Lost In The Funhouse; Fiction For Print, Tape, Live Voice is John Barth's response to a gauntlet Marshall McLuhan was throwing down back in the heady days of the sixties regarding the immanent demise of the work of art as printed text and the subsequent decline in the fortunes of the Gutenberg family. Sound familiar? As it is his first collection of short fiction (anomalous), no matter one's response to the Funhouse, please do pick up one of his long works, the form in which his muse sings much so sweetly.How seriously ought we regard the book's subtitle, "for Print, Tape, Live Voice"? [??] But according to the "Author's Note" these pieces are intended for a variety of performance modalities: ". . .take the print medium for granted but lose or gain nothing in oral recitation. . . would lose part of their point n any except printed form. . . meant for either print or recorded authorial voice, but not for live or non-authorial voice. . . will make no sense unless heard in live or recorded voices, male and female, or read as if so heard. . . intended for monophonic authorial recording, either disc or tape. . . for monophonic tape and visible but silent author. . . may be said to have been composed for 'printed voice'. . . print, monophonic recorded authorial voice, stereophonic ditto in dialogue with itself, live authorial voice, live ditto in dialogue with monophonic ditto aforementioned, and live ditto interlocutory with stereophonic et cetera, my own preference. . . " You decide. . . But then should you. . . Well, yes, of course, we are here to have a good time after all. Altogether now, chorally, "On with the Story!" Indeed. Frame-Tale -- How to write fiction with scissors in many fewer hours than that other guy with his whole cut-up thing that no one wants to read.Ambrose His Mark, Water-Message, Lost in the Funhouse (The Ambrose stories) -- Please take a gander at these stories when you get around to placing LETTERS on your calendar. Character Ambrose will be recycled there. Lost in the Funhouse -- JB: For whom is the funhouse fun? DFW: For whom is the funhouse a house?With this dialogue we see history shift from the postmodern to the post-postmodern, or at least an attempt at the post-post. Famously, DFW wrote his "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" in the margins of this here very story. That's reason enough to read it. And who takes DFW seriously when he says those unnice things about our Barth-man? You say mean things about your father all the time, too.Menelaiad -- Perhaps the crowning achievement of this collection of literary stunts and dares. Having sent his (unneeded, but foisted) student assistants into the stacks to discover frame-tales and stories about stories and stories with stories inside them and such like (you remember 1001 Nights etc?) his results indicated that no story-within-story had been written which bored down more than four (or five) stories deep, i.e., a story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story. "Ah," said Herr Barth, "I can indeed do much better! I can go as deep as seven stories-within-stories-within-etcetera. . . ." And he did. The result looks something like this:"'"'"'"Love!"'"'"'" Or, better:"'"'"'"Speak!" Menelaus cried to Helen on the bridal bed,' I reminded Helen in her Trojan bedroom," I confessed to Eidothea on the beach,' I declared to Proteus in the cave-mouth," I vouchsafed to Helen on the ship,' I told Peisistratus at least in my Spartan hall," I say to whoever and where- I am. And Helen answered: [vide supra.Will that drive you mad? How about sitting in the audience at Boston College on the eve of a wintery storm whilst Herr Meister Barth reads the entire damn thing inclusive of visual aids by way of cue cards keeping count of all of that '"' and '''. Well, that was the night he (re)met his bride to be and future book dedicatee, Shelly.Passionate Virtuosity, indeed.
Bookended (almost) with two rather exceptional stories, "Ambrose His Mark" and "Anonymiad", with an absolute knockout in the middle, John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse astonishes and disappoints in almost equal measure. When he's on, as in the aforementioned stories, he's almost unbeatable, and when he's not on (almost every other story in the collection), he's almost unbearable.The postmodern bent to most of the stories contained here largely works against the author, though when employed well, is both playful and poignant. "Lost in the Funhouse" is, for all intents and purposes, a perfect short story. The imagery (the funhouse mirrors, which Barth revisits through repeated phrases in the story) and the keen eye for detail (Ambrose wonders if he could see forever in the funhouse mirrors by using a periscope, thus employing the imagery of the Second World War that hangs over every scene in the story) enable the it to rise above his constant infatuation with the seams in the narrative. That is, these characters exist doubtlessly as characters, and yet he is still able to breathe life into them and, to employ a tired phrase, make them come alive on the page. Ambrose's awkwardness is impeccably crafted, and his disdain for the world (the desire for a button to immediately and painlessly end one's life, and yet the understanding to note the ticket taker wasn't cruel, only "vulgar and insensitive") feels real and believable. And all the good will that he earns from so beautifully crafting a story like "Lost in the Funhouse," he wastes on "Menelaiad." I'm certain that there's an audience for this pretentious nonsense, but I am certainly not among them.I'd recommend stories from this collection, though I'd hesitate to recommend the whole book. A familiarity with Greek mythology is recommended.
What do You think about Lost In The Funhouse (1988)?
I read this book with speed of light under the pressure of finals deadline and I don't really enjoy it. Yet, it is a very witty work. Where do you can find another story that uses Spermatozoon as the main character to contemplate the meaning of its own existence and its journey while swimming toward the ovum? The book is also very challenging especially the Menelaiad in which there is seven level of narrations. What a mind boggling story! Life Story is also interesting. Where do you can find another story whose narrator humiliates the reader by calling them print oriented bastard? Haha. Certainly, the author does not intend to give you an easy reading. He will not let you immerse in the story. He will annoy you every time with his sarcastic comment on the limitation of language and fictionality of fiction and even reality! Well, maybe I will reread this book next time slowly for the genuine pleasure of reading.
—Dian Natalia
Reading this collection made me mad at my undergraduate profs from SF State U from the early '80s who never bothered to teach me that Postmodern Literature (Well, the postmodern novel) not only existed in America but was born in America. Why did we feel compelled to ignore Joseph Heller and John Barth (and even Don DeLillo until White Noise) and rather buy it back from Italo Calvino and Milan Kundera in overpriced trade paperbacks fostered upon us by Reaganite American psychos in publishing hell-bent on inventing ways to make us spend twice as much on a product we needed only half as much. Was a John Barth pocketbook, perhaps, not good enough for the girls with big hair? Was all that padding really necessary in the shoulders of the blazers? Did we really need to import Duran Duran and convince David Bowie to fuck art and dance when we had the Violent Femmes, Husker Du, The Replacements, Tom Waits, and Prince in our Midwestern backyard?--well, Waits was in LA but you know what I mean. Such are the mysteries of history and the mistakes that a cultures makes. We passed over Motown too for the Beatles (and all of those other impossibly bad British geysers who followed in their wake).That's about all I have to say about that. Barth nailed it. Sure, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is perhaps more lighthearted and accessible--but, hell, if you're not educated enough to know the Iliad and the Odyssey then you probably don't want to read any Pomo novels anyway. Lost in the Funhouse is fucking brilliant--in that perfect, self-reflexive Pomo way--and beyond it even.Although I wonder less if I might be a character in a novel than how I can become a character in a novel.This is not a review review; it's a reaction. The first action was reading the book. Now you.
—Lee Foust
Barth is such a lyrical writer, especially compared to most of the brooding postmodernist set. Just look at the opening story, "Night-Sea Journey." Gorgeous in its imagery, rich with philosophical inquiry, it's worthy of Calvino.And Barth doesn't limit himself, he gracefully steps from style to style, going from that to weird biographies to formal experiments to lyrical, haunting childhood tales. Above all, the whole thing is a big, long mash note in love with the writing process.I get the feeling people don't read Barth as much anymore. The influence on David Foster Wallace is unmistakable, so if you dig DFW, go read Barth. This and Giles Goat-Boy are both phenomenal.
—Andrew
