John Barth - Giles goat-boy, or, The revised new syllabus

Giles Goat-Boy

or, The Revised New Syllabus

by John Barth

THIS BOOK CONTAINS THE COMPLETE TEXT

OF THE ORIGINAL HARDCOVER EDITION.

Copyright 1966 by John Barth.

All rights reserved, including the right to

reproduce this book or portions thereof.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-15666

Third Fawcett Crest printing, July 1968

Published by Fawcett World Library

67 West 44th Street, New York, N. Y. 10036

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Publisher's Disclaimer

Cover-Letter to the Editors and Publisher

Volume One

First Reel

1. His keeper. His kidship

2. His Deanship of the Hill

3. Lady Creamhair

4. In the hemlock grove with Lady Creamhair

5. He attacks Max. His espial of a Beist in the buckwheat

6. His attempt to Be with Lady Creamhair

7. His Maximizing

Second Reel

1. His propping and departure

2. A fork in His road

3. George's Gorge

4. Anastasia's history

5. He bites Anastasia in the sidecar

6. At the Power Plant

7. His Memorial Service in the Living Room

Third Reel

1. To the Pedal Inn

2. Peter Greene's life and loss of eye

3. His arrival at Main Gate

4. The Tragedy of Taliped Decanus

5. In the Observatory

6. Trial-by-Turnstile

7. Scapegoat Grate

Volume Two

First Reel

1. To Main Detention

2. To the Clockworks

3. To the Light House and the University Council

4. To the NTC Infirmary

5. To the Library

6. To WESCAC's Belly

7. To the Old Chancellor's Mansion

Second Reel

1. In Main Detention

2. His departure from Main Detention

3. He fixes the Clock

4. He ends the Boundary Dispute

5. He overcomes His infirmity

6. He sees through His Ladyship and re-places the Founder's Scroll

7. He passes the Finals and presents His ID-card, appropriately signed, to the proper authority

Third Reel

1. At the intersection

2. His return to Great Mall

3. Through the Catalogue and Circulation Rooms to the Belfry

4. His final passage through the Belly

5. Out of the Belly

6. To the goat-barns and Founder's Hill

7. On Founder's Hill

Posttape

Postscript to the Posttape

Footnote to the Postscript to the Posttape

The reader must begin this book with an act of faith and end it with an act of charity. We ask him to believe in the sincerity and authenticity of this preface, affirming in return his prerogative to be skeptical of all that follows it.

The manuscript submitted to us some seasons ago under the initials R.N.S., and by us retitled Giles Goat-Boy, is enough removed from the ordinary and so potentially actionable as to make inadequate the publisher's conventional disclaimer: "Any resemblance to persons living or dead," etc. The disclaimer's very relevance -- which we firmly assert -- was called into question even prior to the manuscript's receipt, as has been everything about the book since, from its content to its authorship. The professor and quondam novelist whose name appears on the title-page (our title-page, not the one following his prefatory letter) denies that the work is his, but "suspects" it to be fictional -- a suspicion that two pages should confirm for the average reader. His own candidate for its authorship is one Stoker Giles or Giles Stoker -- whereabouts unknown, existence questionable -- who appears to have claimed in turn 1) that he too was but a dedicated editor, the text proper having been written by a certain automatic computer, and 2) that excepting a few "necessary basic artifices"* the book is neither fable nor fictionalized history, but literal truth. And the computer, the mighty "WESCAC" -- does it not too disclaim authorship? It does.

* The computer's assumption of a first-person narrative viewpoint, we are told, is one such "basic artifice." The reader will add others, perhaps challenging their "necessity" as well.

Frankly, what we hope and risk in publishing Giles Goat-Boy is that the question of its authorship will be a literary and not a legal one. If so, judging from the fuss in our office these past months, the book affords more pregnant matter for controversy. Merely deciding to bring it out has already cost us two valued colleagues, for quite different reasons. Five of us were party to the quarrel, which grew so heated, lengthy, and complex that finally, as editor-in-chief, I was obliged to put an end to it. No further discussion of the book was permitted. Inasmuch as the final responsibility was mine I requested from each of my four associates a brief written statement on the questions: should we publish the manuscript entitled Giles Goat-Boy? If so, why, and if not, why not?

Their replies anticipate, I think, what will be the range of public and critical reaction to the book. I reprint them here (with signatures and certain personal references omitted) not in the hope of forestalling that reaction, but to show that our decision was made neither hastily nor in bad faith:

Editor A

I am quite sensible that fashions have changed since my own tenure as editor-in-chief: marriage has lost its sanctity, sex its mystery; every filthiness is published in the name of Honesty; all respect for law and discipline is gone -- to say nothing of propriety and seemliness, whose very names are sneered at. Cynicism is general: the student who eschews cheating like the young girl who eschews promiscuity or the editor who values principle over profit, is looked upon as a freak. Whatever is old -- a man, a building, a moral principle -- is regarded not as established but as obsolete; to be preserved if at all for its antiquarian interest, but got rid of without compunction the moment it becomes in the way. In the way, that is, of self-interest and the tireless sensualism of youth. Indeed fashions change, have always changed, and there's the point. Granted that every generation must write its own "New Syllabus" or re-interpret the Old one, rebel against its teachers, challenge all the rules -- all the more important then that the Rules stand fast! Morality like motion has its laws; each generation takes its impetus from the resistance of its forebears, like runners striving against the ground, and those who would abolish the old Answers (I don't speak of restating or modifying them, which is eternally necessary) would turn the track underfoot to quickmire, with fatal consequences for the race of men.

This Revised New Syllabus is nothing new, but as old as sickness of the spirit; not a revision of anything, but a repudiation of all that's wholesome and redeeming. It is for us to repudiate it. Publishing remains despite all a moral enterprise, and is recognized as such in its heart of hearts even by the public that clamors for gratification of its appetites. The sensational, the vulgar, the lurid, the cheap, the hackneyed -- there is an innocence about these things in their conventional and mass-produced forms, even a kind of virtue; the novelists everyone purchases do no harm as they line our pockets and their own. They are not difficult; they do not astonish; they rebel along traditional lines, shock us in customary ways, and teach us what we know already. Their concerns are modest, their literary voice and manner are seldom wild, only their private lives, which make good copy: in straightforward prose they reveal to us how it is to belong to certain racial or cultural minorities; how it is to be an adolescent, a narcotic, an adulterer, a vagabond; especially how it is to be the Author, with his particular little history of self-loathings and aggrandizements. Such novels, I conceive, are the printed dreams of that tiny fraction of our populace which buys and reads books, and the true dwelling-places of art and profit. In serving the dream we prevent the deed: vicariously the reader debauches, and is vicariously redeemed; his understanding is not taxed; his natural depravity may be tickled but is not finally approved of; no assaults have been made upon his imagination, nor any great burden put on his attention. He is the same fellow as before, only a little better read, and in most cases the healthier for his small flirtation with the Pit. He may even remark, "Life is absurd, don't you think? There's no answer to anything"; whereafter, his luncheon-companion agreeing absolutely, they have another cocktail and return to more agreeable matters.