Coming upon a satiric poem—written by one Ebenezer Cook and published in London in 1706—in the course of his researches into the local history of his native Maryland, John Barth’s imagination took flight, and, turning poet into protagonist, he conceived his own comic extravaganza—an enormous, rambunctious, ribald, screamingly funny novel written in the exuberant narrative and literary style of eighteenth-century English fiction (think Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling). Set in the late 1600s, Barth’s Sot-Weed Factor chronicles Ebenezer’s picaresque exploits as he voyages to America to supervise his father’s tobacco business and to immortalize, in epic verse, the destiny of Maryland. The marvelously involved plot leads the awkward young innocent through uncounted attempts by innumerable rogues to divest him of his wits, his fortune, and his virginity. Barth’s virtuosity in detailing these treacherous adventures animates every page of this huge tale with such rollicking delight that, despite its length, one is very sorry to reach its end.