The Floating Opera

   At a book sale in the Bloor Street United Church, I went treasure hunting today. A few rare finds popped out at me, most of them reminding me of my years as an undergraduate. At times, I find a book that is worth re-reading, and I cannot help but pick it up at the low price. One such book is John Barth's The Floating Opera. Here is one of 6 books that I had managed to buy for a single dollar, as the church sale was just about to close shop until May of next year.
      Barth's narrative protagonist is Todd Andrews, a bachelor who describes himself as having very little passion or exceptionality in his life. He describes how the name Todd is a derivation of Tod, which means "death" in German,--a name which foreshadows Todd's attempt at 'near' death in the subsequent chapters. In fact, much of the book revolves around Todd's decision to take his life, and how the metaphor of the floating opera helps him to decide not to take his life after all.
     The idea behind the floating opera is that it is a kind of boat that moves from one side of a river to another, showing a theatrical display to spectators standing on the shore. The spectators essentially only get glimpses of what's happening throughout the play: a few snippets of dialogue, some action, and some appearances of actors emerging and disappearing as the boat comes and goes. Spectators are left to piece together the entire play from these spare bits of dialogue. Todd describes the floating opera as an allusion to what happens in our daily lives:

      "That's how life works: our friends float past; we become involved with them; they float on,     and  we must rely on hearsay or lose track of them completely; they float back again, and we must either renew our friendships--catch up to date--or find that they and we don't comprehend each other any more." (p.13-14)

I think that Todd is referring to an experience of impermanence and emptiness. The sense he has is that there is no single coherent story that really holds together the people who come and go on the floating opera. Initially, Todd sees this transitory nature of life as reason to despair and even attempt suicide, but then he later concludes that there is no intrinsic reason "not" to live either, so he doesn't take his life after all.
        I have had a sentimental attachment to this book, ever since I read it in my teenage years. However, in retrospect, the despair that Todd is describing is both endearing and somehow lacking a certain dimension.  Looking at it from the lens of Buddhist philosophy, I think that Todd's narration of the floating opera still clings to a notion of a separate self, with separate others floating by. Because of that, the narrative invites readers to pity the narrator and also to be nostalgic for a time when relationships seemed both lasting and meaningful.. The interesting aspect about many nihilistic texts is that they long for precisely what they intend to reject.
       A narrative that tries to exhaust itself and declare the 'end' of all reasons for living, is often in reality hearkening back to a time when there was a presumed fixed meaning. In the process of trying to end narrative, the protagonist ends up glorifying narrative coherence and a permanent nature to things and relationships by indicating the horror of its absence. But, I wonder,  does the impermanence of relationships make them any less meaningful? Does the fact that our relationships are fleeting mean that they are pointless?
   Perhaps no matter how impermanent relationships are, beings are always interconnected in some way. I think Todd's accomplishment at the end of the novel is to see beyond a self that gains or loses. It is to let go, in a sense, which causes him to rejoice. But in another sense, the book doesn't quite realize the rejoicing and letting go of self, because it still narrates in terms of all or nothing absolutes: either there is absolute, permanent meaning or no meaning at all. Hence, at one point, Todd reflects, "the reasons that people have for attributing value to things are always ultimately arbitrary." (p.216). Yet, I think it only seems that way when values are being designed for a single self. If values are related to the mind of all beings, there is no longer a need to despair over the lack of meaning in 'having/not having a self'.

Barth John (1956), The Floating Opera. Avon Library