This blog post is the first in a series by Aster Luke, highlighting collections in the Koller-Collins Center and Robbins Library.
Oftentimes (surely there is a better word to start with) when you read a story, it is taking for granted how they (stories she means, she'll specify next time) us usually go, and how you're going to consume this story in particular (better?).
What an odd way to start. What kind of story feels the need to tell you explicitly what it is and how to read it? Lost In The Funhouse by John Barth, as it turns out.
I (the author, she means, her name is somewhere on the page I believe) found this gem of a book the same way I found every other book to come. The title sounded interesting and a quick investigation into what Lost In The Funhouse is and onto my list it goes.
I have a secret to tell you. Promise you won't tell anyone (really! she's being very honest)? I had thought that I'd found a real hidden gem. This wonderfully silly and strange and sometimes overbearing, book that read with that must so familiar to books from the past century and small town public libraries.
As it turns out, this is not exactly a "hidden" gem any more than "apples" are hidden on trees.
Now this an a very long winded way of telling you, my trusted reader, how I found this book.
Now (again?), the first thing, or one of the first things, that this book tells you is that some of the following stories are better consumed by not reading them. The other first thing (wouldn't that be the second?) is that these stories are new for this collection and are meant to tell an overarching theme. Now hold on! I can't bare to stay inside a pair of parentheses, for this. Why do you bring this up? You aren't planning on dissecting these stories for a theme. You're getting our poor lovely reader's hopes up. I'm very sorry, reader, but the author's made something of a blunder (but I don't play chess...) and I would like to apologize. Now (now who's doubling up on Now's), she may continue talking about what she really wants to talk about.
Stories that are about telling themselves—which Barth tells plenty of—were some of my favorites. 'Title' and the titular 'Lost In The Funhouse' both do this, albeit in different ways. 'Lost In The Funhouse' comments on its own pacing and structure numerous times, often negatively. It mentions that by now, we should have arrived at the funhouse, and why do we have to have this meaningless scene before they even get to the fair and why and why and shouldn't and shouldn't and what an adjective noun (no no, she's getting ahead of herself, that's 'Title's' gimmick).
Eventually, thankfully, the characters reach the fair. But when they're about to enter the funhouse, it seems they've already left it. To give you a sense of what happens next, I'll quote directly from my notes so I don't spoil to much more (she has neglected to tell you that these stories are hard to spoil given their nature).
"Briefly the story itself enters the fun house before leaving" (author's notebook 2).
(Should we do 'Title' now? I'm not sure you have much more to say about such an adjective, adjective story).
Well, reading back it does seem a bit short. I think I could talk about a bit more about the 'Lost In The Funhouse'.
(If you have no problem with it then I have no problem with it, carry on).
This story is also very interesting for the way it continues to tell the story of Ambrose. Almost entirely unrelated to either of the two previous stories but undoubtedly still the same Ambrose (of course, there couldn't be two people with the same name, that would be silly). I know that it must be the same Ambrose because Ambrose's daydreams are highly contagious. Whenever he lets his thoughts get away from him they have a tendency to take over the narrative. More than once I felt like I'd read a different story entirely before the narrator kindly reminded that Ambrose was still in a funhouse or by a river or wherever he might be. (Could we talk about 'Title' now?)
This story ('Title', of course), about halfway through the whole book, is a fill in the blank sort of story. However, the kind Mr. Barth has already done the heavy lifting and gone ahead and filled in the blanks with blanks. The result is a story where most of the details are "etcetera" or 'adjective' (oh my, she's made a mistake, the former example is actually from 'Life-Story', another very good story to be found in this same book). Interruption aside, 'Title' is a story that is nearly unhappily written, in fact by the end it —" well, read the book" (Barth, vii).
So, all of that to say (not that she said much), if you are a fan, my dear Reader, of influential , experimental literature then I recommend you find this book in the Robbins Library.
