Done with Mirrors: Restoring the Authority Lost in John Barth's Funhouse

Author(s): Marjorie Worthington

Source: Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 114-136
Published by: Hofstra University
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Done with Mirrors:

Restoring the Authority
Lost in John Barth's Funhouse

MarjorieWorthington

though narrative self-consciousness is by no means specific to the

contemporary period, the particularly rampant metafictional self-reflexivity demonstrated in Lost in the Funhousehas often been touted as one
of the principal traits of postmodern fiction. As Linda Hutcheon says,
"What we tend to call postmodernism in literature today is usually characterized by intense self-reflexivity and overtly parodic intertextuality"
("Historiographic"3). Postmodern fiction, then, often exhibits a metafictional quality.Metafiction is typically defined as "fiction about fictionthat is, fiction that includes within itself a commentary on its own
narrative and/or linguistic identity" (Hutcheon, Narcissistic11). In other
words, metafiction focuses as much if not more on its own processes of
creation as on a "story" in the usual sense. John Barth, widely considered to be the preeminent American metafictionist, directly confronts
issues of selfhood and authorship in his Lost in the Funhouseseries.1
However, instead of challenging the primacy of authorship, Barth's
metafictional experiments serve to cement the author into a position of
authority over the text. Linda A. Westervelt writes: "John Barth ... takes
the inner division that results from self-consciousness and, by metaphoric extension, makes it a resource-namely, the subject of his fiction" (42).
Many of Barth's works not only employ but also thematize the complications arising from an increasingly intrusive narrative self-consciousness
that arises, according to Jerome Klinkowitz, from Barth's sense that his
era

47.1 * Spring 2001 * 114

Literature
Twentieth-Century

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had rejected the Cartesian definition of ego so central to traditional novelistic design. A hero could no longer speak with confidence and coherence and so define himself, since under
contemporary philosophical pressure the old cogito,ergosum had
become a farcically painful lie.
(408)
Although Barth's heroes are unable to define themselves through their
narratives,they experience an almost desperate need to continue the attempt.The result is that most of the stories in the series depict narrators
as authors so aware of themselves and so concerned with the effect of
this awareness on their waning creative powers that they cannot avoid
continually inserting their presence into the stories they narrate.Their
overt authorial presence threatens to derail the narratives,making them
unable to come to a fruitful end. Instead, they twist and turn on themselves, leaving the reader with the difficult and perhaps impossible task
of sorting out product from process, story from narration.
Because of the intricacy of these stories, much of the critical discussion surrounding Lost in the Funhousehas focused on the increased burden of interpretation that metafiction forces on the reader.The argument
has often been made that the intricacy of the text, coupled with the
apparent failure of the narrator to control and shape the story, forces the
reader to construct a meaning for the text and thereby to participate in
the construction of the work itself. In the face of postmodern indeterminacy, interpretive authority no longer resides with authors, and singularity of meaning no longer exists.As Deborah A.Woolley puts it, criticism
about metafiction
substitutes a heroics of text and language for the older heroics of
creative genius and imagination. The text . . accepts the existentialist challenge to confront the lack of a center at the heart of
(460)
language and to dwell in that void.
Many critics have pointed out that Lost in the Funhouseinvites such an
interpretation by repeatedly suggesting that traditional narrative forms
and the authors who construct them have lost their power to find or
depict a coherent meaning.
However, what is often overlooked is metafiction's inherent and inevitable preoccupation with the creative power of the author.At the same
time that they lament the diminished capacity of the narrator to con-

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MarjorieWorthington

struct a proper story, the self-conscious moments in Lost in the Funhouse

point necessarily to the existence of a creator, of an author.When I use
the term author,I am not referring to the actual figure ofJohn Barth but
to what Inger Christensen calls the "fictional author,"the narrator who
is ostensibly also the author of the text he narrates.As Christensen says,
The historical author will of course always exist outside and
apart from the work itself, so that metafiction only operates with
an additional factor: the fictional author [who] places himself
inside the fictional world and figures as a structural element in
the novel.
(13)
What I will focus on is not the historical or actual figure ofJohn Barth,
but rather the extent to which authorship and authority are thematic
and structural concerns in his series. Lost in the Funhouseis not merely a
Kunstlerroman-esquechronicle of the life and development of an author;
the structural strategies it employs serve also as an attempt to recenterto reauthorize-the author in twentieth-century fiction.
There are several avenues through which critics have approached the
idea that metafiction in general and Lost in the Funhouse in particular
allow more freedom or demand more responsibility for interpretation
from the reader.2 Beverly Gray Bienstock anticipates this critical focus
on Barth's readers by arguing that Lost in the Funhouseaddresses the issue of"the capricious immortality of the work of art" by asking, "how
does the reader fit into this masquerade of immortal possibilities?" (72).
To answer this question, some critics have employed elements of reader
response theory in order to argue that the self-conscious intricacies of
Barth's text demand that readers become skillful enough to follow this
difficult text to its end. While mastery of the text may still elude them,
these readers will have been initiated into the select group qualified to
read metafiction. Beth A. Boehm points out this connection between
Barth's work and reader response theory when she says:"Barth creates
an audience of active, self-conscious readers capable of re-experiencing
the pleasures of discovery whenever they are confronted with a new puzzle" (118).3 Linda Hutcheon makes this same argument about metafiction in general when she posits that self-consciousness forces the reader
to acknowledge a text's fictionality and to participate, to "engage himself intellectually, imaginatively, and affectively in its co-creation" (Narcissistic7).Although readef response critics maintain that all texts demand

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Barth'sLost in theFunhouse

such interpretive participation from readers, Hutcheon argues that the

role of the reader is of even more crucial importance in metafiction. Because the text is so self-consciously fictional, she argues, the reader'sinterpretation is particularly necessary to imbue the text with meaning.
Deconstructionists have made a similar case for the importance of
the role of the reader-in all texts, not just metafictional ones-by means
of the Derridian concept of decentering, which results in the free play
of linguistic signifiers and posits that meaning is not fixed but contextual, fleeting, nonexistent. Such a theory,Brian Edwardsargues,"insists(minimally stated) upon reader participation in creating meaning and texts
within the freeplay of language" (266).4 The reader is charged with the
responsibility for making meaning and interpreting the text because, the
deconstructionist argument goes, the text no longer provides a singular,
authoritative meaning-if indeed it ever did.
This "reduction of traditional forms of authority" clears the way for
readerparticipationin the construction of textual meaning (Edwards265).
Many critics have pointed out the extent to which Lost in the Funhouse
invites such an interpretation by asserting, as the selection called "Life
Story" does, that "the old analogy between Author and God ... can no
longer be employed" (Lost 125). The text further lends itself to a deconstructive reading in that many of the stories are about the inability to
tell a proper story or the inability of traditional narrative forms to hold
up to contemporary narrativeneeds, as if"the medium and genre in which
he worked ... were moribund if not already dead" (Lost 118). Thus, the
text almost asks to be deconstructed, as it claims that authority once did
but no longer does rest with either the author or the text. In fact, the
narrator of "Life Story" emphasizes the immense responsibility of the
reader when he says:"your own author bless and damn you his life is in
your hands.... Don't you think he knows who gives his creatures their
lives and deaths? Do they exist except as he or others read their words?"
(124). The implication here is that it is the reader, not the author, who
holds the ultimate power over a narrative.
It is, however, not that simple. What the text suggests on one hand,
it denies on the other. At the same time that Lost in the Funhouseproclaims the supremacy of the reader and reduces the author from the status of godlike creatorto struggling fictional character,it nevertheless makes
that author-character the thematic and structural crux of many of the
stories it contains. Even as the metafictional elements of Lost in the Fun-

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MarjorieWorthington

house project a new direction for late twentieth-century fiction, closer

examination reveals that they also serve to revalidate the very tenets of
traditional narrative that they ostensibly repudiate: the centrality of authorial authority and the creative power of the individual. Similarly,while
metafiction in general allows, even demands, a new and more powerful
role for the reader, it simultaneously demonstrates the continuing need
for a consciously constructing authorial figure. What I mean is: a text
that thematizes a self-conscious awareness of the processes of its own
construction unavoidably thematizes the importance of its constructor.
Works that constantly point to themselves as texts or fictions, that refer
continually to their fictionality, simultaneously point to the necessity of
the existence of the artist or author who created them. By claiming to
be unable to control the story he is crafting, the author-narrator demonstrates his continued presence in and creative influence over the text.
By assertinghis failure,he simultaneously assertshis (albeit waning) power,
illustrating that the self-consciousness, the self-reflexivity of metafiction
is simultaneously and necessarily a recognition of authorial presence.
The argument that metafiction is inherently author-focused is particularly relevant to a discussion about Lost in the Funhousebecause both
its structure and its content focus on issues of narrative and authorship.
Although deconstructionists have rightly pointed to this text as a demonstration of how meaning and authority are decentered, Lost in the Funhouserepresents at the same time an attempt to maintain a firm grasp on
the power of author-ity. Despite the critical celebration of the "birth of
the reader"that surroundsmetafiction (Barthes 148),5 a close textual reading of Lost in the Funhousereveals one of its primary projects to be the
resuscitation of a supposedly dead author who struggles to retain the
ability to construct a narrative.Lost in the Funhousejuxtaposes elements
of the self-reflexive narrative with the self-conscious creator in order to
posit an intricate, inextricable relationship between them, thereby reaffirming the notion that at the helm of every narrative there must exist
an agenic creator, or author. What has often been touted, then, as the
preeminent postmodern urtext actually representsa simultaneous attempt
to reestablish the authority of the author, the center of the subject, and
the literary traditions of an earlier period.6
Many of the stories in this series feature a self-reflexive narratorwho,
we are led to understand, is the actual creator, the "fictional author" of
the narrative.This fictional author bewails the fact that he cannot seem

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

to construct a story in which his own presence does not overwhelm the
action, a plight that, according to Heide Ziegler, illustrates that the "Romantic author who consciously begins to intrude into his own fiction
must eventually become the postmodern author who is no longer able
to withdraw from it" (91). Simultaneously, the protagonist that this toopresent narratordescribes is struggling with the different but related problem of an overdeveloped self-consciousness which keeps him from directly
experiencing his own life.
This pairing of the stultifying self-consciousness of the main character and the crippling self-reflexivity of the narrative is evident, for example, in "Life Story,"which is about an author struggling to write an
entertaining and meaningful story at the exact midpoint of his life, which
is exactly two-thirds of the way through the twentieth century. It seems
to him that the literary vehicle available to him at this time (Monday,
June 20, 1966) is too "self-conscious, vertiginously arch, fashionably solipsistic,unoriginal-in fact a convention of twentieth-century literature"
(114). Thus the narrator recognizes that the problems he is facing are
problems facing literature in general at this point in the century. He describes his literary efforts this way:
Another story about a writer writing a story! Another regressus
in infinitum! Who doesn't prefer art that at least overtly imitates
something other than its own processes?That doesn't continually
proclaim "Don't forget I'm an artifice!"?That takes for granted
its mimetic nature instead of asserting it in order (not so slyly
after all) to deny it, or vice-versa?
(114)
However, the apparent response to this claim that contemporary literature is too self-involved is Lost in the Funhouse-a series of stories that
repeatedly depict that very self-consciousness. Similarly, the narrator in
the story called "Title" laments,"Oh God comma I abhor self-consciousness. I despise what we have come to" (110), but then embarks on that
very self-consciousness as a "temporary expedient" in order "to turn ultimacy, exhaustion, paralyzing self-consciousness and the adjective weight
of accumulated history . . . against itself to make something new and
valid, the essence whereof would be the impossibility of making something new.What a nauseating notion" (106).This is one of the basic contradictions or paradoxes of this text: although the narrators deplore the
seeming ubiquity of contemporary narrative self-consciousness, no oth-

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MarjorieWorthington

er means of construction is available to them. They hate being "meta"

but cannot seem to avoid it.
At work here is Barth's oft-cited notion that his writing represents
what he called "the literature of exhaustion." In his 1967 essay by that
title, Barth describes the literatureof exhaustion as representing"the usedupness of certain forms or exhaustion of certain possibilities" in literature (70). Novelistic fiction, Barth argues, has already said, done, and
imagined everything that can be said, done, or imagined; it is no longer
possible for fiction to follow the modernist imperative to "make it new."7
For example, the narrator of"Life Story" gets most of the way through
his narration and is still unable to establish what he calls a "ground-situation," or a basis for a good or meaningful story in this medium which
is "moribund if not already dead" (Lost 118). In "The Literature of Exhaustion,"however, Barth says that the fact that the genre is moribund is
"by no means necessarily a cause for despair" (70).8 Instead, this lack of
meaningful story can becomethe meaningful story, which thereby "turns
the artist'smode or form into a metaphor for his concerns" (78). In other words, Barth argues that fiction should both portray and become-or
be performative of-the postmodern exhaustion he discusses. Similarly,
the "Life Story" narrator eventually realizes that he should regard "the
absence of a ground-situation, more accurately the protagonist's anguish
at that absence and his vain endeavors to supply the defect, as itself a
sort of ground-situation" (Lost 123). Neither the article nor the story is
saying, then, that art is no longer possible or that art can no longer have
meaning (as Barth is often misunderstood as having said). Rather, the
argument is that because traditional narrativeforms have been "exhausted," a good artist must respond by depicting that very exhaustion.
And that is ostensibly what the narrator of"Life Story" attempts to
do. After spending two-thirds of his lifetime writing novels, "it was perhaps inevitable that one afternoon the possibility would occur to the
writer of these lines that his own life might be a fiction, in which he
was the leading or an accessory character"(113). He decides to write a
story about a character who believes he is a character in someone's fiction, which would of course be a story about himself. This character
suddenly and self-consciously recognizes his creator's,his author's,existence, and "Life Story" starts out to be about the writing of that story.
However, in the process of writing the story, the narratorrecognizes that
he cannot be a fictional character because

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

he could demonstrate by syllogism that the story of his life was a

work of fact: though assaultsupon the boundary between life
and art, reality and dream, were undeniably a staple of his own
and his century's literature as they'd been of Shakespeare'sand
Cervantes's,yet it was a fact that in the corpus of fiction as far as
he knew no fictional character had become convinced as he had
that he was a character in a work of fiction. This being the case
and he having in fact become thus convinced it followed that his
conviction was false.
(125-26)
Whereas critics like PatriciaWaugh argue that it is this metafictional selfconsciousness that helps to blur the line between art and reality, and to
"explore the possible fictionality of the world outside the literary fictional text" (2), it is this very self-consciousness that assuresthe narrator
of"Life Story" that he is indeed real, that his life is factual. In the case of
"Life Story," narrative self-consciousness does not lead to the recognition of the fictionality of life; instead, the narrator'sawareness of himself
as a self-conscious being allows him to conclude that he is not, after all,
a character in someone else's fiction. However, while the narrator'sselfconsciousness serves to reestablish his personhood or reality by convincing him that he could not possibly be fictional, that same
self-consciousness stands in the way of his successfully completing the
story he set out to write. Once he recognizes that he is not a fictional
character in someone else's fiction, it suddenly becomes impossible for
him to write the story about a character who is.
"Life Story" is indicative of many of the stories in Lost in the Funhouse in that, perhaps in response to "The Literature of Exhaustion," it
acts as an attempt to demonstrate the "used-upness" of modern literary
traditions.In this series, seemingly pointless and meandering stories chronicle the ostensible inability of contemporary narrativeforms to tell a proper or interesting story or to provide any manner of or route to "truth."
For example, the story titled "Echo" depicts the character of Narcissus looking into the pool and desiring immediate and direct access to
the image he sees there, not knowing that that image is of himself-and
not even of himself undistorted, but an image of himself inaccurately
reflected by the pool. Narcissus tries but cannot truly find, see, or know
himself without the interference of a screen of reflection. Heide Ziegler
calls attention to "the double meaning of the word 'self-reflection"' as

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MarjorieWorthington

Narcissus moons oveYthe reflection of himself that he sees in the pool,

and becomes lost thereby in self-reflection-in reflecting on that selfuntil the gods pity him and turn him into the eponymous flower (91).
Narcissus spends eternity loving, longing for, and being denied unmediated access to himself. Instead, he can only see his image, or the
narrativized reflection of reality his image in the pool represents. He is
so taken with his own reflection that he can do nothing but stare at it
and sigh. Both the narrative of his life and the narrativized image created by his reflection in the pool end here in the cave, mired in Narcissus's fascination with himself, stuck in his self-reflection. "Echo," then,
makes a clear connection between the character of Narcissus and the
author of the self-reflexive narrative (yet a third meaning for the term
in order to demonstrate the unfortunate result when an
self-reflection)9
author (Narcissus) can do nothing but refer endlessly to his own narrative reflection. The story of Narcissus represents the self-reflexive narrative so in love with itself that it cannot do other than refer to itself and
cannot, therefore, achieve self-knowledge or a properly fruitful narrative
end10 but can only "linger forever on the autognostic verge" (Lost 100).
"Echo" then, serves as a warning that the self-reflexive fiction so popular at the time of its publication can act as a trap,alluring yet ultimately
unproductive and stifling.
But Narcissus is not alone in the cave.When he attempts to speak,
are reflected back to him by Echo, the nymph whose wonwords
his
derful storytelling kept Hera distracted while Zeus frolicked with mountain nymphs, and who was subsequently cursed forever merely to repeat
what is said in her presence. Echo is no longer able to make up her own
stories; she can only reproduce those told her by others. The narrator of
the story warns, however, that although her words are not her own, Echo
still manages to be a storyteller through the manner in which she repeats what she is told: "She edits, heightens, mutes, turns others' words
to her end" (Lost 97). When Narcissus enters the cave with the pool,
Echo instantly falls in love with him and repeats, alters, and shapes his
words into a love narrative of her own:
I can't go on.
Go on.
Is there anyone to hear here?
Who are you?

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

You.

I?
Aye.
Then let me see me!
See?
A lass!Alas.
(98)11
In thus speaking to Echo, Narcissus believes he is speaking to himself, or
at least a strange and oddly reflected version of himself, and he cannot
resist that reflection: "No use, no use: Narcissus grows fond; she speaks
his language" (99-100). What Narcissus really loves is not himself but
the narrativized version of himself that he gets from Echo and from his
reflection in the pool: "it was never himself Narcissus craved, but his reflection, the Echo of his fancy" (99). Echo fools Narcissus into loving
her story when he thinks he loves only himself, illustrating that she is
still able to construct a convincing narrativedespite the fact that the words
she must use are not original and not even her own.
Furthermore, Echo's attempts at narrativeconstruction are more successful than Narcissus's;while Narcissus "perishes by denying all except
himself," Echo "persists by effacing herself absolutely" (99).While Ziegler refers to Echo's love for Narcissus as "the story [being] in love with
its author" (93), my argument establishes Echo as the author in love with
the figure she attempts to narrativize:Narcissus. As author, Echo effaces
herself absolutely in order to reflect and depict the story of Narcissus,
and is thus able to persist by creating a more traditional, un-self-reflexive narrative.However, although she has withdrawn as much as possible
from the narrative she constructs, she cannot withdraw completely; her
authorial authority remains present and intact. In this way, Echo represents the successful author as a realist, constructing mimetic narratives
by repeating what she has witnessed, yet exerting constant creative influence over those narrativesas she "edits, heightens, mutes, turns others'
words to her end." It is Echo who is ultimately able to survive long after
the demise of poor self-reflexive Narcissus. The implication in "Echo"
then, is that traditional mimetic fiction will outlast current metafictional
narrativetrends and that the individual creative genius of the author necessarily lurks behind every successful narrative construction no matter
how mimetic that narrative may seem.
It is somewhat surprising perhaps to encounter this notion of the

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MarjorieWorthington

actively constructing author embedded in what is usually considered to

be the quintessential postmodern or "experimental" work of fiction.The
ostensible purpose of these experiments was to sound the death knell of
traditional narrative enterprises, which had lost their power to create
meaningful fiction. Both critics and Barth himself have usually agreed
that the project of Lost in the Funhousewas to comment on the failure
and exhaustion of traditional narrative forms and strategies and to create
art from the self-conscious assertion that new art is no longer possible.
Clearly, I am making an altogether different claim, in concert with Max
F Schultz's assertion that Barth "is not an errant realist guilty of formalist perversions so much as a radical preservationist looking for ways to
conserve old and new storytelling" (408). Rather than being an argument for new fictional forms, the reclamation of the authorial authority
demonstrated in "Echo" acts as the revalidation of traditional narrative
techniques.
The concentration on authorial authority in this story is striking,
especially since the time of its publication roughly coincides with the
first literary theoretical rumblings about the death of the author and the
rise of the importance of reader involvement in the text. My point is
that at the same time that Lost in the Funhouseseems to invite increased
reader participation in the construction of textual meaning, it also engages in an attempt to revalidate the figure of the author as a powerful
and conscious constructor of narrative.This move appears in opposition
to the idea that traditionalnovelistic forms are no longer powerful enough
to result in great fiction, or that the authority for meaning-making no
longer resides with an author. Rather, reestablishing the importance of
the author serves simultaneously to reestablish those traditional forms as
the very ones that can save postmodern fiction from the self-centered
slump of metafictional reflexivity.
This endeavor to reinstate the author as the center of textual importance is evident in many of the stories in Lost in the Funhouse,including the story that is arguably the most notable (and noted) example
of self-reflexive narrative:"Lost in the Funhouse." This story depicts a
young boy named Ambrose getting lost in a funhouse on a beach boardwalk and vacillates between telling that story and discussing the telling
of that story:

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

He has come to the seashore with his family for the holiday, the
occasionof theirvisit is Independence
Day, the most importantsecular
the
United
States
holidayof
ofAmerica.A single straight underline is
the manuscript mark for italic type, whichin turnis the printed
equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the
customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention. (69)
This digression from the story to a discussion of the use and meaning of
italics calls attention simultaneously to the fact that the book is a piece
of printed material and to the fact that the narrative itself is also a construction where certain words are emphasized, certain parts considered
more noteworthy than others.
Interestingly,however, this construction-this narrative-is apparently
moving increasingly beyond the constructor's control. Several pages into
this rambling, digressive story, we are informed that
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?
(75)
The narrative is stalled somehow, snagged on its self-conscious deviations, and we are left to wonder why it is that, while "most go along
without difficulty,"this narrative seems to have lost its way. Not only is
it not progressing fast enough, but the narrator worries at regular intervals that "we will never get out of the funhouse" and "At this rate our
hero, at this rate our protagonist will remain in the funhouse forever"
(74, 75). The failure of the narrative to progress in a timely fashion will
trap little Ambrose forever in the funhouse, making him similarly unable
to progress.Just as Ambrose is lost in the funhouse, then, so are the narrator and reader lost in the funhouse of this narrative construction.
In fact, the connections are many between Ambrose's plight and the
plight of this narrative.Just as the narrative is focused more on its own
processes than the telling of a realistic story, the character of Ambrose is
consistently too conscious of himself to engage directly with his surroundings.Ambrose narrateshis existence to himself, and instead of simply
having an experience, he feels the constant need to distance himself from
that experience through a veil of mental description. For example, during a sexual encounter he had once had with Magda:

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MarjorieWorthington

though he had breathed heavily, groaned as if ecstatic, what he'd

really felt throughout was an odd detachment, as though some
one else were Master. Strive as he might to be transported, he
heard his mind take notes upon the scene: This is what they call
(81)
passion. I am experiencingit.
Like so much in this story, what happens in and to the narrative is mirrored by what happens to Ambrose. The fear expressed by the narrator
that the story is stuck and will never be able to progress to a proper
ending mirrorsAmbrose's similar fear that he will be trapped in the funhouse forever.And just as Ambrose masks or copes with his fears by consciously constructing a veil of story between himself and the events around
him, the narrator constructs a similar veil of self-reflexive musings about
the nature of narrative around the story of Ambrose in the funhouse.
The self-reflexivity of the narrative serves to exteriorize Ambrose's selfconscious self-narration.
It is while he is at his most self-absorbed that Ambrose takes the
wrong turn that gets him lost in the funhouse. In a truly Narcissistic
move, Ambrose gets lost in self-reflection while viewing his altered image in the funhouse mirrors. Unlike Narcissus, however, Ambrose realizes that the mirrors do not provide a truly accurate reflection and do
not allow him direct access to himself: "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" (81-82).12 Nevertheless, Ambrose gets so involved in his own reflections on his own reflection that it is here in this
room that both he and the story go astray.He takes a wrong turn and
suddenly, now "Ambrose is off the track, in some new or old part of the
place that's not supposed to be used" (80). The narrator informs us that
it is here, in the mirror room, that the misstep occurs: "That'sjust where
it happened, in that last lighted room: Peter and Magda found the right
exit; he found one that you weren't supposed to find and strayedoff into
the works somewhere" (82). Just as the narrative has become preoccupied with its own workings, Ambrose has become lost in the inner workings of the funhouse; just as the narrative has gone off its track toward
the proper conclusion, Ambrose has gone off the track toward the end
of the funhouse. It is important to note that the moment Ambrose goes
astrayinto the inner workings of the funhouse is the moment when he
is at his most self-reflexive.

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

Furthermore, Ambrose's experiences in the funhouse can be directly correlated to the trajectory of the narrative entire. In the same way
that his self-awareness prevents Ambrose from forgetting himself long
enough to have an experience unalloyed by self-narration, the self-conscious preciousness of the narrative prohibits it from progressing with
the story.While Ambrose worries that he will never become a "regular
person," the narrator evinces a certain amount of anxiety over whether
this story will follow the traditional narrative structure described (and
illustrated) as a variant of Freitag'sTriangle (93, 91)-in other words,
whether this will become a "regular narrative."
But it won't. At the same time that Ambrose gets lost by going "off
the track, in some new or old part of the [funhouse] that's not supposed
to be used," the narrative has similar problems: "the plot doesn't rise by
meaningful steps but winds upon itself, digresses, retreats,hesitates, sighs,
collapses, expires" (92). Clearly, the narrative itself has taken on the attributes of a funhouse-a funhouse in which we and it have become
trapped and lost, with little hope of getting to the proper end. The narrator knows what that end should be, but is unable for some reason to
bring it about: "The climax of the story must be its protagonist's discovery of a way to get through the funhouse. But he has found none, may
have ceased to search" (92). This story, then, is performative in that it
simultaneously depicts the failure of the protagonist and the narrative
itself to reach the expected resolution. Just as Ambrose's self-reflections
caused him to get lost and now he cannot find his way out of the funhouse, the story is too focused on its own construction to make sufficient progress toward a conclusion and cannot, therefore, find its proper
ending.
However, his self-consciousness serves an important purpose for
Ambrose, who is often upset by the suspicion that he is not a real human being but rather a character in the story of his or someone else's
life and that this story is a kind of"portrait of the artist as a fiction"
(Marta 210). Ambrose realizes that if he is a fictional character, he is a
character doomed to a heightened self-awareness that others do not possess-doomed therefore to the recognition that he is merely a fictional
character.This realization saddens him, as he thinks
how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person.
He even foresaw,wincing at his dreadful self-knowledge, that he

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MarjorieWorthington

would repeat the deception, at ever-rarer intervals, all his

wretched life, so fearful were the alternatives.
(90)
Paradoxically,however, it this very sense of being too self-conscious to
be a real person that simultaneously provides Ambrose with the means
to construct a narrative subjectivity for himself. His constant self-conscious narration of events allows him to construct a selfhood where he
worries there may be none. If he cannot be a person, he can at least
construct himself a persona and thereby become, in a sense, the author
of himself. So even if he feels, like Narcissus, that he does not have direct access to real experience (access not mediated by a film of self-constructed narrative), these narrative constructions represent his attempts
to convince himself that he actually does exist.Through his constant narrativizing, Ambrose constructs a portrait of himself as a fiction and his
narratives constitute his selfhood. Ambrose is the artist and his selfhood
is his art.
Instead of continuing to search for the way out of this funhouse once
he gets lost in the mirror room,Ambrose begins constructing narratives,
"rehearsing to himself the unadventurous story of his life, narrated from
the third-person point of view" (92). He fantasizes about meeting someone in the dark of the funhouse, of opening his soul to that person and
helping her escape; he fantasizes about returning one day to the funhouse with his wife and child, of hugging his child to him when he
wants to know what a funhouse is. "He dreams of a funhouse vaster by
far than any yet constructed; but by then they may be out of fashion,
like steamboats and excursion trains" (93).While lost in this funhouse,
stuck in this narrative,Ambrose decides, "He could design such a place
himself" (93). The story ends as Ambrose, still lost in the funhouse, realizes somewhat unhappily that he is destined to be a person who will
"construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator-though
he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed"
(94). In other words, he decides reluctantly to be an author, a creator of
narrative funhouses, despite the dreary recognition that they may be going out of style.
Thus, not only is "Lost in the Funhouse" a narrative about the failure of self-reflexive narrative,as I have shown and as many others have
argued,13but it is also about the creation of an author. As the narrative
fails, trapping its protagonist in the funhouse forever, that protagonist de-

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Barth'sLostin the Funhouse

termines simultaneously to become an author.The failure of this narrative seemingly necessitates the emergence of a writer, of a creator-someone to witness and document that failure. In fact,"Lost in the Funhouse"
is the story of the creator of this particular story as well as the story of
its own creation. I would argue that Ambrose himself actually is the narrator (and therefore the ostensible constructor) of the story.
As noted earlier,Ambrose told to himself the events of his life from
the third-person point of view; this story is also narrated in the thirdperson point of view, so it is not unreasonable to suspect that the narrator actually is Ambrose. Furthermore, earlier in the story that third-person
point of view is interrupted by one of the instances where the narrator
bemoans the slow progress of the story-the only instance, however, that
is in the first person: "I'll never be an author" (83). It is instructive to
examine the entire paragraphin which that statement occurs:
"Let's ride the old flying horses!" Magda cried. I'll never be an
author. It's been forever already,everybody's gone home, Ocean
City's deserted, the ghost-crabs are tickling across the beach and
down the littered cold streets.And the empty halls of clapboard
hotels and abandoned funhouses.A tidal wave; an enemy air raid;
a monster-crab swelling like an island from the sea. The inhabitantsfled in terror.Magda clung to his trouser leg; he alone knew
the maze's secret. "He gave his life that we might live," said Uncle Karl with a scowl of pain, as he. The fellow's hands had been
tattooed; the woman's legs, the woman's fat white legs had. An
He yearned to tell Peter. He wanted to
astonishingcoincidence.
throw up for excitement. They hadn't even chased him. He
wished he were dead.
(83)
The paragraph begins in the present of the story, with Magda's suggestion. Then the narrator'sshow of discouragement leads into a description of the deserted Ocean City boardwalk.From that description emerge
several ofAmbrose's frequent fantasies about becoming a hero as the narrative once again resumes the third person, and the paragraph ends with
an internal description of Ambrose's thoughts. The brief emergence of
first-person narration is quickly glossed over and compensated for, but
the connection is nonetheless made between the self-conscious narrator
and the similarly self-conscious Ambrose; asAmbrose the child loses him-

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MarjorieWorthington

self in the reflection of the finhouse mirrors,Ambrose the narrator reveals himself through his constant self-conscious reflections.
Thus, at the heart of this failed or failing narrative,there is the consciously constructing figure of the narrator,who, while he may not always be able to control the progress of the narrative,nevertheless acts as
guide through and constant commentator on the action. Furthermore,
this constructing presence is simultaneously narrator and author of the
story he is narrating. The figure of Ambrose as author is constructed
through and by the telling of this story, an argument that becomes more
convincing in light of the myriad connections between the narrativeand
the character. In addition to its being a story about an author telling a
story about the creation of an author, the story, through its telling, performatively transforms the main characterAmbrose into an author ultimately able to narrate the story of his own creation as author. Here we
have the connection between the self and the ostensible author made
overt. The author,Ambrose, needs the narrative in order to narrate himself a "self."In turn, this need causes him to become an author. He determines to create funhouses for others because the curse of his
self-consciousness denies him the ability simply to enjoy them. Ambrose
needs the narrative-he needs to narrate-in order to be a person, in
order to have a self.
However, in the case of the Lost in the Funhouseseries as a whole,
that need is reciprocated: as much as the author needs the narrative,the
narrative simultaneously needs the author. For example, the story "Lost
in the Funhouse" is in constant threat of breaking down, of not finding
the appropriate end, of not getting through, or even into, the funhouse.
Things are not progressing as they should: "we will never get out of the
funhouse" (74) at this rate,"I'l never be an author" (83).The story threatens permanently to detour into one of its narrative perversions when it
should merely suggest-but not pursue-the possibility of a perverse
ending.14 In fact, it has been argued that "Lost in the Funhouse" does
end without the proper resolution, in that it ends without Ambrose's
triumphant emergence from the funhouse.15And actually,Ambrose never
does find his way out of the funhouse; he does not gain the knowledge
we expect him to gain-knowledge of"the way out." So at first glance,
this story does not seem to have the proper ending, because it does not
end the way one would expect.
On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that Ambrose does

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

gain a kind of knowledge-the sad knowledge that he is destined never

to leave the funhouse. His calling is not only to remain in the funhouse
forever, but to construct funhouses for others' enjoyment-to become
an author. Ambrose does not "linger on the autognostic verge" but instead is imbued with an Oedipal self-knowledge of his true identity as
an author.Thus this narrative does end productively: it creates an author
out of Ambrose. Furthermore, for Ambrose, the autognostic momentthe moment in which this becomes a productive narrative-is the same
moment in which Ambrose is confirmed in his authorship of this story
about how he became an author. That moment of recognition is the
moment in which Ambrose the author brings this, the story of his rise
to authorship, to a productive close. Furthermore, as I argued earlier,this
narrative creates its own author, as it is Ambrose himself who constructs
the story "Lost in the Funhouse."
Subsequently, the ultimate savior of this highly successful depiction
of narrative exhaustion must necessarily be a powerfully constructing
author. To some extent, Barth himself recognizes this necessity in "The
Literature of Exhaustion" when he concludes that contemporary fiction
must wend its way through the labyrinth of all that has already been said
and done and all that it is possible to say or do. He compares the author
to Menelaus, who "has got to hold fast while the Old Man of the Sea
exhausts reality'sfrightening guises so that he may extort direction from
him when Proteus returns to his 'true' self" (82). Menelaus, then, becomes the strong author figure who holds out and holds on until truth
is revealed.
In fact, in the Lost in the Funhousestory "Menelaiad,"Menelaus wants
both to win back the love of his wife Helen and to be able to tell the
story of that winning; he grasps the sea god for help. As in the essay,the
Menelaus of the story wants desperately to get through the lies and illusions to the real story, to get through the layers of clothing to his wife.
While holding on to Proteus, he cries, "When will I reach my goal
through its cloaks of story? How many veils to naked Helen?" (140).
Interestingly, however, the self that Proteus turns into is Menelaus himself, and Menelaus notices that the instructions he receives from Proteus
are spoken from his own mouth. By holding on, Menelaus has become
empowered to tell the story, and Menelaus the storyteller emerges as the
"true self," making clear the connection between Barth's essay and his
series of stories.

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MarjorieWorthington

Lost in the Funhouserepresents a fictional enactment of the essay's

rebellion against the death of the author, or what Barth calls the tendency of the "intermedia arts"to eliminate "the most traditional notion
of the artist: the Aristotelian conscious agent who achieves with technique and cunning the artistic effect" ("Exhaustion" 71). In the essay,
Barth scoffs at the notion that a text is less the result of one person's
artistic effort than an amalgam of different voices and forces. He argues
to the contrary that "not just any old body is equipped for this labor":
an author is "the virtuoso, the Thesean hero"who must "with the aid of
veryspecialgifts ... go straight through the maze to the accomplishment
of his work" (83, emphasis Barth's).Thus the author is necessary if we
are going to navigate through the exhausted forms of modern literature
toward newer and truer possibilities (which, as I have already argued, requires a simultaneous return to older traditions). Furthermore, Barth argues that the author is the true hero of contemporary literature and must
therefore be strong, capable, centered, and fully developed. So for Barth,
there truly is no need for despair, because the disintegrating narrative
forms will be either salvaged or recast by the heroic virtuosity of the
author.
In addition, this authorial virtuosity obviates the necessity for the
interpretive participation of the reader,as is demonstrated by the last story
in Lost in the Funhouse.The series ends with the image of the anonymous author of the "Anonymiad," having just launched his final missive
into the sea, convinced that no one will ever decipher, read, or even find
it. What is the writer's response to the idea that his work will encounter
no readers?"No matter,"he sighs, it is enough for him to know that on
"this noontime of his wasting day ... on a lorn fair shore a nameless
minstrel / Wrote it" (194). As this passage demonstrates, the interpretive
involvement of the reader is not necessary for the success of a text; the
virtuosity of the author is sufficient.
Clearly,this viewpoint does not so much signal an embrace of a reader-centered literary aesthetic as a reaction against it. It is certainly possible from my analysis to draw the conclusion that Barth is not the
harbinger of postmodern indeterminacy and malaise that he is so often
deemed to be. More likely, what it means to be "postmodern," in Barth's
case at least, is quite different from what we usually imagine. I have argued that the project of Lost in the Funhouseis not simply to demonstrate the exhaustion of modernist narrative forms but to reinvigorate

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Barth'sLost in the Funhouse

them by combining them with contemporary narrative strategies such

as self-conscious self-reflexivity. This rejuvenation, however, requires a
return to traditional principles of narrative,particularly that of the powerfully creative virtuosity of the author. As much as the ever-present
metafictional self-consciousness illustratesthe failure of language to construct a fixed and coherent meaning and asks or even demands a greater
interpretive investment from the reader, it also requires a recognition of
the creative enterprise of the fictional author.The true paradox of metafiction is that at the same time that it suggests an increased responsibility of
the reader, it also represents an attempt to restore and recentralize the
authority of the author.
Furthermore, this recentering of the author could be viewed as a
recentering of an essentialized, coherently depicted subject. It seems to
me that Barth's argument that a talented author figure is necessary to
lead literature through the maze of exhausted forms is also a recognition
of the necessity of a coherent, if constructed, subjectivity at the heart of
the narrative.If the narrative threatens to fail, it can and must be rescued
by the centralized figure of a coherent constructing subject as author.
Whereas Barth argues for the necessity in contemporary literature for
the heroic author who tries to control the narrativeproceedings and who,
in "Lost in the Funhouse," takes the form of the narrator,I would suggest that equally necessary in Barth's work is the coherent yet self-constructing subject of Ambrose, narrating his life to himself in the third
person. In Lost in the Funhouse (and possibly other metafiction) the self
in self-consciousness and self-reflexivity refers not only to the narrative
but also to an actual self constructed within that narrative-a self that is
essential for the narrative'spurposes.

Notes
1. In the author'snote, Barthwrites that the book is "neithera collection nor a
selection,but a series;though severalof its items haveappearedseparatelyin
periodicals,the serieswill be seen to havebeen meant to be received'all at
once' and as here arranged"(Lostix). Most critics,myselfincluded,takethis to
mean that the storiesin the book can and shouldbe takenas ableboth to
standindependentlyand to be readtogether.
2. My analysiscould productivelybe broadenedto include some of Barth's
other texts such as Chimeraor Letters,
which also focus on innovationsin nar-

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MarjorieWorthington

rativestructureand on authorialagency.However,becauseit is widely considered to be one of the preeminentmetafictionaltexts,Lostin theFunhouseoften

servesas the springboardfor criticaldiscussionof metafictionin general.I have
chosen to focus solely on this seriesin an effortnot only to reevaluatemajor
criticalreadingsof the text but also to reframeour understandingof the genre
of metafictionas a whole.
3. See also bothWesterveltand Marta.
4. See alsoBell.
5. See also Foucault.
6. Others havealso identifiedelementsin Lostin theFunhousethat recuperate
particularnarrativeforms.Heide Ziegler discusseswhat she callsthe "neoRomanticismof the postmodernauthor"(90). Max F Schulz,througha reading of Lostin theFunhouseas a unified novel insteadof a collection of short
stories,arguesthatBarthattempts"to fuse into one viable contemporaryform
the differentnovelisticmodes . .. of the nineteenthand twentiethcenturies,
and therebyto rejuvenatethe storytellingconventionsofWesternculture"
(397).
7. In a lateressay,"The Literatureof Replenishment,"Barthfurtheroutlineshis
definitionof postmodernismand commentson his 1967 essayby saying:
What my essay"The Literatureof Exhaustion"was reallyabout,so it
seems to me now,was the effective"exhaustion"not of languageor of
literaturebut of the aestheticof high modernism:that admirable,notto-be-repudiated,but essentiallycompleted"program"of what Hugh
Kennerhas dubbed"the Pound era." (66)
8. Or, as the narratorin "Title"states,this is "a stateof affairsmore tsk-tskthan
boo-hoo" (108). I mention this passagein orderto illustratethe connection
between"The Literatureof Exhaustion"and Lostin theFunhouse;the latteris
clearlya fictionalembodimentof the ideasespousedin the former.
9. In fact,Hutcheon uses the term narcissistic
narrative
to referto the kind of
textualself-awarenesstypifiedby metafiction.
10.JudithRoof writes:
As ideology,this patternof [narrative's]
joinder to productalso accounts for the countlessanalogiesto child/product-knowledge, mastery,victory,anothernarrative,identity,and even death-that occupy
the satisfyingend of the story. (xvii)

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Barth'sLostin the Funhouse

11.The fact that this exchangedimly echoes the ending of Beckett'sThe Unnameable
("I can'tgo on, I'll go on" [414]) is probablynot coincidental,as this
and many of the other storiesin Lostin theFunhousearepreoccupiedwith
reachinga satisfactorynarrativeending.
12.JanMartadiscussesthis partof the story in an effort to make more explicit
the connection between the issuesof this story and those of the seriesas a
whole, saying:"The inevitableimpositionof the realreflectingobject makes
pure reflectionimpossible,reinforcingthe union of self-reflectionand mimesis,
as we haveseen at the macro-textuallevel"(221).
13. See in particularboth Olson and Slaughter.
14. PeterBrookshas arguedthatnarrativemust tend toward"the correctend,"
and that this end is threatenedby "the dangerof short-circuit:the dangerof
reachingthe end too quickly"(103-04). Brooksarguesthat these possible
short circuitsor "perversions"
arepartof the pleasureof narrativein that we
threat
the
the
that
story mightgo awry only becausewe knowthat evenenjoy
it
will
not.
tually
15. See bothWesterveltand Schulz.

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