- Hardcover: 768 pages
- Publisher: Atlantic Books (4 Mar 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1903809509
- ISBN-13: 978-1903809501
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 548,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished novel, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the chaotic odyssey of the hapless, ungainly Ebeneezer Cooke. Cooke is sent to the new world to oversee his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, he is captured by pirates and Indians; loses his father's estate to roguish impostors; falls in love with a former prostitute;is nearly robbed of his virginity, which he is (almost)determined to protect; and meets a gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities. The Sot-Weed Factor is a hilarious, bawdy tribute to all the most insidious human vices with lasting relevance for readers of all times.
From the Back Cover
In this boisterous satire on the historical novel, the hapless, naive Ebeneezer Cooke is sent from England to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business. But instead of the cultivated Eden he has been led to expect, he finds the Maryland plantation to be a barbarous and pestilential place where the Indians stink of bear grease, the colonials are drunkards and the women are sluttish. With a dazzling display of invention and unfailing wit, John Barth takes us on a wildly chaotic journey of innocence and experience through an eighteenth century that never was.
“One thing about Mr Barth's gargantuan novel can be cleared up right away. A sot-weed factor is, in eighteenth-century America, the manager of a tobacco plantation. The reader is advised to cling to this solid fact, because nothing else in Mr Barth's monstrous tome is what it appears to be, not only on the surface but also several layers below. A most magnificent, tongue-in-cheek, totally scandalous romp, reeking with vice, blasphemy and every kind of scurrility known to man.”
SUNDAY TIMES
“'The Sot-Weed Factor' is that rare literary creation – a genuine serious comedy. Ebeneezer Cooke, in this boisterous historical farce, emerges as one of the most diverting heroes to roam the world since Candide.”
TIME
“Brilliant… as it were, a lost novel by Defoe or Smollett which recreates with a remarkable air of verisimilitude a whole lost world. Exceedingly enjoyable.”
NEW STATESTMAN
“A mightily-hewn boulder of a novel among the smoother pebbles of contemporary fiction. A tour de force.”
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First Sentence
IN THE LAST YEARS of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to be the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
IN THE LAST YEARS of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to be the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ebenezer Cooke is one of the most moving and endearing characters I've ever come across. The picaresque tale of his hapless adventures will have you laughing out loud at times, and deeply sympathizing with his troubles at the same time. Barth's language is superb too: of course it's not really how people spoke in those days, but it feels ever so right.
Thick as it may be, you'll wish this novel had twice as many pages to enjoy!
Thick as it may be, you'll wish this novel had twice as many pages to enjoy!
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
"The Sot-Weed Factor" is originally a satirical poem, written by a certain Ebenezer Cooke, and is among the earliest pieces of literature to come out of the newly settled America. John Barth has borrowed the name of both author and work, and has sculptured a beautiful work, a grand tale about small and greater men. The characters are diverse, and the striking technique of Mr Barth makes them all come alive. The plotline is too complicated to explain in full, but still easy to follow, and the passages about an earlier journey around Chesapeake bay are hilarious, written in an English only a scholar could contrive (Mr Barth is a professor of English). And for all of those who like good, old-fashioned storytelling from which you may actually learn something, the tale of Ebenezer's (I know him so well that I only use his first name) awowed innocence, with the disastrous results it has for himself and others, gives an opportunity to ponder this aspect of human existenc.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a wonderful (adult) book, I believe that a copy should be given to every American so they can truly understand their own history (tongue in cheek!)
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Masterful; a timeless classic
Over the first three months of 1955, American author John Barth wrote the first part of an intended trilogy of works -- his 'nihilistic comedy', "The Floating Opera". Read more
Published 17 months ago by Steve Benner
Brilliant!!
Laugh out loud funny at the beginning (embarrassing on the beach)this is a rollicking bawdy adventure with so many twists and turns. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Brighterbuyer
So Weed Factor
Quick and efficient delivery. Wonderful value .Delightful book which am re-reading after 40 years.
Published on 9 Dec 2009 by G. M. Donald
Sot Weed Factor
Book received promptly and in good shape, decent price, but I was disappointed that it was a former Library copy paperback with special cover added (therefore not a real hardback):... Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2009 by Nial J. Brannigan
Please pass the fags
Without contradiction a masterpiece, rank Barth along with Willie S & Charlie D from England. Mind you its the only book of his I've read. You laugh out loud alot with this one.
Published on 18 Sep 2003 by "michaelcasey"
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