This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece. This modern classic is a
hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who
is "one of the most diverting . . . to roam the world since Candide."
"A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly inventive (and, OK, yes, long-winded)
this satire of the eighteenth-century picaresque novel--think Fielding's
Tom Jones or Sterne's Tristram Shandy--is also an earnest picture of
the pitfalls awaiting innocence as it makes its unsteady way in the
world. It's the late seventeenth century and Ebenezer Cooke is a poet,
dutiful son and determined virgin who travels from England to Maryland
to take possession of his father's tobacco (or "sot weed") plantation.
He is also eventually given to believe that he has been commissioned by
the third Lord Baltimore to write an epic poem, The Marylandiad. But
things are not always what they seem. Actually, things are almost never
what they seem. Not since Candide has a steadfast soul witnessed so
many strange scenes or faced so many perils. Pirates, Indians, shrewd
prostitutes, armed insurrectionists--Cooke endures them all, plus
assaults on his virginity from both women and men. Barth's language is
impossibly rich, a wickedly funny take on old English rhetoric and
American self-appraisals. For good measure he throws in stories within
stories, including the funniest retelling of the Pocahontas
tale--revealed to us in the 'secret' journals of Capt. John Smith--that
anyone has ever dared to tell." --Time
