Textual identity in John Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor" and in Alejo Carpentier's "El siglo de las luces"

In The Sot-Weed Factor, set in the eighteenth century, John Barth describes the adventures of Ebenezer Cooke and Henry Burlingame. Ebenezer, or Eben, and Henry, see the world and themselves through a diversity of texts, not just written ones. Ironically, Henry tries to dissuade Eben from relying on these texts. In El siglo de las luces, Alejo Carpentier depicts the development of the protagonists Esteban and Victor during the French Revolution in France and its repercussions in the Caribbean. Esteban realizes during and after the Revolution that it and himself are influenced by texts that cannot express reality or help establish identity and therefore, he abandons it. However, Victor continues to participate in it since his identity relies on its manifestations. Texts in these novels includes more than just written materials such as paintings that the characters and readers "read" or try to understand and/or "write," and even mark on their bodies.