Books › The Sot-Weed Factor
The Sot-Weed Factor
First published 1960 · 819 pages
A sprawling, bawdy mock-epic that drags a hopelessly naive poet through the mud and madness of colonial America.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like being trapped in a brilliant, exhausting, and endlessly bawdy seventeenth-century tavern tale. It is a sprawling, chaotic picaresque that revels in its own artifice, demanding a reader who delights in linguistic acrobatics and historical parody. The prose is a dense, masterful pastiche of archaic English, wrapping absurd misadventures and philosophical digressions in elaborate, mock-heroic syntax. The mood is wildly farcical and deeply cynical, stripping away the romantic myths of colonial history to reveal a world of scoundrels, impostors, and fools. It is not a quick read, but rather a meandering, labyrinthine journey that rewards patience with sheer intellectual audacity. Fans of massive, postmodern doorstoppers will find themselves completely absorbed in its dizzying, mud-splattered brilliance.
- Mood
- chaotic
- absurd
- ribald
- disorienting
- Tone
- satirical
- bawdy
- mock-heroic
- ironic
- farcical
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- the illusion of innocence · unreliability of history · identity and reinvention · absurdity of colonialism
- The writing
- A brilliant, exhaustive pastiche of seventeenth-century English, dense with archaic vocabulary, elaborate syntax, and bawdy wordplay.
- The arc
- Moves from naive, grandiose idealism through a gauntlet of disillusioning humiliations, landing in a state of cynical but grounded acceptance.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love massive, intellectually playful postmodern doorstoppers and have a high tolerance for bawdy humor and historical pastiche.
Content notes
- sexual violence
- colonial violence
- racism
- bawdy humor
- historical slurs
About the book
Considered by critics to be Barth's most distinguished masterpiece, The Sot-Weed Factor has acquired the status of a modern classic. Set in the late 1600s, it recounts the wildly chaotic odyssey of hapless, ungainly Ebenezer Cooke, sent to the New World to look after his father's tobacco business and to record the struggles of the Maryland colony in an epic poem
Description from Open Library.
Books like The Sot-Weed Factor
See why they match
Lost in the funhouseJohn BarthA dizzying, self-aware labyrinth of language that constantly pulls back the curtain on its own creation.
Mason & DixonThomas PynchonA sprawling, wildly inventive 18th-century road trip that maps the boundaries of friendship and the ghosts of a rationalized world.
Bahía de ChesapeakeJames A. MichenerA sweeping, centuries-long immersion into the tides, wildlife, and generations of families that shaped a single American estuary.
The SourceJames A. MichenerA monumental, time-traveling excavation of human faith and civilization layered within a single patch of ancient earth.
Martin DresslerSteven MillhauserA hypnotic, architectural fairy tale about the dizzying heights and hollow center of the American Dream.
Cat's CradleKurt VonnegutA darkly hilarious, bite-sized spiral into the inevitable end of the world.