John Barth - 'Lost in the Funhouse' (1968): Writing about Writing about Writing.
John Barth’s titular short story, ‘Lost in the Funhouse’, from his subversive short-story collection Lost in the Funhouse, is an overt example of the theories discussed elsewhere and in more detail on this website. In terms of story, ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ is a rather simple tale that deals with a family trip to an amusement park and specifically, the funhouse. The main protagonist is 13 year old Ambrose who gets lost in the funhouse – any discerning reader would not have to work hard to see how a story of a pubescent teenage boy in the company of an uninterested teenage girl could find himself, both literally and metaphorically, lost in the funhouse. However, considered alongside the theories I have discussed on this website, another layer of interpretative reading materialises that, I believe, secures Barths postmodern presence within a much wider contextual standing.
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"He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he’s not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator” (p.97)
Often touted as the definitive metafictional text, Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ explicitly explores the author’s self-referential placement within the text, the author not only becomes a character in the story but additionally, this narrative device also adds another interesting tier to the story, it becomes a fragmented written feature about writing which aligns itself entirely with Linda Hutcheon’s beneficial definition of metafiction; “fiction about fiction-that is, fiction that includes within itself a commentary on its own narrative and/or linguistic identity.” (Hutcheon, 1980, p.1) – the authors seeming loss of control over the text is mirrored by our protagonists own lack of authority and control - as he stands in the mirror-room unable to acknowledge himself from another perspective other than the one that is presented in front of him “In the funhouse mirror-room you can't see yourself go on forever, because no matter how you stand, your head gets in the way” (Barth, 1988, p. 85). This introspective vision of Ambrose attempting to see himself is somewhat rather indicative of the entire postmodern manifesto (not that such a helpful thing exists); any attempt at trying to be too far removed from yourself (or your work) will only frustrate you - the exact sentiment Barth was trying to convey in his essay ‘The Literature of Exhaustion’ when he said that the all-too-often imitation of the same novel format that is reproduced over and over was desultory and that only looking forward (to new authorial styles) will result in original works. In a metaphorical mirror-room, the reader is presented with the same old familiar vision, an arbitrary intermediary that the author and reader fruitlessly partake in.
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“You think you’re yourself, but there are other persons in you.” (p.85)
Michel Foucault’s ‘What is an author?’ is a comprehensive look at not only what an author’s function is but also what that means in terms of the authors presence, responsibility for the text and preconceived notion of the authors function. In ‘Lost in the Funhouse’, Barth flouts all the preconceived notions that the reader expects from the author function, which is to author a novel within a familiar discourse (through previous writings, genre expectations, etc.) to which the reader has become accustomed to. Barth does this by periodically interrupting the omniscient narrator to remind the reader that fiction is not real and is easily violated in any way that the author sees fit, revealing himself to be an omniscient author who has becomes bored of the traditional realist narrative and peppers the story with displaced comments, ones usually reserved for footnotes and/or critical evaluations. So, on the one hand, the reader may charge Barth with a breach of the long-established author/narrator/reader relationship but then what if we also include the accusation that the author, Barth, is also the protagonist in the text? His first-person narrative voice disregards the already-established third person omniscient narrator and thus, unnerves the readers preconceived notions of how a story should told within a text. In this way Barth is unequivocally taking ownership of his decision to narrate his story in such a way, or as Foucault states, “…the relationship between text and author and with the manner in which the text points to this figure that…” (Foucault, 1998, p.205). As both Ambrose and Barth find themselves lost in that eponymous funhouse, it becomes increasingly likely that Ambrose is a biographical version of a younger Barth; “…how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person. He even foresaw, wincing at his dreadful self-knowledge, that he would repeat the deception at ever rarer intervals, all his wretched life” (Barth, 1988 p.93). By interrupting the narrative to become a character in his own text, Barth appropriates the mind of Ambrose to “foreshadow” his own entrance into his “future” text.
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"This can’t go on much longer; it can go on forever." (p.95)
Within the Lyotard section of this website, I noted a key quote from his text, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'; “Simplifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives”. Though Lyotard was writing this text almost twenty years after to Barth’s would-be simple story was published, applying his sentiments to ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ aids an auspicious reading - the godlike figure of the omniscient narrator proves himself to be malleable and, considering the ease which he abandons the narrative, unreliable in the extreme. Looking at Barth’s story in this light certainly mirrors a growing postmodern feeling, societies pre-existing metanarratives have proved to be just the same as Barth’s narrator, malleable and unreliable. Very early on in the story, the narration is interrupted, the author shattering what appears to be realism in order to convey to the reader the process of writing and the literary and linguistic conventions that are associated with such a text. After offering the reader a small portion of the story the author writes;
“…Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means” (Barth, 1988, p.73).
As Simon Malpas notes in The Postmodern; “For Lyotard, the role of postmodernism is thus to perform an immanent critique of the day-to-day structures of realism.” (Malpas, 2005, p.30) which is evident in Barth’s work at each level of narration as he not only criticises the frustration of composing a text, but effectively communicates his disregard for a willing suspension of disbelief.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"For whom is the funhouse fun?" (p.72)
Across this website we have looked at only some of the key elements of postmodernism literature, some fleetingly and some more in-depth, that have been made possible through the analysis of John Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’. Through his relatively short text, Barth conveys a much broader contextual audit of postmodernism – he gives the reader an opportunity to explore metanarratives, metafiction, the authors function, emerging forms of fiction and the art of writing fiction. Popular opinion is that Barth opposes realism yet is ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ not a realer version of realism? The reader is certainly given a much more realistic view of writing a fictional story and though it is an unfamiliar form of realism, I would argue that it should be classed a ‘real Realist’ text. Using metaphor to convey a bigger picture (not an unfamiliar device in realist fiction) the funhouse becomes a symbol of, not only Ambrose’s sexual frustration, but Barth’s frustration at the contemporaneous state of fiction. There are many other features of Barths fiction that I could have analysed but for me, I wanted to explore Barths attitude to postmodernism and the ways that he sought to demonstrate his ideas. The story starts with a question, “For whom is the funhouse fun?”(Barth, 1988, p.72) offering the answer “Perhaps for lovers.” (1988 p.72). Thus, if we take Ambrose’s sexual frustration to be mirrored by Barth’s artistic convention, then the lovers - those who are free - could be said to be the traditional novelists for whom the funhouse is somewhere to play without reflection.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
"He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he’s not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator” (p.97)
Often touted as the definitive metafictional text, Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ explicitly explores the author’s self-referential placement within the text, the author not only becomes a character in the story but additionally, this narrative device also adds another interesting tier to the story, it becomes a fragmented written feature about writing which aligns itself entirely with Linda Hutcheon’s beneficial definition of metafiction; “fiction about fiction-that is, fiction that includes within itself a commentary on its own narrative and/or linguistic identity.” (Hutcheon, 1980, p.1) – the authors seeming loss of control over the text is mirrored by our protagonists own lack of authority and control - as he stands in the mirror-room unable to acknowledge himself from another perspective other than the one that is presented in front of him “In the funhouse mirror-room you can't see yourself go on forever, because no matter how you stand, your head gets in the way” (Barth, 1988, p. 85). This introspective vision of Ambrose attempting to see himself is somewhat rather indicative of the entire postmodern manifesto (not that such a helpful thing exists); any attempt at trying to be too far removed from yourself (or your work) will only frustrate you - the exact sentiment Barth was trying to convey in his essay ‘The Literature of Exhaustion’ when he said that the all-too-often imitation of the same novel format that is reproduced over and over was desultory and that only looking forward (to new authorial styles) will result in original works. In a metaphorical mirror-room, the reader is presented with the same old familiar vision, an arbitrary intermediary that the author and reader fruitlessly partake in.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“You think you’re yourself, but there are other persons in you.” (p.85)
Michel Foucault’s ‘What is an author?’ is a comprehensive look at not only what an author’s function is but also what that means in terms of the authors presence, responsibility for the text and preconceived notion of the authors function. In ‘Lost in the Funhouse’, Barth flouts all the preconceived notions that the reader expects from the author function, which is to author a novel within a familiar discourse (through previous writings, genre expectations, etc.) to which the reader has become accustomed to. Barth does this by periodically interrupting the omniscient narrator to remind the reader that fiction is not real and is easily violated in any way that the author sees fit, revealing himself to be an omniscient author who has becomes bored of the traditional realist narrative and peppers the story with displaced comments, ones usually reserved for footnotes and/or critical evaluations. So, on the one hand, the reader may charge Barth with a breach of the long-established author/narrator/reader relationship but then what if we also include the accusation that the author, Barth, is also the protagonist in the text? His first-person narrative voice disregards the already-established third person omniscient narrator and thus, unnerves the readers preconceived notions of how a story should told within a text. In this way Barth is unequivocally taking ownership of his decision to narrate his story in such a way, or as Foucault states, “…the relationship between text and author and with the manner in which the text points to this figure that…” (Foucault, 1998, p.205). As both Ambrose and Barth find themselves lost in that eponymous funhouse, it becomes increasingly likely that Ambrose is a biographical version of a younger Barth; “…how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person. He even foresaw, wincing at his dreadful self-knowledge, that he would repeat the deception at ever rarer intervals, all his wretched life” (Barth, 1988 p.93). By interrupting the narrative to become a character in his own text, Barth appropriates the mind of Ambrose to “foreshadow” his own entrance into his “future” text.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"This can’t go on much longer; it can go on forever." (p.95)
Within the Lyotard section of this website, I noted a key quote from his text, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge'; “Simplifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives”. Though Lyotard was writing this text almost twenty years after to Barth’s would-be simple story was published, applying his sentiments to ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ aids an auspicious reading - the godlike figure of the omniscient narrator proves himself to be malleable and, considering the ease which he abandons the narrative, unreliable in the extreme. Looking at Barth’s story in this light certainly mirrors a growing postmodern feeling, societies pre-existing metanarratives have proved to be just the same as Barth’s narrator, malleable and unreliable. Very early on in the story, the narration is interrupted, the author shattering what appears to be realism in order to convey to the reader the process of writing and the literary and linguistic conventions that are associated with such a text. After offering the reader a small portion of the story the author writes;
“…Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means” (Barth, 1988, p.73).
As Simon Malpas notes in The Postmodern; “For Lyotard, the role of postmodernism is thus to perform an immanent critique of the day-to-day structures of realism.” (Malpas, 2005, p.30) which is evident in Barth’s work at each level of narration as he not only criticises the frustration of composing a text, but effectively communicates his disregard for a willing suspension of disbelief.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"For whom is the funhouse fun?" (p.72)
Across this website we have looked at only some of the key elements of postmodernism literature, some fleetingly and some more in-depth, that have been made possible through the analysis of John Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’. Through his relatively short text, Barth conveys a much broader contextual audit of postmodernism – he gives the reader an opportunity to explore metanarratives, metafiction, the authors function, emerging forms of fiction and the art of writing fiction. Popular opinion is that Barth opposes realism yet is ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ not a realer version of realism? The reader is certainly given a much more realistic view of writing a fictional story and though it is an unfamiliar form of realism, I would argue that it should be classed a ‘real Realist’ text. Using metaphor to convey a bigger picture (not an unfamiliar device in realist fiction) the funhouse becomes a symbol of, not only Ambrose’s sexual frustration, but Barth’s frustration at the contemporaneous state of fiction. There are many other features of Barths fiction that I could have analysed but for me, I wanted to explore Barths attitude to postmodernism and the ways that he sought to demonstrate his ideas. The story starts with a question, “For whom is the funhouse fun?”(Barth, 1988, p.72) offering the answer “Perhaps for lovers.” (1988 p.72). Thus, if we take Ambrose’s sexual frustration to be mirrored by Barth’s artistic convention, then the lovers - those who are free - could be said to be the traditional novelists for whom the funhouse is somewhere to play without reflection.
Barth, J. (1988). ‘Lost in the Funhouse’. In Lost in the Funhouse. New York: Anchor Books.
Hutcheon, L. (1980). Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Malpas, S. (2005). The Postmodern. Oxen: Routledge.
'Lost in the Funhouse' image sourced HERE.
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DISCLAIMER: All videos, unless created by Stephanie Darke, are linked directly from Youtube & Vimeo. At the time of publishing, all are available in the public domain.