Lost in the Funhouse

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.

This book is without a doubt very clever and well-written. I tend to read “genre” books, but I'm branching out by reading a number of American literature pieces. This collection of short stories is one of the pieces I picked (by recommendation of an iTunesU course).

Most of the stories are related to one another. One of my favorites is the first: “Night-Sea Journey”. At first glance it seems to be the story of a fish, but reading it again, you'll find it is about something else entirely.

Another favorite was “Anonymiad”, which was actively entertaining, whereas other stories were more enlightening than entertaining.

I think the author intends to really have the reader question literature: what makes a story, how a story is told, and how we perceive stories. “Menelaiad” is an incredibly complex story that tells a story within a story within a story, and so on. It is a short story that required a long time to read with a lot of concentration.

If you like really thinking about the philosophy of storytelling mixed with experimental metafiction, you will likely enjoy this book. However, if you prefer swashbuckling adventure, leave this on the shelf.