Writing Against Death in The Floating OperaIn the first chapter of The Floating Opera, Todd Andrews observes that storytelling is not his cup of tea, because digressions are impossible to contain, and this makes it difficult for him to concentrate on a particular line of narration; each image he creates generates other images, words generate other words, the “new figures and new pursuits” having no end (Barth 2). This remark suggests that Todd's existence is indeed confined to the reality he creates in telling his story; this fictional reality regenerates. The tone of the passage also implies that Todd greatly appreciates the unprecedented freedom this realm allows to digress at will, pursuing the figures and implications of his sentences to their lairs; this image is reminiscent of modern hypertext. The relationship between Todd's fiction and reality is as problematic as is the authenticity of the events of his Floating Opera. Charles Harris points out that the novel is largely a lie masquerading as an autobiography (44): for example, referring to the timeline of the writing of his novel, Todd Andrews mentions spending three years reading books about medicine, shipbuilding, philosophy, minstrelsy, marine biology. , jurisprudence, pharmacology, Maryland history, and gas chemistry to make sure he understood what happened. But if we look closer, we will discover that these are exactly the books that the narrator should read to actually compose the story, not to understand it. One could obviously object that a close reading is entirely consistent with the minutiae of the character. But Todd Andrews, “perhaps the best lawyer on the East Coast,” as he claims later in the novel, would escape death. Works Cited: Barth, John. The Floating Opera. Garden City, New York: Doubleway & Company, 1967. Gardner, John. Grendel. New York: Knopf, 1971. Harris, Charles. “Todd Andrews, Ontological Insecurity and the Floating Opera.” Review: Studies in Modern Fiction. 18 (1976): 34-51. LeClair, Thomas. “John Barth’s Floating Opera: Death and the Craft of Fiction.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language: a Journal of the Humanities.14 (1973): 711-30. Martin, Dennis M. "Desire and Illness: The Psychological Model of Floating Opera." Review: Studies in Modern Fiction. 18 (1976): 17-33. Merrill, Robert. "John Gardner's Grendel and the Interpretation of Modern Fables." American Literature: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Literal Bibliography. 56 (1984): 162-80.