Lost in the Funhouse
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
John Barth's lively, highly original collection of short pieces is a major landmark of experimental fiction. Though many of the stories gathered here were published separately, there are several themes common to them all, giving them new meaning in the context of this collection. As the characters search, each in his own way, for their purpose and the meaning of their existence, Lost in the Funhouse takes on a hiliarious, often moving significance.
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A dense, truly guard blade style work. Exceptionally unique stories and memorable moments, however this is double edged, and there is inherent exhaustion in trying to keep up with Barth's games (one of the stories, for instance, et cetera, is specifically designed to be seven paragraphs of seven different narrators speaking about seven different things that are wholly alien and nonsensical to the reader, until finding out what the structure was in the author's notes at the end of the book). So while the technical forms Barth presents are interesting, certainly unlike anything I've read before, it left me feeling empty often. I think this goes along with his inherent pessimism and criticism of narrative language as a whole which was one of his motivations for this book. Its interesting to read this while also reading Quixote, as they both are works of metafiction in their own right. However Quixote's satire is a joyful one, Funhouse's is cold and analytical. Quixote leaves me feeling inspired by the optimism literature can offer, Funhouse left me feeling inspired that the future of literary form must lie in labyrinthine spirals of syntax. Overall a lot of this book was truly over my head, much like the laughter above Ambrose's, the wordplay of which I just don't have much energy to attempt to decipher through a rereading.
