ABSTRACT – JOHN BARTH – THE SOT-WEED FACTOR 1960 Doubleday Press. An epic if heavily over-written bawdy farce in the William
Makepiece Thackery tradition. It is the story of an English dandy nobleman who inherits an American tobacco (The Sot-weed of the title) plantation upon the death of his father. He sets sail for the New World, but quickly makes enemies, and so he swaps identities with his own valet. This has unforeseen consequences when the valet gambles away the deeds to the plantation on a losing bet on board the ship. The ship is full of whores being taken to America for the delights of the settlers. The hero now goes through a bewildering number of increasingly desperate adventures and skirmishes, and changes of identity in his efforts to reclaim his property. His luck worsens considerably when pirates who ravage the whores board the ship. The hero saves himself by pretending to be a buccaneer himself. Asking if a ship full of prostitutes is their best find ever, the pirate captain replies that he once had better when he took a pilgrimage ship filled with vestal virgins bound for Mecca. In the course of his journeys, the hero learns the true fate of a relative, who was a deaf and dumb missionary in Africa, miming the Bible to the natives. They eventually took him for the central character of his story and crucified him. Such humorous gems are all too rare in a relatively tedious slog of a book. The hero finally comes to face a court hearing over ownership of The Sot-Weed Plantation, where he learns that his only hope lies in wedding and consummating a relationship with the current owner, a woman riddled with syphilis. He is so tired and desperate that he chooses to do so. Funny and clever if you persevere through the excess use of prosaic padding.