John Barth is one of America's greatest writers, a story teller on par with Twain and Steinbeck, Boyle and Bellow. As far as I can tell, however, none of them ever wrote a story about story telling, which is what Barth has done in this fantastical epic. Simon Behler (if that is, in fact, the name of the identity- and perspective-challenged narrator), for whom water has always played some central role in his life, appears to have swum through a rip in the time/space and reality/fantasy continuum, where he ultimately arrives at the doorstep of the fabled Sinbad The Sailor, and his captivating daughter Yasmin. Invited in, he and Sinbad swap tales of their respective, fantastic voyages in front of myriad household members and prospective investors for Sinbad's proposed seventh voyage, all of whom doubt the origins and suspect the motives of our narrator. Except, of course, for the delicious Yasmin, who, it turns out, has a mysterious and inexorable connection to Simon.While this is a tale filled with mystery and adventure, love and sex, betrayal and death, and an endless supply of conflict, the underlying theme is the role that stories play in our lives, both as literal archives and moral instruction. Barth's trademark wordplay makes every passage worth a second and third reading, and his characters are impressively believable given their unbelievable context. Like his other masterpiece, "The Sot-Weed Factor," this is a sprawling and ribald epic, showcasing the enormous intellect and imagination of an American master in his prime.This is the book I wanted and it is in very acceptable condition, with one caveat--I didn't realize that what I was getting was a library discard and still had ALL the library "stuff" attached. Not only the card holder inside the cover and the (black marked-out) code tag on that same page, but the heavy taped library identification info on the outside. oh well, it is the book I wanted to replace one lost, or taken, from my bookshelf. It will work...I am maniacal about finishing books, but I couldn't bring myself to finish this one. I found it to be full of sexist male fantasies and macho expression. I do NOT think this book can be construed as feminist. The author's pretension and satisfaction with himself showed through brilliantly in his writing. I have found (and the other reviews support this) that mostly men like this book. All of the women I have talked to about it disliked it strongly, if they even finished it. I found it tedious, and too self-satisfied to tolerate.“The high ground of traditional realism, brothers, is where I stand! Give me familiar, substantial stuff: rocs and rhinoceri, ifrits and genies and flying carpets, such as we all drank in our mother’s milk and shall drink—Inshallah!—till our final swallow. Let no outlander imagine that such crazed fabrications as machines that mark the hour or roll themselves down the road will ever take the place of our homely Islamic realism, the very capital of narrative—from which, if I may say so, all interest is generated. … And may not the same be said for a story’s action? Speak to us from our everyday experience: shipwreck and sole survivorhood, the retrieval of diamonds by means of mutton-sides and giant eagles, the artful deployment of turbans for aerial transport, buzzard dispersal, shore-to-ship signaling, and suicide as necessary. Above all, sing the loss of fortunes and their fortuitous re-doubling: the very stuff of story!"Sums it up.The Last Voyage is filled with layers of irony and clever, tongue-in-cheek jokes. It’s definitely a showcase of narrative experimentation. I admired this book for its dizzying technical turns, but it never made the leap for me into anything more than a literary exercise, so I didn’t really relish it as much as others have.Do not approach this book thinking you will come away feeling satisfied. You won't. You will be impressed by the writing. Every sentence is well-crafted. You will be impressed by the wit. Parts of this book are truly funny. You will be taken with the author's fertile imagination, and tickled by what other reviewers are calling the "pornographic" parts--that's much too harsh a word, I think.But...you will find it tedious reading at times. You will easily enjoy parts of it--the parts set in modern times and wish there were more of them. You will be amused, for a time, with Sinbad's adventures. But you will, I think, decide that there are too many of them, they go on for too long and they don't contribute as much as the author thinks they do.And when you put the book down, you will, if you're like me, utter the single comment: "Argh!" You will find the ending ambiguous and unsatisfying. We are led by the hand to one last great trip. The trip begins...and then the book runs out of pages.This is not, I am afraid, the Sot-Weed Factor. The author is a fine, even great writer, but this is far from his best work.