101 Books, Number 89

Favorite Books from Throughout My Life

89. The Sot-Weed Factor, 1960, by John Barth (1930–)

Here is my Dy-er Guarantee:

A single sentence and you’ll see

This writer’s gifts, his artistry.

The Sot-Weed Factor—sentence one*:

A twisting, long one (so much fun)—

You’ll be so glad that you’ve begun

This hefty book (oh, yes, it’s long—

But you won’t notice: Like a song

You love you’ll love this—I’m not wrong!).

It twists and turns and entertains

And stuffs such wonder in your brains

That you’ll ignore all reading pains.

I’ve read his books—yes, all of them.

Admired them all—up to the brim.

Have grieved to see his output dim.

*and here it is!

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 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.