract discussion of “why” Todd acts such and such way, has such and such attitudes toward life (and death): Todd’s father committed suicide (when Todd was, say, 20 years old)-Purely, it seems, because he did not want to face the debt he accrued prior to the stock market crash. Todd also had a horrific war experience, which he relates brilliantly (pg 59). While terrified, he killed a man who was equally terrified-Aware that the same (terrified) man could have killed him, Todd (who, remember, was terrified). Todd also has heart condition which, theoretically, could take his life at any time. Death is not a abstract for Todd as it is for most individuals.
(You might be thinking: The Great Depression, The World Wars, maybe it’s not so irrelevant that Todd is a “20th C man.” Well, let me reiterate: Would it be any different were he born in 1899, 1900, 1901, 1902, and so on? And would the date 1899 evoke such an annotation as “20th C man”?)
Is it any wonder Todd, in a deranged Eureka moment, thinks to himself “Nothing has intrinsic value” (pg 165). If he could lose his life any day, what is the meaning of having <just> “one more day”? I can complete these few mundane tasks, which may mean nothing to me tomorrow, because I may die.
Then later, is it any wonder he continues: “The reasons for which people attribute value to things are always ultimately irrational. There is, therefore, no ultimate reason for valuing anything” (pg 218)?
Then later…”Living is action. There’s no final reason for action. There’s no final reason for living” (pg 223)?
He contemplates suicide. He plans on it. It takes him until the end of the this book which he narrates to realize there is a logical complement to the statement “There’s no final reason for living.”
There’s no final reason for living…Or for suicide (245).
(My genius annotator scribbled the note “More logically consistent.” Genius.)
Not the most uplifting note for our narrator to end on, but maybe, if we are optimists, we can hope that it represents a nice promise for Todd. In realizing there is no logical reason for suicide, there is a promise of a chance to escape the doom-like presence he feels in cyclone in which he has been spiraling downward. There is a promise of a chance to experience some joy for joy’s sake.
I did not elaborate much on the specifics of Todd’s story-Just on the tone of his character. Recall, “If The Floating Opera were a braid,” I would have only told you about one of its strands. (And if The Floating Opera were a floating opera, you would haven’t have seen several interesting acts.)
Among many closing thoughts, I think…There is no “recipe” for a good life, whatever that is, but I think it is fair to say Todd’s recipe calls for too much intellect, or too little emotion. Too much thought; too little action, too much reaction. If the former were sugar and the latter were flour, this would mean more than the difference between muffins and scones.