The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road are John Barth's first two novels. Their relationship to each other is evident not only in their ribald subject matter but in the eccentric characters and bitterly humorous tone of the narratives. Both concern strange, consuming love triangles and the destructive effect of an overactive intellect on the emotions. Separately, they give two very different views of a universal human drama.

In The Floating Opera, the protagonist Todd Andrews, an orphaned war veteran, has been sleeping with his friend's wife. Todd awakens one morning determined to commit suicide, having concluded that nothing in life has intrinsic value—but then spends the day methodically reasoning his way into disregarding that fact and remaining a part of the floating opera of life.

In The End of the Road, a man named Jacob Horner finds himself literally paralyzed by an inability to choose a course of action from all possibilities. He begins an unconventional course of "mythotherapy" treatment at the Remobilization Farm, but his eccentric doctor's directives lead him into a tragic love triangle and from there to the nihilistic end of the road.

These novels form the beginnings of an illustrious literary career.