A review by wmbogart
The Floating Opera by John Barth

And this is what I wanted to say, because I consider it fairly important (hell, even urgently important) to the understanding of this whole story: quite frequently, things that are obvious to other people aren't even apparent to me.

RIYL: Self-aware navel-gazing, parenthetical asides, direct addresses to the reader, formal gags, ironic pedantry.

Or if you like critiques of literary realism embedded in any of the above, this might be the novel for you. I loved it! It is intentionally insufferable, in the best way.

Barth calls his shot early on:

Were you ever chagrined by stories that seemed to promise some revelation, and then cheated their way out of it?

The irony here is that the "revelations" in The Floating Opera, despite the narrator's belief to the contrary, are mostly laughable. Until they aren't. Without giving anything away, I found the conclusion life-affirming, without compromising the hilarious, bizarre tone of the novel up to that point.

Full disclosure - not everything here has aged well. There are some unsavory attitudes throughout, both in the narrator's voice (more forgivable) and in what I'm reading as Barth's (unfortunate). 

Still, I really enjoyed it! I frequently disturbed my cat by laughing out loud while reading. But I could laugh at a narrator's intentionally moronic ~ruminations~ all day if the prose is strong enough. Others, understandably, feel differently.