THE FLOATING OPERA
by John Barth
A deliberately digressive and, on occasion, smugly salacious report on the life and times of Todd Andrews, a bachelor, a lawyer, and a philosopher of (and out of) sorts who reviews his life as it was influenced by a heart condition and prostate trouble. Back and forth, he traces his first, unfortunate (humor reared its ugly head) sexual experience with Betty June; the next years of continence (prostate here); his affair with his friend Harrison's wife- Jane- approved and abetted by Harrison, and its end product-a lovely little girl; and finally his Life Inquiry, or Death Inquiry, of Self Inquiry as he calls it into the cause of his father's suicide. This leaves him with the answer that there is "no reason for living"- but he reverses this just in time.... The scene is the Eastern shore of Maryland, and The Floating Opera is a showboat which docks up there.