Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative

Coming Soon!!! (Or End Time, or The New Show) is a joyous post-modern romp, a witty, intelligent mash of ideas hovering around the central conceit of a showboat, an author, and another author. The plot is difficult to explain. John Barth - the author - wrote, as his first book, The Floating Opera, a novel that was loosely about The Original Floating Opera, a showboat on the Chesapeake. Johns Hopkins Johnson is an aspiring young author, and for his master's writing thesis, he wishes to create a sequel to The Floating Opera, a sequel that involves Johns writing his version of the sequel, and John Barth - the fictional character - writing another at the same time, in a competition. John Barth (A) reads this thesis submission and is intrigued, deciding that he would like to write the same novel, in a competition as well. So. We have the real author writing a story where the author 'John Barth' is writing a sequel to his previous novel while a young wannabe author attempts it as well, and while this is happening, a young wannabe author is writing a sequel to John Barth's novel while a character of John Barth is doing the same. Confusing. But it isn't, really. Barth manages to handle this story-within-a-story gimmick quite well, and in fact he does it in a few other ways on top of that. At the beginning of the real, physical novel, we are assuming that we are reading the Novel Emeritus' - the real John Barth - version, but by the end of the novel, there have been enough scattered hints to suggest that maybe Johns Hopkins Johnson won the challenge, and we are actually reading his novel. Maybe it is both? The question is never conclusively answered, and couldn't be, really, as the answer would lie in the universe outside the novel. Post-modern plot aside, Barth absolutely revels in playing with the English language. He capitalises words to add emphasis, combines words, rambles on, inserts commentary about his own personal life, et ceteras, abbreviates and just has fun: 'Detour now, is it, O Opter of the Options, Clicker of the Clicker, Mastress of the Might Mouse? Detour it is, then, even as Mlle Sherry Singer directed back there in (my) Chap. 1, 'Commencement' - Where last we saw your Novelist Aspirant & Apprentice narrator hip-hopping south and east and south again on wings of desire,...' and so on and so on. There are puns: On the The Original Floating Opera II, there is a character, the Phantom. Phantom of the Opera. Get it? Hilarious. Well, it is, in the narrative structure that Barth has created. He throws in the the elements for a joke, then, several paragraphs later, puts it all together. If you can catch it before he does, you win, if not, you get to giggle at his cleverness. The plot largely focuses on The Original Floating Opera II, with expositionary detours of what the Novelist Emeritus (Barth) is doing over the five years of the story, and then the Novelist Aspirant (Hopkins) gets a turn, introducing us to his love, Sherry, his parents, his ideas and dreams, and of course, the showboat. They both write the same chapters, a '1995.1' and a '1995.2', but there are little 'off-story' sections as well, including a Cast of Several, which explains all of the characters and their roles. 47 pages into the novel. The novel can be a difficult read. Barth is very, very clever, and he knows enough of the English language and grammatical structure that he can mix it up and mess it about with ease. And he does. If rambling, largely irrelevant plots coupled with trickery for trickery's sake and a penchant for look-at-me cleverness is not your idea of a rip-roaring novelistic experience, then pass by the pastiche of witticisms. If it is, then settle down and enjoy the work of a master at the top of his game.

I hate to do this, but I'm reviewing this book without having read all of it yet. Does this make me seem pretentious and rather smart-allecky? Yes. But I just had to write a response to the previous review. I wholeheartedly understand how someone who reads books merely for story's sake would not enjoy this book; there's not much of a story. But to read Barth's later works for simply this reason is wherein the fallacy lies. You see, Barth is the master (as far as I'm concerned) of literary gymnastics and narrative techniques. If you enjoy literature qua literature, then you'll like this. The first twenty pages alone (which the first reviewer claimed were boring) blew my mind for the sheer technique. Surely this book is not for everyone, it's actually for a very small number of people, but please don't criticize it for not being "standard" like, say, Larry McMurty. And if you just read a book for the storyline with no appreciation for the literary merits, why not just waste less time and go see a movie? (Oh yeah, I almost forgot how much you like to claim that reading is more rewarding than watching movies.)

As always, I'm blown away and inspired when I read Barth. If I can ever do anything half as well as he can write, I'll be a success! I was sad at the end to think that this might be his final offering (although you can spend a lifetime re-reading his work), but now that the collection 10 Nights and a Night is out I'm over the heartbreak. I think my next readerly Voyage will be back to The End of the Road and On With the Story (again)!

The first 20 pages of Coming Soon was all I could tolerate. The author's use of obscure slang and 'clever' devices such as the 'book-within-a-book,' notes from the fictitious author and memos from his fictitious mentor combined to make a work of fiction so rambling and intensely annoying that I could not force myself to continue. If you love a good story, as I do, then you will probably find youself wondering, as I did, if the author will ever get to one. Coming Soon is a work likely to make many readers wonder "Why am I not a published author?" I recommend that you read ANYTHING by Larry McMurtry instead.

Barth's novel provides a comic retort to the call for new sincerity in literature, the attempt to sidetrack postmodern considerations is repostured back into the pomo mainstream.