Giles Goat Boy (119 page)

In any case, one ought not to take it seriously. Consider the internal evidence against its authenticity: in the “Posttape” the “Grand Tutor” puts quotation-marks around such terms as “My Ladyship” and “Lady Creamhair,” a practice followed nowhere else in the manuscript; also around “Revised New Syllabus” and “Gilesianism”—as if he had grown contemptuous of the terms! More revealingly, he mentions technological and cultural phenomena whose existence is never previously alluded to, such as airplanes and comic-books; and his references to nickels, dimes, and pennies, for example, seem flatly discrepant with the economic system of New Tammany College implied by the rest of the chronicle—and so important to an understanding of the Boundary Dispute. It may be
objected by ingenious apologists that in one instance a reference of this sort is preceded by the ambiguous phrase “in modern terms,” which, though it patently means “nowadays,” might be said to suggest in addition a translation—by WESCAC or the Grand Tutor—of His University into our terms. Indeed, there is a sense in which the same may be said of the entire
Syllabus
—of all artistic and pedagogical conceit, for that matter, especially of the parable kind. But suffice it to say, in reply to this objection, that the Grand Tutor seems nowhere else in the vast record of His life and teachings to resort to this device—only in the gloomy “Posttape.”

Which brings us to the real proof of its spurious character. Even if none of the above-mentioned discrepancies existed, the hopeless, even nihilistical tone of those closing pages militates against our believing them to be the Grand Tutor’s own. Having brought us to the heart of Mystery, “He” suddenly shifts to what can most kindly be called a tragic view of His life and of campus history. Where are the joy, the hope, the knowledge, and the confident strength of the man who routed Harold Bray, affirmed the Candidacies of His Tutees and readied Himself to teach all studentdom the Answer? “Not teachable” indeed! And the unpardonable rejection of Greene, of Anastasia, of His own son, in favor of a sickly mulatto boy with the improbable name of
Tombo—

But no, the idea is ridiculous. Some impostor and antigiles composed the “Posttape,” to gainsay and weaken faith in Giles’s Way. Even the type of those flunkèd pages is different!

J.B
.

John Barth was born on May 27, 1930, in Cambridge, Maryland. As a student at Johns Hopkins University he was fascinated by Oriental tale-cycles and medieval collections, a body of literature that would later influence his own writing. He received his B. A. from Johns Hopkins in 1951 and his M. A. in 1952. He has held professorships at Pennsylvania State University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and Boston University. He presently teaches in the English and Creative Writing programs at Johns Hopkins.

Barths first novel,
The Floating Opera
(1956), was nominated for the National Book Award.
The End of the Road
(1958) was also critically praised. In 1960,
The Sot-Weed Factor
—a comic historical novel—established Barths reputation.
Giles Goat-Boy
(1966) was a huge critical and commercial success, after which he revised and republished his first three novels.
Lost in the Funhouse
, a book of interconnected stories, earned him a second nomination for the National Book Award. His other works are
Chimera
(1972), a collection of three novellas, which won the National Book Award;
Letters
(1979), an epistolary novel;
Sabbatical: A Romance
(1982); and
The Friday Book
(1984), a collection of essays. His latest work is
Tidewater Tales
(1987).