I noticed that my
RIP John Barth sank without trace. I found the full text of
The Sotweed Factor here, free of charge. It's in a fixed-pitch font and has a lot of begats before you reach the text but it's well worth a look. Here are the first couple of paragraphs as a horse's doover:
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.
As poet, this Ebenezer was not better nor worse than his fellows, none
of whom left behind him anything nobler than his own posterity; but four
things marked him off from them. The first was his appearance: pale-haired
and pale-eyed, raw-boned and gaunt-cheeked, he stood— nay, angled— nine-
teen hands high. His clothes were good stuff well tailored, but they hung on
his frame like luffed sails on long spars. Heron of a man, lean-limbed and
long-billed, he walked and sat with loose-jointed poise; his every stance
was angular surprise, his each gesture half flail. Moreover there was a
discomposure about his face, as though his features got on ill together:
heron's beak, wolf-hound's forehead, pointed chin, lantern jaw, wash-blue
eyes, and bony blond brows had minds of their own, went their own ways,
and took up odd stances. They moved each independent of the rest and
fell into new configurations, which often as not had no relation to what one
took as his mood of the moment. And these configurations were shortlived,
for like restless mallards the features of his face no sooner were settled than
ha! they'd be flushed, and hi! how they'd flutter, every man for himself,
and no man could say what lay behind them.
Barth was quite simply brilliant and it'd be a shame to miss his work.
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