ON BARTH
107
taining it is not written by John Barth, suggesting it is by "an obscure,
erratic wizard whose
nom de plume,
at least, is
Stocker, Giles,"
and coyly
intimating that it might have been written by a computer. (Similarly it
does not end, but recedes via a posttape, a postscript, and "a footnote to
the postscript to the posttape.") This calling into question the very
status of the novel is an accepted modem tactic (as in Gide or Borges) but
it is not often done so laboriously and to so little purpose. One is tempted
to fasten on the notion of the computer-author, taking that as an image
for Barth's own mind. For clearly his powers of mental absorption are
unusual and, like the best computer, he can do almost anything with the
vast amount of material that has been fed into him (via books, college,
newspapers, etc.). He can produce fairly intricate satire on international
politics, the New Testament, contemporary philosophy, racial attitudes,
psychology, Greek tragedy-whatever. To arrive. at the overall scheme
of the book it is as though he has fed into his mind the instruction to ex–
ploit down to the last detail all the possible cross-references, relationships,
variations and permutations to be derived from seeing the world as a
campus--or Universe as University. And his fantastic mind has done just
that. To what end I am not yet certain; but to suggest that the book is
more about Barth's own mental powers than anything else is not, of course,
to deny it interest. And, in the blurred confusion, we can see old themes
being developed. Burlingame, in the previous novel, at one point an–
nounced himself as "Suitor of Totality, Embracer of Contradictories," and
the strange adventures of Giles from goat farm to campus to WESCAC;
his elevation from animal to human to hero; thence (almost) to martyr
and (vaguely) to prophet-philosopher, finally (perhaps) to a nihilist–
pessimist-all are basically motivated by a similar aspiration. Starting
from a frisky uncomplicated animal innocence, he gradually becomes
acquainted with the more problematical human emotions, appetites,
guilts and regrets; his plans to become a hero and tutor and furnish a new
healing philosophy for the whole "campus" have to be continually modi–
fied or abandoned and recommenced as he confronts and tries to absorb
the realities of evil, time, death and love. The deeper he gets into the
labyrinthine complexities of human life and the problems of nature, the
more equivocal he finds everything, and the harder it gets to sort things
out and get them straight. (I need hardly say that masks and meta–
morphoses proliferate.) So that while one of his earlier convictions is of
"the necessity of clear distinctions," his more mature and seemingly more
final feeling is that the source of confusion and evil is "differentiation,"
and the new wisdom is "Embrace!" Pondering his earlier attempts to
pass judgments on people (Pass or Fail) he later sees his whole effort as
