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The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor
A National Book Award winner offers his most inventive novel to date. Journalist Simon Behler finds himself in the house of Sinbad the Sailor after being washed ashore during a sea-going adventure. Over the course of six evenings, the two take turns recounting their voyages in a brilliantly entertaining weave of stories within stories. "Filled with white nights and golden days . . . lyrical, fresh and sprightly."--Washington Post.
573 pages, Paperback
First published February 11, 1990
21 people are currently reading
974 people want to read
About the author
John Barth
76 books794 followersJohn Barth briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, received a bachelor of arts in 1951 and composed
The Shirt of Nessus
, a thesis for a Magister Artium in 1952.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, distractions, stories, and lists, such as two prostitutes, who exchange lengthy insulting terms. The disillusioned fictional Ebenezer Cooke, repeatedly described as an innocent "poet and virgin" like Candide, sets out a heroic epic and ends up a biting satire.
He moved in 1965 to State University of New York at Buffalo. He visited as professor at Boston University in 1972. He served as professor from 1973 at Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1995.
The conceit of the university as universe based Giles Goat-Boy , a next speculative fiction of Barth comparable size. A half-goat discovers his humanity as a savior in a story, presented as a computer tape, given to Barth, who denies his work. In the course, Giles carries out all the tasks that Joseph Campbell prescribed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Barth meanwhile in the book kept a list of the tasks, taped to his wall.
The even more metafictional Lost in the Funhouse , the short story collection, and Chimera , the novella collection, than their two predecessors foreground the process and present achievements, such as seven nested quotations. In Letters , Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.
Barth meanwhile also pondered and discussed the theoretical problems of fiction, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion," first printed in the Atlantic in 1967, widely considered a statement of "the death of the novel" (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1979) a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment," to clarify the point.
Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterisation and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling.
He served as a professor at Penn State University from 1953. Barth began his career with short The Floating Opera , which deals with suicide, and The End of the Road on controversial topic of abortion. Barth later remarked that these straightforward tales "didn't know they were novels."
The life of Ebenezer Cooke, an actual poet, based a next eight-hundred-page mock epic of the colonization of Maryland of Barth. Northrop Frye called an anatomy, a large, loosely structured work with digressions, distractions, stories, and lists, such as two prostitutes, who exchange lengthy insulting terms. The disillusioned fictional Ebenezer Cooke, repeatedly described as an innocent "poet and virgin" like Candide, sets out a heroic epic and ends up a biting satire.
He moved in 1965 to State University of New York at Buffalo. He visited as professor at Boston University in 1972. He served as professor from 1973 at Johns Hopkins University. He retired in 1995.
The conceit of the university as universe based Giles Goat-Boy , a next speculative fiction of Barth comparable size. A half-goat discovers his humanity as a savior in a story, presented as a computer tape, given to Barth, who denies his work. In the course, Giles carries out all the tasks that Joseph Campbell prescribed in The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Barth meanwhile in the book kept a list of the tasks, taped to his wall.
The even more metafictional Lost in the Funhouse , the short story collection, and Chimera , the novella collection, than their two predecessors foreground the process and present achievements, such as seven nested quotations. In Letters , Barth and the characters of his first six books interact.
Barth meanwhile also pondered and discussed the theoretical problems of fiction, most notably in an essay, "The Literature of Exhaustion," first printed in the Atlantic in 1967, widely considered a statement of "the death of the novel" (compare with Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"). Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing, and pointing to possible directions from there. He later (1979) a follow-up essay, "The Literature of Replenishment," to clarify the point.
Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterisation and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling.
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October 15, 2025
Along with The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor belongs among my favourite John Barth’s novels – it is incredibly flowery, juicy and lacey.
In fact The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is two journeys – the first through the world of fairytale dreamworld and the second through the protagonist’s bleak past.
If you are capable of finding your way out of the world of cruel reality into the land of exotic reverie your living will become fabulous and adventurous and worthwhile.
Resail those voyages: my first, to that floating island that was a monstrous fish; my second, to the valley of serpents and diamonds, the island of rocs and rhinoceri; my third, to the mountain of apes and cannibal giants; my fourth, most dreadful of all, to God knows where, where I myself was obliged to deal death or die, and I did not die; my fifth, no easier, to where I was pissed on head to foot by the Old Man of the Sea…
In fact The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is two journeys – the first through the world of fairytale dreamworld and the second through the protagonist’s bleak past.
Though life’s tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.
If you are capable of finding your way out of the world of cruel reality into the land of exotic reverie your living will become fabulous and adventurous and worthwhile.
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May 21, 2017At abebooks one can purchase the dust jacket for Women and Men for $US10.* Yesterday I purchased The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor for $US6.50 because my reading copy a) had no dust jacket and b) had a broken spine. With that bit of housekeeping taken care of I have now replaced one signed 1st/1st with a better signed 1st/1st. $US3.25 for a dust jacket? Sure.
This little Barthian novel is seemingly oft over-looked, overshadowed as it is by the Golden Age of Barthian Fiction--The Sot-Weed Facter and Giles Goat Boy. Also, Barth had been thoroughly rejected by the general reading public by this point in his career, having published in 1979 the "unreadable" LETTERS. On the upside, he had apparently performed a publisher's book tour with this one, so signed 1st/1st are about $US6.50 per dozen.
It's a bit of a shame that this Last Voyage should be so quickly passed by. It is Barth's ode to his eternal muse, Ms Scheherazade, she of the stories told at the end of a blade, her life rescued by story-telling night upon night for 1001 of them and three children. Please read this retold tale of Sinbad, or Somebody, or whatever you want to call him. It can only be a mountain of fun.
_____________
* This statement should now be considered in the past tense, seeing as how Friend Nick has swept it up.
This little Barthian novel is seemingly oft over-looked, overshadowed as it is by the Golden Age of Barthian Fiction--The Sot-Weed Facter and Giles Goat Boy. Also, Barth had been thoroughly rejected by the general reading public by this point in his career, having published in 1979 the "unreadable" LETTERS. On the upside, he had apparently performed a publisher's book tour with this one, so signed 1st/1st are about $US6.50 per dozen.
It's a bit of a shame that this Last Voyage should be so quickly passed by. It is Barth's ode to his eternal muse, Ms Scheherazade, she of the stories told at the end of a blade, her life rescued by story-telling night upon night for 1001 of them and three children. Please read this retold tale of Sinbad, or Somebody, or whatever you want to call him. It can only be a mountain of fun.
_____________
* This statement should now be considered in the past tense, seeing as how Friend Nick has swept it up.
January 10, 2013
I was originally interested in Barth by reading about The Sot-Weed Factor, and a glance at the descriptions of some of his other books merely deepened this curiosity. This, then, just happened to be the first one I came across, and mighty pleased I was - having, as I do, a fondness for the 1001 Nights, and Sindbad . This book promised much, but I may have misheard exactly what.
At the beginning (or slightly after it, if we want to get technical) is the frame, which is a rather delightful one. Scheherazade has outlived everyone and Death (the character, naturally) refuses to take her, ignoring her pleas as he gradually dispatches all those about her. Until, that is, she remembers her natural skill (which I assume we need not mention here) and strikes a bargain to end her life rather than save it.
Then on to the rest, which consists of a slow unveiling of this 'Somebody' in an exchange of stories with the legendary Sindbad. Somebody's voyages start in our age with warm and progressively more libidinous accounts of his life. Each voyage is interspersed with interludes (decreasing in number in relation to the rising voyages) in which we are teased with mysteries and plots, are reassured that we will soon hear about Somebody's reason for being in the time of Sindbad, and are even retold Sindbad's own voyages.
The first 4 voyages, set in the (comparatively) present day were not hugely to my liking. Though they were well enough done, I was left itching for the next set of interludes and was satisfied when, after voyage 5, all was situated in Sindbad's time. The main joy from the first 4 voyages comes from imagining them told to Sindbad's dinner guests, and Barth takes advantage of this as soon as the tales are over, with one guest declaring his loyalty to the realism of Rocs and sleeping islands, rather than the absurdity of airplanes and watches.
The Sindbad stories are the jewels here, as perfect as they already were: Sindbad learning the lessons of his voyages in a much more mechanistic way than traditionally. From observing the patterns early he learns that, after setting out on a voyage, it is imperative that a storm washes them off-course to find a paradisaical island where all of Sindbad's companions may die.
The problem I had was that the twisting and turning of the narrative is too often signposted relentlessly beforehand. The mysteries are emphasised until you have solved them, after which - he seems to decide - there is no need to hurry in getting to their unveiling, upon which, you find out, you were right. Possibly this is a clever inversion of Scheherazade's endless ability to have you dying to know the conclusions to her stories, just as he has inverted her reasons for telling.
It's fairly good fun though, and a very smooth and fast read. Get it if you really like Sindbad or Barth. I love Sindbad, but I am yet to love Barth.
At the beginning (or slightly after it, if we want to get technical) is the frame, which is a rather delightful one. Scheherazade has outlived everyone and Death (the character, naturally) refuses to take her, ignoring her pleas as he gradually dispatches all those about her. Until, that is, she remembers her natural skill (which I assume we need not mention here) and strikes a bargain to end her life rather than save it.
Then on to the rest, which consists of a slow unveiling of this 'Somebody' in an exchange of stories with the legendary Sindbad. Somebody's voyages start in our age with warm and progressively more libidinous accounts of his life. Each voyage is interspersed with interludes (decreasing in number in relation to the rising voyages) in which we are teased with mysteries and plots, are reassured that we will soon hear about Somebody's reason for being in the time of Sindbad, and are even retold Sindbad's own voyages.
The first 4 voyages, set in the (comparatively) present day were not hugely to my liking. Though they were well enough done, I was left itching for the next set of interludes and was satisfied when, after voyage 5, all was situated in Sindbad's time. The main joy from the first 4 voyages comes from imagining them told to Sindbad's dinner guests, and Barth takes advantage of this as soon as the tales are over, with one guest declaring his loyalty to the realism of Rocs and sleeping islands, rather than the absurdity of airplanes and watches.
The Sindbad stories are the jewels here, as perfect as they already were: Sindbad learning the lessons of his voyages in a much more mechanistic way than traditionally. From observing the patterns early he learns that, after setting out on a voyage, it is imperative that a storm washes them off-course to find a paradisaical island where all of Sindbad's companions may die.
The problem I had was that the twisting and turning of the narrative is too often signposted relentlessly beforehand. The mysteries are emphasised until you have solved them, after which - he seems to decide - there is no need to hurry in getting to their unveiling, upon which, you find out, you were right. Possibly this is a clever inversion of Scheherazade's endless ability to have you dying to know the conclusions to her stories, just as he has inverted her reasons for telling.
It's fairly good fun though, and a very smooth and fast read. Get it if you really like Sindbad or Barth. I love Sindbad, but I am yet to love Barth.
May 12, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in August 1999.
John Barth's writing, though always worth reading, suffers from several faults. The most important of these is perhaps the way that everything else he has written pales into insignificance next to Giles Goat-Boy. In that novel, he handles his themes more tellingly, with a background more extraordinary, than in the other novels he has written, and by making it partly an allegorical account of the Cold War increases its interest.
A second problem in Barth's writing is in his obsession with his major themes. These are to do with the nature of fiction, the various people involved in narrative art (author, reader, characters), and the relationships between them and the rest of the world's literature. Thus, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor takes the form of a narrative within a narrative within a narrative within a narrative, the third story about the subject of the outermost story. (The character named Behler tells a story about Scheherezade telling a story about Behler telling a story about himself). This is inspired by the structure of the Arabian Nights, which frequently uses the device of characters in one story telling other tales.
The Arabian Nights form one obvious part of the relationship of this novel with world literature in general. The innermost story juxtaposes the tale of Sindbad the Sailor's seven voyages with the life of the American author William Behler, who has found himself stranded in the world of the Nights after nearly drowning in a sailing accident. Each section has a series of interludes which tell the story of the developing relationship between Behler and Sindbad's household, and contain the tales told by Sindbad of his own voyages. Each is then followed by Behler's retelling of part of his story - and thus the narrator of the outside level is also a narrator of the innermost stories. The structure is further complicated by resonances between Behler's life and aspects of Barth's, making the whole thing a commentary on the storytelling process and the way in which the author is usually both part of and separated from the stories s/he tells, particularly in a first person narrative.
The use, and retelling, of the stories of Sindbad from the Arabian Nights is similar to the adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in Giles Goat-Boy. Like Barth's earlier reworking, Sindbad's tales are twisted, used to produce moral lessons distinctly reminiscent of Tristram Shandy (Sterne is clearly an influence on Barth) and show the main characters of the tales in a far less positive light than in the original.
Another important theme in Barth's writing is the character of the innocent. He is of course the stock in trade of the satirist, enabling the writer to point out the absurdity of human affairs with ease. Behler is not quite such an innocent as the central character of Giles Goat-Boy or The Sot-Weed Factor, yet he has a naivete shared with both of them.
The third problem in Barth's writing is its lengthiness. The complex structure of The Last Voyage needs a considerable length to work itself out; to tell Behler's story straight would probably require many fewer pages than the five hundred and seventy actually filled with twenty-eight interludes, two introductory sections, and a conclusion. In Giles Goat-Boy the length does not feel like a problem, yet here, and even in The Sot-Weed Factor, it is tempting to begin skipping pages.
It is really, then, the grandeur of the design and the fact that it does not succeed as well as the author's best work that stand against this novel. It contains entertaining ideas, such as the description of a dancer speaking by her art rather than words (another facet of Barth's fascination with the mechanics of narration), Sindbad's duplicity, and Behler's revelation to his then wife of his infidelities not through his guilty appearance but by writing a series of best selling articles about it.
John Barth's writing, though always worth reading, suffers from several faults. The most important of these is perhaps the way that everything else he has written pales into insignificance next to Giles Goat-Boy. In that novel, he handles his themes more tellingly, with a background more extraordinary, than in the other novels he has written, and by making it partly an allegorical account of the Cold War increases its interest.
A second problem in Barth's writing is in his obsession with his major themes. These are to do with the nature of fiction, the various people involved in narrative art (author, reader, characters), and the relationships between them and the rest of the world's literature. Thus, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor takes the form of a narrative within a narrative within a narrative within a narrative, the third story about the subject of the outermost story. (The character named Behler tells a story about Scheherezade telling a story about Behler telling a story about himself). This is inspired by the structure of the Arabian Nights, which frequently uses the device of characters in one story telling other tales.
The Arabian Nights form one obvious part of the relationship of this novel with world literature in general. The innermost story juxtaposes the tale of Sindbad the Sailor's seven voyages with the life of the American author William Behler, who has found himself stranded in the world of the Nights after nearly drowning in a sailing accident. Each section has a series of interludes which tell the story of the developing relationship between Behler and Sindbad's household, and contain the tales told by Sindbad of his own voyages. Each is then followed by Behler's retelling of part of his story - and thus the narrator of the outside level is also a narrator of the innermost stories. The structure is further complicated by resonances between Behler's life and aspects of Barth's, making the whole thing a commentary on the storytelling process and the way in which the author is usually both part of and separated from the stories s/he tells, particularly in a first person narrative.
The use, and retelling, of the stories of Sindbad from the Arabian Nights is similar to the adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in Giles Goat-Boy. Like Barth's earlier reworking, Sindbad's tales are twisted, used to produce moral lessons distinctly reminiscent of Tristram Shandy (Sterne is clearly an influence on Barth) and show the main characters of the tales in a far less positive light than in the original.
Another important theme in Barth's writing is the character of the innocent. He is of course the stock in trade of the satirist, enabling the writer to point out the absurdity of human affairs with ease. Behler is not quite such an innocent as the central character of Giles Goat-Boy or The Sot-Weed Factor, yet he has a naivete shared with both of them.
The third problem in Barth's writing is its lengthiness. The complex structure of The Last Voyage needs a considerable length to work itself out; to tell Behler's story straight would probably require many fewer pages than the five hundred and seventy actually filled with twenty-eight interludes, two introductory sections, and a conclusion. In Giles Goat-Boy the length does not feel like a problem, yet here, and even in The Sot-Weed Factor, it is tempting to begin skipping pages.
It is really, then, the grandeur of the design and the fact that it does not succeed as well as the author's best work that stand against this novel. It contains entertaining ideas, such as the description of a dancer speaking by her art rather than words (another facet of Barth's fascination with the mechanics of narration), Sindbad's duplicity, and Behler's revelation to his then wife of his infidelities not through his guilty appearance but by writing a series of best selling articles about it.
June 28, 2016
Slow going at times, but the structure is dazzling.
A storytelling contest at a table for ten.
Seven voyages of Sinbad vs. Seven voyages of Simon Baylor. (Bey-el-Loor?)
But which tales are fantasy? The ones that come from 11th c Baghdad? Or the 20th c Eastern Shore ones? Or both? But Last Voyage is not a puzzle so much as a game. All tales have frames. Any tale is fantastic, to the right listener.
Baudy, rauchy, funny, tiresome, good old John Barth. Here, more than thirty years after The Sot Weed Factor, he is still in excellent form.
A storytelling contest at a table for ten.
Seven voyages of Sinbad vs. Seven voyages of Simon Baylor. (Bey-el-Loor?)
But which tales are fantasy? The ones that come from 11th c Baghdad? Or the 20th c Eastern Shore ones? Or both? But Last Voyage is not a puzzle so much as a game. All tales have frames. Any tale is fantastic, to the right listener.
Baudy, rauchy, funny, tiresome, good old John Barth. Here, more than thirty years after The Sot Weed Factor, he is still in excellent form.
February 7, 2009
Strange that I read 3 or 4 of Barth's bks & then? Waited 30 or more yrs to read another one? He taught (or teaches? - don't even know if he's still alive?) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore but I never tried to meet him?! Even though I lived in Baltimore City for 18 yrs?!
At 1st, this bk was almost a sure 5-star. It was almost uncanny reading about an environment I didn't exactly grow up in but close enuf. What really cinched it was learning that "Chinese Cigar" trees (aka just "Cigar" trees) that were a common feature of my MD days landscape are called Catalpa trees. Thanks for telling me! There's even one near where I live in Pittsburgh & everytime I walk past it I wonder at my ignorance: How cd I not know this tree's name?! Now I do.
This bk is clever - a fantastic & wonderful multi-levelled narrative. A weave of stories about stories w/in stories, etc.. GREAT! A thoroughly enjoyable read, a thoroughly engrossing tale. But I give it a 4-star. As usual, these ratings are close to useless. Why not just leave the star-ratings undone? I suppose I was disappointed by the ending. I suppose Barth had no intention of having the ending be as romantic as the rest of the bk.. - still the (undisclosed here) ending just seems like a cheap shot.. after all that narrative mastery I expected more - a coup de grace of genius! No such luck.
STILL, it's way 'better' than any novel I'll ever write! If only b/c it's highly unlikely that I'll ever write one!
At 1st, this bk was almost a sure 5-star. It was almost uncanny reading about an environment I didn't exactly grow up in but close enuf. What really cinched it was learning that "Chinese Cigar" trees (aka just "Cigar" trees) that were a common feature of my MD days landscape are called Catalpa trees. Thanks for telling me! There's even one near where I live in Pittsburgh & everytime I walk past it I wonder at my ignorance: How cd I not know this tree's name?! Now I do.
This bk is clever - a fantastic & wonderful multi-levelled narrative. A weave of stories about stories w/in stories, etc.. GREAT! A thoroughly enjoyable read, a thoroughly engrossing tale. But I give it a 4-star. As usual, these ratings are close to useless. Why not just leave the star-ratings undone? I suppose I was disappointed by the ending. I suppose Barth had no intention of having the ending be as romantic as the rest of the bk.. - still the (undisclosed here) ending just seems like a cheap shot.. after all that narrative mastery I expected more - a coup de grace of genius! No such luck.
STILL, it's way 'better' than any novel I'll ever write! If only b/c it's highly unlikely that I'll ever write one!
November 29, 2020
I was enjoying my trip through barth, his first two novels are really good and I loved The Sot-Weed Factor. Then I came to Lost in the Funhouse which apart from a few stories put me off reading him for just over two years. A couple weeks back i re-read some of the stories in funhouse and then bought this, a slightly later Barth novel but much in the same vain as a Sot-Weed Factor, a big, free-wheeling postmodern novel that covers all of barth's themes and ideas from metafiction, stories within stories within stories, The Literature of Exhaustion as Barth calls it. This is one of the most fun and charming novels I've read this year and I'm glad too be back reading barth .
March 1, 2013
This one was actually pretty straightforward for a Barth novel. The complexity is there, but it doesn't make for such troublesome reading as usual. Interesting to have Sinbad tales interwoven with the story of a Maryland man born shortly before WWII, and then have those stories further intertwine until meeting. Definitely an interesting one.
April 23, 2021
“...only a certain part of him was lost at sea and the rest come back to Baghdad...”
September 1, 2018
In some ways you can say that Barths later novels always tell the same story - middle aged writer man goes sailing with somewhat younger wife, various more or less metaphorical disasters happen, a lot of sex and a lot of storytelling goes on. More importantly, though, they are also always about telling the same story again, what the act of re-telling means and does to the story and the re-teller.
After having summed up his first seven books in the sprawling, mad Letters (an epic meditation on the concept of re-enactment - and beside this a towering masterpiece equal with the best of Thomas Pynchon or Joseph McElroy) the later novels mostly deal in condensation and refinement. (Ok, The Tidewater Tales is pretty long, a bit too long actually, but next to nothing happen in it.) The themes are still present, but the delivery a bit more relaxed and playful, like Barth knows that the reader knows that he knows we've heard this one before, but still want to hear it again, and therefore play around a bit with conventions, delivery and formal features.
And actually, this is not analysis, but more or less what happens in this book upfront: Sinbard The Sailor (straight out of The Arabian Nights) re-tells his voyages to an audience having heard the stories lot of times before, altered with Barths middle aged writer/sailor alter-ego telling the story of his life, and how he came to be present at Sinbard table, telling these stories.
Of course, nothing is simple in a novel by Barth. Besides a mild Oulipian love of lists and complicated narrative and compositional systems, not to mention frame-stories within frame-stories, we get re-tellings from different points of view, mutually excluding versions of central happenings, and meditations on narrative structure woven into the stories themselves. Like in Letters (consisting entirely of, yes, letters): almost nothing happens in real time (besides an impressive amount of sex) - all is hearsay, re-tellings and dialogs.
So, this is to say, that while this book is nowhere his best (of the post-Letters novels I'd say Sabbatical: A Romance takes the price) it is still Barth on top of his game. The writing is never less than exquisite, and if you enjoy Barths very specific flavor, including his peculiar mix of melancholy and farce, this is more than worthy of reading.
After having summed up his first seven books in the sprawling, mad Letters (an epic meditation on the concept of re-enactment - and beside this a towering masterpiece equal with the best of Thomas Pynchon or Joseph McElroy) the later novels mostly deal in condensation and refinement. (Ok, The Tidewater Tales is pretty long, a bit too long actually, but next to nothing happen in it.) The themes are still present, but the delivery a bit more relaxed and playful, like Barth knows that the reader knows that he knows we've heard this one before, but still want to hear it again, and therefore play around a bit with conventions, delivery and formal features.
And actually, this is not analysis, but more or less what happens in this book upfront: Sinbard The Sailor (straight out of The Arabian Nights) re-tells his voyages to an audience having heard the stories lot of times before, altered with Barths middle aged writer/sailor alter-ego telling the story of his life, and how he came to be present at Sinbard table, telling these stories.
Of course, nothing is simple in a novel by Barth. Besides a mild Oulipian love of lists and complicated narrative and compositional systems, not to mention frame-stories within frame-stories, we get re-tellings from different points of view, mutually excluding versions of central happenings, and meditations on narrative structure woven into the stories themselves. Like in Letters (consisting entirely of, yes, letters): almost nothing happens in real time (besides an impressive amount of sex) - all is hearsay, re-tellings and dialogs.
So, this is to say, that while this book is nowhere his best (of the post-Letters novels I'd say Sabbatical: A Romance takes the price) it is still Barth on top of his game. The writing is never less than exquisite, and if you enjoy Barths very specific flavor, including his peculiar mix of melancholy and farce, this is more than worthy of reading.
September 16, 2009
While I suffered a severe disaffection during the middle portion of this book, the sheer genius of the thing didn't strike me until about 2/3 of the way through, once the final character and plot twists finally began to become clear. Truly an awesome work, Barth's own _Thousand Nights and a Night_. The ending is especially moving. My favorite Barth work is still _The Tidewater Tales_ but this is very good stuff indeed.
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October 1, 2020I don’t know quite what to say about this novel beyond the fact that it didn’t really work for me. I had difficulty engaging the Arabian Nights portion—which is about 75% of the book—and though I have read and understood critical evaluations of its narrative method and thematic goals, I am still left unsatisfied.
August 24, 2017
A rip-roaring witty dance of storytelling. Intertwining the stories of Sindbad the Sailor with John Beylor (one of his many names) who lands himself smack bang in the midst of Sindbad's home/travels and sundry shenanigans, Beylor must attempt to find his way back to 20th Century America. A tour de force story within story structure made me marvel at Barth's ingenuity and kept me entertained through a lengthy piece of storytelling itself!
March 4, 2018
It initially seemed as if The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is going to establish itself as cotton candy reading, which is to say, not very substantial in any meaningful way but enjoyable in the short-term, even as the sweetness and lightness gets to be overwhelming at times. During an initial stretch of what was mostly table-setting in each of the two dominant narrative strands of the book, Barth shows off all the tricks at his disposal, extending the traditional role of the establishing chapters by not merely setting down basics of time and place and characters but cramming his passages with an accretion of details that can almost overwhelm the reader, a forest designed to be overlooked in favor of its trees; endlessly rhyming minor and major details from one narrative with those from the other; establishing the rigorous narrative structure to which he will hew; making clever references to the text’s content and also to the text itself—as in its very formatting. It’s mostly very clever, almost too much so.
And then he settles down a bit into what is the highlight of the book, “Somebody’s Second Voyage,” and while the ornamentation of the story is dialed down some, the story also strengthens enough to a degree that it could outshine even the flashiest writing of someone of Barth’s prodigious talent. The action takes place in Somebody’s early adolescence, and the writing of the children is some of the best I’ve ever read; they don’t feel overly precocious, and are often woefully unaware of certain realities of the world (often in very accurate combination with a feeling of worldliness and near-omniscience). Supporting characters here are well-crafted, given the sense of having lives beyond their roles in Somebody’s story. The sentiments are pitch-perfect, and are accompanied by perfectly-balanced humor, fatalism, and recontextualization of earlier events.
The book, it must be said, is downhill from here—in fairness, it would be hard for it not to be—but the hill is at least of a fairly gentle grade. There are long enjoyable stretches throughout, though the writing and plotting can both be a bit inconsistent, with good sections running into draggy ones. Sindbad’s accounts of his voyaging and the other business conducted in the interludes gain sufficient interest after the initial establishment of baseline details. “Somebody’s Third Voyage,” with a now-adult Somebody, is a lot less compelling than his second—quite dull really—and Barth’s deployment of characters who skew treacherously close to caricature starts in earnest here, with characters defined merely by tics and doomed to do little beyond repeat them.
One starts to realize, too, that for all the intricacy of Barth’s interwoven structural construction—it’s largely unnecessary. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is really no more sophisticated than a two-stranded narrative—not a bad thing, though Barth seems to think it is, as if its relative simplicity would undermine his reputation. So he splits Somebody’s story into voyages, and each segment of the Sindbad-centered material into a collection of “interludes;” only there is little about Somebody’s exploits to be properly characterized as voyages, and the numbering of the interludes seems to occur almost at arbitrary, breaks not coming at apparent breakpoints but inserted as if only to ensure that each segment is separated into the appropriate number of sub-segments.
One really comes to regret even more the early over-concentration of literary showiness in the latter part of this book, as Barth seems to tire of spicing his language up much later on, convinced, I guess, that the interest in his plot and its two strands and how they will coincide is enough to sustain interest. Which is somewhat true, though I often wasn’t quite sure whether I genuinely cared about the story of, say, Somebody and Yasmīn, because they were interesting in their own rights, and likewise their story together, or whether I “cared” only because they were the central characters given me to care about. After a certain point, the book consists almost entirely of echoes and expansions of previously-referenced material, which isn’t nearly as much of a drawback as it sounds like. Some of the mirroring between details and between characters is quite pleasing, and Barth manages to inject vitality by allowing new voices to take part in the storytelling, by cleverly varying previously “established” patterns, by teasingly over-overcomplicating matters like a shaggy-dog storyteller, by inserting some welcome jokiness (see especially “Four Interludes”), and occasionally even just delivering a bit of narrative development that is genuinely quite touching.
But the changed approach is quite evident, with Barth having shifted his focus from writing with a distinct charm and flair to leaning more heavily on the resolution of loose ends and open questions. Happily, he pleasingly allows some of the biggest mysteries to never be solved and some of the largest ambiguities to never be clarified; his sometimes uncertain handling of the material had me nervous at times, especially once he seemed to have settled into a mode of tidying up, but he avoided any serious mis-steps, including allowing parallels to ever too neatly map or for the junction of the narratives to too cleanly scan in any one particular way, in support of any one particular interpretation. (The deliberate construction of the book to defy “solvability” by rhyming elements rather than having them match up and cohere point-for-point is one of its great joys, and actually more impressive than the book’s overall structure which seems at first to promise to be its crowning achievement.) The twist of Sindbad’s ending—his desires disguised as punishment—and of Somebody’s—punishment disguised as his desires—is a particularly effective example of conclusion without oversimplification.
The most enjoyable concerns, and arguably the central ones, of The Last Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, are of stories and the language we use to tell them. I’ve touched on the way Barth gives voice, at times, to many of those peripheral characters fortunate enough to be fleshed out that much, and the way he focuses on the specific use of language. There are additionally pleasing touches about how each person constructs his own narrative with himself at the center, and half-joking/half-serious points made at length about a related propensity to construct a story about the other “characters” in one’s life, as if to determine their reasons for existing, and in the way that they do, at any given point. Barth’s attention in his prose, and sometimes even his narrator’s attention in his prose, to the punctuation and formatting in the way characters speak, and to usages of certain verb forms, for example, are some of the mot satisfying fleeting touches; unfortunately, this attention paid to the careful use of language fades at the same time as Barth’s own inventiveness with words does, but it was still nice throughout when the narrative would dip briefly into a digression about the merits of various methods of storytelling, as it was when he would introduce one of his original shortenings and coinages of slang, rarer as the book went on but perhaps increasingly pleasing due to their scarcity.
And then he settles down a bit into what is the highlight of the book, “Somebody’s Second Voyage,” and while the ornamentation of the story is dialed down some, the story also strengthens enough to a degree that it could outshine even the flashiest writing of someone of Barth’s prodigious talent. The action takes place in Somebody’s early adolescence, and the writing of the children is some of the best I’ve ever read; they don’t feel overly precocious, and are often woefully unaware of certain realities of the world (often in very accurate combination with a feeling of worldliness and near-omniscience). Supporting characters here are well-crafted, given the sense of having lives beyond their roles in Somebody’s story. The sentiments are pitch-perfect, and are accompanied by perfectly-balanced humor, fatalism, and recontextualization of earlier events.
The book, it must be said, is downhill from here—in fairness, it would be hard for it not to be—but the hill is at least of a fairly gentle grade. There are long enjoyable stretches throughout, though the writing and plotting can both be a bit inconsistent, with good sections running into draggy ones. Sindbad’s accounts of his voyaging and the other business conducted in the interludes gain sufficient interest after the initial establishment of baseline details. “Somebody’s Third Voyage,” with a now-adult Somebody, is a lot less compelling than his second—quite dull really—and Barth’s deployment of characters who skew treacherously close to caricature starts in earnest here, with characters defined merely by tics and doomed to do little beyond repeat them.
One starts to realize, too, that for all the intricacy of Barth’s interwoven structural construction—it’s largely unnecessary. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor is really no more sophisticated than a two-stranded narrative—not a bad thing, though Barth seems to think it is, as if its relative simplicity would undermine his reputation. So he splits Somebody’s story into voyages, and each segment of the Sindbad-centered material into a collection of “interludes;” only there is little about Somebody’s exploits to be properly characterized as voyages, and the numbering of the interludes seems to occur almost at arbitrary, breaks not coming at apparent breakpoints but inserted as if only to ensure that each segment is separated into the appropriate number of sub-segments.
One really comes to regret even more the early over-concentration of literary showiness in the latter part of this book, as Barth seems to tire of spicing his language up much later on, convinced, I guess, that the interest in his plot and its two strands and how they will coincide is enough to sustain interest. Which is somewhat true, though I often wasn’t quite sure whether I genuinely cared about the story of, say, Somebody and Yasmīn, because they were interesting in their own rights, and likewise their story together, or whether I “cared” only because they were the central characters given me to care about. After a certain point, the book consists almost entirely of echoes and expansions of previously-referenced material, which isn’t nearly as much of a drawback as it sounds like. Some of the mirroring between details and between characters is quite pleasing, and Barth manages to inject vitality by allowing new voices to take part in the storytelling, by cleverly varying previously “established” patterns, by teasingly over-overcomplicating matters like a shaggy-dog storyteller, by inserting some welcome jokiness (see especially “Four Interludes”), and occasionally even just delivering a bit of narrative development that is genuinely quite touching.
But the changed approach is quite evident, with Barth having shifted his focus from writing with a distinct charm and flair to leaning more heavily on the resolution of loose ends and open questions. Happily, he pleasingly allows some of the biggest mysteries to never be solved and some of the largest ambiguities to never be clarified; his sometimes uncertain handling of the material had me nervous at times, especially once he seemed to have settled into a mode of tidying up, but he avoided any serious mis-steps, including allowing parallels to ever too neatly map or for the junction of the narratives to too cleanly scan in any one particular way, in support of any one particular interpretation. (The deliberate construction of the book to defy “solvability” by rhyming elements rather than having them match up and cohere point-for-point is one of its great joys, and actually more impressive than the book’s overall structure which seems at first to promise to be its crowning achievement.) The twist of Sindbad’s ending—his desires disguised as punishment—and of Somebody’s—punishment disguised as his desires—is a particularly effective example of conclusion without oversimplification.
The most enjoyable concerns, and arguably the central ones, of The Last Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor, are of stories and the language we use to tell them. I’ve touched on the way Barth gives voice, at times, to many of those peripheral characters fortunate enough to be fleshed out that much, and the way he focuses on the specific use of language. There are additionally pleasing touches about how each person constructs his own narrative with himself at the center, and half-joking/half-serious points made at length about a related propensity to construct a story about the other “characters” in one’s life, as if to determine their reasons for existing, and in the way that they do, at any given point. Barth’s attention in his prose, and sometimes even his narrator’s attention in his prose, to the punctuation and formatting in the way characters speak, and to usages of certain verb forms, for example, are some of the mot satisfying fleeting touches; unfortunately, this attention paid to the careful use of language fades at the same time as Barth’s own inventiveness with words does, but it was still nice throughout when the narrative would dip briefly into a digression about the merits of various methods of storytelling, as it was when he would introduce one of his original shortenings and coinages of slang, rarer as the book went on but perhaps increasingly pleasing due to their scarcity.
August 17, 2017
Barth's novel appeared just as the last great era of books and things bookish was coming to an end. And nobody was more in tune with the 1980s and early 1990s postmodern obsession than John Barth. Hard to believe that such an era actually existed, where arguing over literature was a thing of some importance, where the direction of the novel seemed paramount. Now, those concerns have collapsed into the salons of the "good" and "superior." Used to be that even a mid range American city would have a reviewer to give space to fiction and literature. No more.
But as for The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, well, it just seems not to have survived over the past few decades as something to take seriously. And, frankly, many authors of that era (I can think of Kazuo Ishiguro, Jane Rogers, Julian Barnes, David Lodge--well, maybe not Ishiguro) seem to have fizzled, their work gimmicky, their preoccupations with hyper-fiction timeworn. Not a Graham Greene among the lot of them.
But back to Barth's novel. It just seems to miss the point. The intersection of myth and realism becomes a four way stop. And once your turn at the light pops up, it's difficult to engage the gears and get the engine started again. No, it's not a bad book. But it is indicative of its times. And today it seems a bit pretentious and vapid--like Jane Rogers and Julian Barnes.
But I must admit it was a fun time to be living and be interested in books. Because it all seemed to matter so much.
But as for The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, well, it just seems not to have survived over the past few decades as something to take seriously. And, frankly, many authors of that era (I can think of Kazuo Ishiguro, Jane Rogers, Julian Barnes, David Lodge--well, maybe not Ishiguro) seem to have fizzled, their work gimmicky, their preoccupations with hyper-fiction timeworn. Not a Graham Greene among the lot of them.
But back to Barth's novel. It just seems to miss the point. The intersection of myth and realism becomes a four way stop. And once your turn at the light pops up, it's difficult to engage the gears and get the engine started again. No, it's not a bad book. But it is indicative of its times. And today it seems a bit pretentious and vapid--like Jane Rogers and Julian Barnes.
But I must admit it was a fun time to be living and be interested in books. Because it all seemed to matter so much.
July 27, 2015
“The high ground of traditional realism, brothers, is where I stand! Give me familiar, substantial stuff: rocs and rhinoceri, ifrits and genies and flying carpets, such as we all drank in our mother’s milk and shall drink—Inshallah!—till our final swallow. Let no outlander imagine that such crazed fabrications as machines that mark the hour or roll themselves down the road will ever take the place of our homely Islamic realism, the very capital of narrative—from which, if I may say so, all interest is generated. … And may not the same be said for a story’s action? Speak to us from our everyday experience: shipwreck and sole survivorhood, the retrieval of diamonds by means of mutton-sides and giant eagles, the artful deployment of turbans for aerial transport, buzzard dispersal, shore-to-ship signaling, and suicide as necessary. Above all, sing the loss of fortunes and their fortuitous re-doubling: the very stuff of story!”
Sums it up.
The Last Voyage is filled with layers of irony and clever, tongue-in-cheek jokes. It’s definitely a showcase of narrative experimentation. I admired this book for its dizzying technical turns, but it never made the leap for me into anything more than a literary exercise, so I didn’t really relish it as much as others have.
February 9, 2012
This book was not an easy read. It had sooo many different factors going on that at times it felt like I was in 'uncharted' waters with no form of navigation.
I picked it up because I was intrigued about the concept of merging the infamous voyages of Sindbad the Sailor with a modern day variation. But honestly I just couldn't get into it.
Sindbad's stories are funny, witty and adventurous, he took your imagination someplace. Simon Baylor's stories were dull and I could not meld his life-stories with the predicament he was now in.
As for the characters, I really empathized for none of them.
The only constant was the sex. Everybody was having sex with each other. The protagonist came off as a horny old man (as well as a bit of a pedophile).
Two stars for the overall story but at least 3 for the author's attempts at creating a literary challenge.
I picked it up because I was intrigued about the concept of merging the infamous voyages of Sindbad the Sailor with a modern day variation. But honestly I just couldn't get into it.
Sindbad's stories are funny, witty and adventurous, he took your imagination someplace. Simon Baylor's stories were dull and I could not meld his life-stories with the predicament he was now in.
As for the characters, I really empathized for none of them.
The only constant was the sex. Everybody was having sex with each other. The protagonist came off as a horny old man (as well as a bit of a pedophile).
Two stars for the overall story but at least 3 for the author's attempts at creating a literary challenge.
March 12, 2016
At least twice as long as it needed to be, this is a book with a great premise and some masterful writing, diluted by tedious and often off-putting genre conventions.
The genres in question are folktale and aging-intellectual-has-one-last-youthful-lay. The latter isn't my favorite, even when well written, as it often is here. The over-the-top outdated folk style brings with it unsavory obsession with women's virginity, rape, and virility—none of this was as enjoyably silly to me as it is in Barth's excellent 'The Sot-Weed Factor'.
It's a book I want to steal ideas from, but it wasn't a ton of fun to read, and it's not easy to recommend.
The genres in question are folktale and aging-intellectual-has-one-last-youthful-lay. The latter isn't my favorite, even when well written, as it often is here. The over-the-top outdated folk style brings with it unsavory obsession with women's virginity, rape, and virility—none of this was as enjoyably silly to me as it is in Barth's excellent 'The Sot-Weed Factor'.
It's a book I want to steal ideas from, but it wasn't a ton of fun to read, and it's not easy to recommend.
March 15, 2009
You cannot think of the "campus novel" without thinking of Giles Goat-Boy or the historical epic without The Sot-weed Factor. Barth uses classical story and form to play with the notion of story telling. Here he uses the 1001 Arabian Nights and, in particular, the voyages of Sinbad to do just that. The novel's modern day reality story becomes myth as at the same time the mythic story becomes reality. While perhaps not as great a novel as the previous mentioned Giles or Sot-weed Factor, it is still an engaging read. But I recommend having read 1001 Nights before you tackle this one.
January 21, 2016
I began this book last year. I've always like the Sinbad stories, and this sounded like it might be fun. It's nothing like I expected, or that the title intimates. The story is tedious. Worse than that, for me, it is bogged down with uninteresting characters, and other things that really serve no purpose. I have slogged through the book for months, and finally, have given up halfway through.
October 7, 2019
To smart for me.
August 28, 2020
Back when I was in college (the mid-1970s), I read a number of John Barth's works: The Sot-Weed Factor, The Floating Opera, The End of the Road. Years later, I read Chimera. But for some reason I never had read his later works. A few weeks ago, someone on a mailing list I'm on mentioned The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, and decided to pull it off my to-be-read pile.
This is a marvelously complex but very readable and entertaining novel. It intertwines two narrative threads. One (at least for the first two-thirds or so of the novel) is the realistic story of Simon Behler (or Baylor, the pen name he uses for his nonfiction) as he grows up in eastern Maryland. It follows him as child, through his first teenage love affair, to his unhappy marriage, and his final attempt, with his new love, to sail on of Sinbad's voyages.
This story is intertwined with that of Behler, having somehow fallen through time, in the palace of Sindbad [the spelling Barth uses throughout] the Sailor, where they alternate telling of their respective voyages (Simon's first voyages being the realistic stories mentioned in the preceding paragraph). These sections are in a very different style, more ironic, often humorous (though at other times nasty), more self referential. Here Simon (often refered to here as Somebody the Still Stranded) falls in love with Sindbad's daughter, Jasmin.
The two sections come together when Simon, on his ocean voyage, dives into the sea to attempt to save his then love, only to find himself transported back in time.
The novel is full of post-modernist flourishes, clever bits, and amusing dialog, but is also exciting, engrossing, and at times moving. And unlike many post-modernist, complex novels, it moves along rather quickly.
Recommended. (I'd have given it 4.5 stars had Goodreads allowed.)
This is a marvelously complex but very readable and entertaining novel. It intertwines two narrative threads. One (at least for the first two-thirds or so of the novel) is the realistic story of Simon Behler (or Baylor, the pen name he uses for his nonfiction) as he grows up in eastern Maryland. It follows him as child, through his first teenage love affair, to his unhappy marriage, and his final attempt, with his new love, to sail on of Sinbad's voyages.
This story is intertwined with that of Behler, having somehow fallen through time, in the palace of Sindbad [the spelling Barth uses throughout] the Sailor, where they alternate telling of their respective voyages (Simon's first voyages being the realistic stories mentioned in the preceding paragraph). These sections are in a very different style, more ironic, often humorous (though at other times nasty), more self referential. Here Simon (often refered to here as Somebody the Still Stranded) falls in love with Sindbad's daughter, Jasmin.
The two sections come together when Simon, on his ocean voyage, dives into the sea to attempt to save his then love, only to find himself transported back in time.
The novel is full of post-modernist flourishes, clever bits, and amusing dialog, but is also exciting, engrossing, and at times moving. And unlike many post-modernist, complex novels, it moves along rather quickly.
Recommended. (I'd have given it 4.5 stars had Goodreads allowed.)
December 26, 2025
Despite being a (sort-of) time-travel adventure replete with mythical creatures and erotic escapades, this book was a mostly tiresome and bewildering slog to get through. It shouldn't have been as there were some really strong early chapters and the wordplay throughout is clever and inventive. The main problem perhaps is that the narrator himself is, despite the fantastic world of Arabian Nights he finds himself stranded in, hopelessly bland and ignorant of his own life-changing mistakes.
Characters and situations that are reflections of each other, as well as Russian dolls nests of stories make for a dazzling, mirror maze of a novel, but not necessarily an involving one. Or even one that the reader will take the effort to unravel. Plenty of authors write for their own enjoyment and hit something that strikes a chord with others. This time anyway, Barth just comes off as self-indulgent.
Characters and situations that are reflections of each other, as well as Russian dolls nests of stories make for a dazzling, mirror maze of a novel, but not necessarily an involving one. Or even one that the reader will take the effort to unravel. Plenty of authors write for their own enjoyment and hit something that strikes a chord with others. This time anyway, Barth just comes off as self-indulgent.
February 23, 2025
It’s been a long time since I read a book this long (almost 575 pages in the U.S. hardcover edition). I don’t often say this, but I felt it could have been about 200 pages shorter. I was so enthralled in the beginning, but the ending dragged, especially after I’d figured out some of the convoluted secrets the characters were keeping from each other. There’s nothing worse than a mystery that goes on long after you’ve figured out the killer, and on that level the book was a failure, at least for me. But this isn’t really a mystery, and the pleasures of the text are other ones— for me, chiefly the interplay between our narrator’s old life in mid-20th century America and his new life in medieval Baghdad. I really came to care for Simon Behler in all his associated time periods, even after I’d grown quite weary of the plot.
July 17, 2023
A boomer takes 500 or so single-spaced pages to die. I'm not qualified to say how much of this book is in poor taste, but I am qualified to say parts of it were entertaining if kind of drawn out. Like do you know as you get old you keep telling the same story again and again but each time something changes, something more slips out? By the second half of the book that's where we are. In the first half of the book, you mostly spend your time thinking "yes, being a young man is kind of gross I get it okay let's move on" and this is not my idea of a good time. I cannot tell you why I stuck it out. This is my reward for buying a secondhand book based largely on the cover. The adage was correct.
December 19, 2018
A dozen interrelated stories, nested within each other and often retold from a different POV; a host of narrators each claiming to be the center of the narrative and God’s favorite and each dispensing with minor characters (and if yer Gods favorite then the others are all minor) ruthlessly. Like a jazz improvisation, themes and phrases and stories repeated and recurring but all changed and twisted.
And the theory that, as yer life flashes before you just before you die, what you remember—if yer male and God’s favorite—is all the sex you had.
And the theory that, as yer life flashes before you just before you die, what you remember—if yer male and God’s favorite—is all the sex you had.
February 29, 2020
I find Barth incredibly irritating: he's definitely a genius, but he has the capacity for almost unfathomable levels of self-indulgence, and GOOD GOD do I hate how he writes about sex, which he does constantly. There were parts of this that took my breath away and parts where I was reading through gritted teeth, and ultimately, even though I wasn't wholly satisfied with the resolution (as it were), I found the ending very moving, which just irritated me more. In a sense I feel like this deserves five stars, but I REALLY can't leave it wholly unpunished for its myriad annoyances.
August 17, 2019
I am admittedly biased on this review, because I got to meet John Barth, hear him read from this work and discuss it with a small audience when he toured in support of its release.
I went to a local college with my father, who had Barth as a professor at Penn State for Freshman Composition.
As a result, I wanted and remember really liking this book, even though I wouldn't rank it in my top three of Barth's it is close.
I went to a local college with my father, who had Barth as a professor at Penn State for Freshman Composition.
As a result, I wanted and remember really liking this book, even though I wouldn't rank it in my top three of Barth's it is close.
September 13, 2017
I liked the layers of this book and found it worthwhile (it is rather long and dense) with one exception. I don't really understand why Yasmin loves Somebody the Sailor. They're rather different in age and I'm not sure why she would have anything to do with him after the events of voyage six. Somebody's six voyage that is, not Sindbad's.
September 26, 2017
The Voyages of an American travel books writer.
Magically send back to the times of the Arabian Nights. Falls in Love with daughter of Sindbad.
Clever but boring. A chapter of his personal past including childhood is always followed by present (in the fairy past) with some recount of a Sindbad voyage.
Magically send back to the times of the Arabian Nights. Falls in Love with daughter of Sindbad.
Clever but boring. A chapter of his personal past including childhood is always followed by present (in the fairy past) with some recount of a Sindbad voyage.
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