Tony Tanner
THE HOAX THAT JOKE BILKED
In a sense John Barth's fiction takes its point of departure
from Wittgenstein's proposition that "the world is all that is the case."
This sentence recurs in varying forms throughout his work and often
serves to pose a basic problem for his main characters who, in one way
or another, are fairly saturated with the author's own existentialist think–
ing.
If
the world simply is all that is the case, what clues does it provide
for significant action within it? On the other hand, several of his main
characters are unusually aware of the power of the mind to think up an
infinity of things which are
not
the case, a power which often extends to
denying any permanent value and stable meaning to the actual given
world. Take these words of the central figure in his latest book,
Giles
Goat-Boy:
1
"I had lived in goatdom as Billy Bockfuss the Kid, now I
meant to live in studentdom as George the Undergraduate; surely there
would be other roles in other realms, an endless succession of names and
natures. Little wonder I looked upon my life and the lives of others as a
kind of theatrical impromptu, self-knowledge as a matter of improvisation,
and moral injunctions ... as so many stage directions.... Nothing for
me was simply
the case
forever and aye, only 'this case.' Spectator, critic,
and occasional member of the troupe, I approached the script and Max's
glosses thereupon in a spirit of utter freedom." With these words Giles,
despite his unusual parentage, reveals how closely he is related to the
leading figures in Barth's earlier novels. Todd Andrews (in
The Floating
Opera)
decides that the problem of life is mainly "a matter of attitudes,
of stances-of masks, if you wish," and throughout the book he reiterates,
and exemplifies through incident, the related conviction that "for me at
least, goals and objectives are without value." Facts there are, and usually
ugly ones-his murder of a German soldier in the mud; the suicide of his
1.
GILES GOAT-BOY. By John Barth. Doubleday
&
Co. $6.95.
