Ebenezer Cooke, an innocent like Candide, was born in Maryland but raised in 17th century England. His initial difficulty is that his tutor teaches him to make a game of learning so that later he can find no reason to choose between philosophies, careers or simple actions during the thirty years to follow. An incredibly complex plot (and some 1100 pages) take him to the New World to manage his father's estate. He becomes involved with pirates, the law, Indian "salvages", and religious and political intrigues. He loses the estate in several different ways, tracks down the mystery of his tutor's ancestry, finds and loses the girl he loves (a whore, Joan Toast) several times, and is involved in many adventures with his twin sister, his servant, and shipmates, pirates, colonists and political figures. While intricate, the plot is clear and full of the manners, morals and language of the period with a great display of poetic and philosophic knowledge. Echoes of Boccaccio, Cervantes, Voltaire and Rabelais are to be found in what is essentially a satire of a certain period done with care and style and learning. However, the literary models Mr. Barth has chosen give him ample scope for pornography and scatology and all the archaism will not disguise the elements and incidents of disgust and distaste which were certainly prominent in his earlier modern allegory, The End of the Road.
Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1960
ISBN: 0385240880
Page Count: -
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1960
IN THE NEWS
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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