The End of the Road was published by Doubleday in 1958, and it completes the pair of “nihilist” novels that began Barth’s career. Where The Floating Opera treated existential crisis as comedy, The End of the Road follows the same philosophical premises to their darkest consequences.
Jacob Horner is a man afflicted with “cosmopsis” — the inability to choose between equally valid alternatives. When presented with options, he freezes: any reason for choosing A is exactly balanced by an equally good reason for choosing B. This paralysis extends to everything: where to sit, what to say, whether to live. A doctor treats him by prescribing arbitrary rules (always sit in the first available chair, always speak first) — external constraints that substitute for internal motivation.
Horner takes a teaching job at a small Maryland college, where he becomes entangled with Joe Morgan (a philosophy instructor who lives by a rigidly consistent existentialist code) and Joe’s wife Rennie. The love triangle — which begins as an intellectual game — ends in catastrophe: Rennie’s death from a botched abortion. The novel’s bleakness lies in its demonstration that ideas have consequences: philosophical positions, carried into the realm of human relationships, produce real suffering.
Collecting The End of the Road
First edition (Doubleday, New York, 1958): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $100–$300
- Without jacket: $15–$40
- Revised edition (1967): $15–$35