The Sot-Weed Factor

By: John Barth

Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau

Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished novel, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the chaotic odyssey of the hapless, ungainly Ebeneezer Cooke. Cooke is sent to the New World to oversee his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem. On his mission, he is captured by pirates and Indians; loses his father's estate to roguish impostors; falls in love with a former prostitute; is nearly robbed of his virginity, which he is (almost) determined to protect; and meets a gallery of treacherous characters who continually switch identities.

The Sot-Weed Factor is a hilarious, bawdy tribute to all the most insidious human vices with lasting relevance for listeners of all times.

©1960 John Barth (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

If you're a lit major, you'll love it

I didn't really read the description of this book before I downloaded it. I missed the word parody. Or farce. Or spoof. I saw it was historical fiction and it was a long book. And it was all of those - parody, history and long. If it had not been for the narrator, Pariseau, I would have given up and added it to the short pile of 2 other books in my lifetime that I simply could not complete reading. But Pariseau made it worth the time - what a phenomenal range that man has!! The story itself is convoluted and has so many short stories within its bounds that I wonder if the book's whole purpose wasn't to supply a connect the dots effect to all those stories. Colorful characters, all. The main character, an English poet, is a fool in the realm of life, but he does get under your skin. I found myself rhyming a lot during the time I was listening to this book! But would I recommend the book -
nay, I say.

Perhaps less Postmodern than merely Contrived

"Life is a shameless playwright," the protagonist Ebenezer Cooke is fond of saying in reference to the bewildering array of miraculous coincidences and mistaken identities that hold the plot of The Sot-Weed Factor together. But the winking irony in this – that it is in fact not life at all, but John Barth who is the "shameless" creator here – is perhaps not enough to excuse the novel's over-reliance on such contrivances. And though, in a shorter work, the fact that these devices are intended to parody the 18th century picaresque novel may make them more amusing than infuriating, in a work of such staggering proportions they simply become tedious. The joke, in short, gets old.

Fans of Sterne or Fielding may find Barth's pastiche of such writers compelling, but I came to this book as a fan of postmodern fiction, and came away disappointed. The narrative is almost relentlessly linear and chronological, always follows Ebenezer, and relies on characters telling stories to fill in past events. No postmodern puzzle-box fragmentation here. And yet it doesn't possess the greatest strengths of a traditional narrative, either: it fails to create any really sympathetic characters, or to evoke an emotional response in the reader – at least not this reader. (It is fun, for a while, to watch the buffoonish protagonist get himself into trouble, but even this pleasure wanes in a 40+ hour work.)

Nevertheless, this version of the book does possess one great merit, without which I probably wouldn't have finished it (though I love long novels). That is, the voice of Kevin Pariseau, who does a fantastic job giving unique voices and appropriate accents to an expansive cast of characters.

Weighty but worthy read

Erudite, witty, literary, and long. But most definitely worth the time if these words don't scare you away.

Witty and surprising.

While it starts a little slow, and has a tendency to run on a bit (rather like Don Quixote), there is more than enough plot and humor to make the whole thing undeniably worthwhile.

Entertaining high-brow adventure yarn

Very entertaining high-brow adventure yarn. Imagine a mash-up of Barry Lyndon, Black Adder, The 40 Year-old Virgin, and Pirates of the Caribbean, delivered in erudite 17th Century English by audiobook narrator Kevin Pariseau.