John Barth

Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice

Lost in the Funhouse

Fourteen short literary experiments intended for perusal in sequence are set in contemporary society and classical Greece

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Stepping from the treacherous passage at last into the mirror-maze, he saw once again, more clearly than ever, how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person.

For all a person knows the first time through, the end could be just around any corner; perhaps, not impossibly it's been within reach any number of times. On the other hand he may be scarcely past the start, with everything yet to get through, an intolerable idea.

People don't know what to make of him, he doesn't know what to make of himself, he's only thirteen, athletically and socially inept, not astonishingly bright, but there are antennae; he has . . . some sort of receivers in his head; things speak to him, he understands more than he should, the world winks at him through its objects, grabs grinning at his coat. Everybody else is in on some secret he doesn't know; they've forgotten to tell him.

At this rate our hero, at this rate our protagonist will remain in the funhouse forever. (...) We should be much farther along than we are; something has gone wrong; not much of this preliminary rambling seems relevant. Yet everyone begins in the same place; how is it that most go along without difficulty but a few lose their way?

But there are prisoners and prisoners; my hope is for another kind of release, from what may not unfairly be termed life-imprisonment for no crime whatever, only the misfortune of being born my brother's brother.

There is no period at the end of the sentence- that's beautiful.

So. My last trump, and I blew it. Not much in the way of a climax; more a climacteric. I'm not the dramatic sort. May the end come quietly, then, without my knowing it. In the course of my breath. In the heart of any word. This one. This one.

Shark up some memorable last words at least, There seems to be time. 

Nonsense, I'll mutter to the end, one word after another, string the rascals out, mad or not, heard or not, my last words will be my last words

In sum I'm not what either parent or I had in mind. One hoped I'd be astonishing, forceful, triumphant-heroical in other words. One dead. I myself conventional. I turn out I. Not every kid thrown to the wolves ends a hero: for each survivor, a mountain of beast-baits; for every Oedipus, a city of feebs. 

So much for my dramatic exposition: seems not to've worked. Here I am, Dad: Your creature! Your caricature!

As toward one's face, one's body, one's self, one feels complexly toward the name he's called by, which too one had no hand in choosing. It was to be my fate to wonder at that moniker, relish and revile it, ignore it, stare it out of countenance into hieroglyph and gibber, and come finally if not to embrace at least to accept it with the cold neutrality of self-recognition, whose expression is a thin-lipped smile. Vanity frets about his name, Pride vaunts it, Knowledge retches at its sound, Understanding sighs; all live outside it, knowing well that I and my sign are neither one nor quite two.

The American Indians, he declared now, had the right idea. "They never named a boy right off. What they did, they watched to find out who he was. They'd look for the right sign to tell them what to call him."

You who I may be about to become, whatever You are: with the last twitch of my real self I beg You to listen. It is not love that sustains me! No; though Her magic makes me burn to sing the contrary, and though I drown even now for the blasphemy, I will say truth. 

The heartless zeal of our (departed) leaders, like the blind ambition and good cheer of my own youth, appalls me now; for the death of my comrades I am inconsolable. If the night-sea journey has justification, it is not for us swimmers ever to discover it.

Isabella Agostino

Has something legitimately gone wrong, or is going wrong the theme of the story, reflected in every possible plot scenario "going wrong"? Is going wrong the nature of PM writers? Is this a playful commentary on authorial control in the postmodern short story world? I love it

With its "self-conscious (fictional) author" and "self-reflective narrator", Lost in The Funhouse introduces the reader to metafiction as it forces them to be a part of the book's construction. The book depends on its reader's input to flourish, though it gets challenging at times due to the constant shift over the narrators. "The fictional author", "the first person anonymous", and the reader only overcome this turmoil through artistic expression despite the mere need of it causing them to become stranded on an island or get lost in the funhouse.  

Matthew Royal

This is the first piece of meta-fiction I've read. Thanks, again, goes to our American Novels Since 1945 book club! Although I finished it a bit too late to participate in the discussion, I think I enjoyed it more having heard and read about passages in the book before reading them.

This book is very quotable.

Lost in the Funhouse Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice

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