Word: goat
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Barth is fond these days of recounting the origin of Giles Goat-Boy, his next novel. It seems that critics of The Sot-Weed Factor began commenting on the similarity between that novel's protagonist and the archetypal mythic hero--with his innocence, his rite of sexual initiation, his quest and so on. Barth himself protests that such similarity was quite unconscious, but once alerted, he set out to make good use of it. Written with the same complexity of plot and wild comedy that filled The Sot-Weed Factor. Giles Goat-Boy is the tale of George Giles, Everyhero...
...most novels would lead one to believe. The problem is that Barth keeps turning up afterward looking as fresh as if he had only just come back from a day sail. From The Floating Opera and The End of the Road to The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy, there is no real urgency in Earth's novels. His characters exhibit a comfortable, charming nihilism. Fat with alternatives, they can change roles as easily as socks. As an immortal resident of Parnassus tells the hallucinating hero of The Sot-Weed Factor, "There's really naught...
...ridicule-a ridiculous, insulting or otherwise unappealing surname-that they could legally change. In the field of animals, from which a number of French surnames are taken, a Monsieur Duck, Cow, Camel, Ass or Snipe would be allowed to change his name, but a Monsieur Ox, Bull, Goat, Nightingale or Leopard would not. Nouns such as tripe, cheese, cemetery and cuckold, and adjectives like hideous and ugly were frowned on as surnames; but unaccountably, villain and pimp were acceptable. The council also suggested that people with Jewish-sounding names, even if they were not Jews, should be encouraged to change...
Bernard Frawley and Terrence Currier, playing Phil Hogan and James Tyrone, Jr., respectively, are the mainstays of the production. Both move comfortably in their difficult roles and both deliver their lines beautifully. Frawley is indeed an irascible "ugly little buck goat" of a father with a polished brogue and a fine comic sense. And Currier exudes the actor's charm of James Tyrone through a convincing alcoholic dissipation. The two minor characters, a younger son, Mike Hogan, and a rich Yankee neighbor, Harder are also excellent...
...Apollo, whose instrument was the lyre, was challenged to a musical contest by a coarse satyr named Marsyas, who had learned to play the flute. Marsyas lost, and Apollo skinned him alive. In our day, this draconian triumph of reason over instinct has been reversed: Marsyas, the unrepressed goat-man, has won; the Rolling Stones are one of his incarnations. Unlike the Beatles-the very prototype of nice English working-class lads accepted everywhere, winning M.B.E.s from the Queen-the Stones from the start based their appeal partly on their reputation as delinquents. They were always too shaggy, too street...