Deorigination of Literature in Lost in the Funhouse - 書虫俱樂部

John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, which is a series (Barth, Lost in the Funhouse xi), can be seen as “a modern ‘literature of exhaustion’” (Hutcheon 56) and replenishment. Barth argues that “[b]y ‘exhaustion’ I don't mean anything so tired as the subject of physical, moral, or intellectual decadence, only the used-upness of certain forms or the felt exhaustion of certain possibilities – by no means necessarily a cause for despair” (“The Literature of Exhaustion” 23). Therefore, he claims in “An Interview with John Barth” that the only way to replenish the used-up contemporary literature is going back to myth – the origin of literature. In other words, replenishment is actually “re-origination” – to rewrite or retell, to reconstruct, and to reorganize the original and traditional texts, which refers to classical Greek Mythology, and finally to echo them – that is parody (Zhang 199); for example, “Echo,” “Menelaiad,” and “Anonymiad.” However, there has become no origin since Barth originates the literature, what he tries to represent in Lost in the Funhouse, so he puts parodies in the second half of the series. Oppositely, it is deorigination of literature.

Life originates from the water, sea, and ocean; foetuses are gestated in amniotic fluid. Literature is like the ocean, and it is the reason why Barth compares him to a sailor (An Interview with John Barth) and takes the image of water as the symbol in Lost in the Funhouse; thus, the series begins with a sperm’s narration in the night-sea journey (if “Night-Sea Journey” is considered the first story). In “Water-Message,” Ambrose fancies the letter of the seed drifting on the ocean and gets epiphany of literature. In “Anonymiad,” the minstrel is marooned on an island of the ocean without reason, and he writes stories and casts seed(s) into the ocean. That is to say, literature, which is compared to the ocean, in order to shakes off the shadow of the exhaustion, needs new seed(s) to replenish it.

Love, which is associated with sexuality, is the foundation of the origin. According to Mistri articulation, “The theory of human genesis through sexual activity forms the basis of creation, fertility, myths, and Barth’s story” (151), Barth plays the sperm, the narrator of Night-Sea Journey, as the image of creatures’ genesis, and represents the sperm’s purpose – “consummation, transfiguration, union of contraries, transcension of categories” (11). In Barth’s “Night-Sea Journey”, the sperm calls “love” (13), “She” (10), and “Her” (10) repeatedly because he has an “official Heritage” and a “private legacy” (12). Ambrose, too, is aware of “the origin of [sexual, artistic, and philosophical] things” (Rice-Sayre 471) in “Lost in the Funhouse.” In “Echo,” Barth points out, “Over much presence appears to be the storyteller’s problem: Tiresias’s advice, in case of excessive identity and coitus irrequitus, is to make of withdrawl a second nature” (101). In “Menelaiad,” Menelaus questions why Helen chooses to marry him, and Helen answers: “ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘ “Love!” ’ ” ’ ” ’ ” (155). Furthermore, Helen insists that she never has intercourse with anyone but Menelaus. In short, according to the proofs here, sexual activity, which creates the origin, is founded on love, and that is the reason why Barth unifies them in Lost in the Funhouse.

Meanwhile, love in Lost in the Funhouse accompanies senselessness and meaninglessness; there is nothing but passion in love. In Night-Sea Journey, the sperm indicates that love is senseless (13), and “the desire that possesses [he] is Her bewitchment” (12), which exposes his craze, enthusiasm, and “passion” (12) toward Her, and this journey is like a “blind ambition” (5). Additionally, the sperm and his comrades appear in the night-sea and begin the journey of swimming without reason. They even do not know here they are from. In “Menelaiad,” Proteus explains to Menelaus that “Helen chose you without reason because she loves you without case, embrace her without question and watch your weather change” (161). Accordingly, love is senseless, meaningless, and reasonless, so are art and literature; consummation and origination are either.

Furthermore, the senselessness and meaninglessness of love can be connected with blank. In order to identify the blank, self-doubt and self-consciousness come out, and they could lead “identity crisis” (Fulmer 342). In “Ambrose His Mark,” Ambrose is nameless until he is stung by bee. Although he exists, he has no essence. Fulmer claims that “[h]is name or essence is a blank, and certainly in one sense he will never have an essence, because he is crated from nothing every moment” (339). Without a proper name, Ambrose has no identity even though he has the other nicknames, such as “Honig” and “Honey” (Lost in the Funhouse 15). He has the feeling of being and not being; however, they are not equal to the identity of a proper name, so his consciousness, not being an object, is nothing unless he is named (Fulmer 340). The nameless sperm of “Night-Sea Journey” even doubts that the night, the sea, and he himself do not really exist; everything is a dream (3). Likely, he has no essence out of his namelessness and lacking of faith. It is blank, nothing, and unknown. In “Menelaiad,” Menelaus questions his essence at Delphi, “Who am I?” (158). However, there is no answer: “ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘ “ ” ’ ” ’ ” ’ ” (158). There is nothing in the last layer; the origin is blank. Through doubting essence, human consciousness gets its own position, and it is self-begetting.

In order to keep the origin of the text, Barth chooses to record the original narration, and let the authorial voice be self-conscious. Echo in “Echo” plays a role as negative evidence. Because Echo cannot say out her own words but select and repeat what others have said; as a result, she becomes an editor of the originality as she meets Narcissuses:

As long as the original narration is spoken by another, it must be selected, modified, edited, or even heightened and turned. The originality will never be originality; it could be different or even opposite. Worthington argues, “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” (124). That is the reason why Barth composed the stories of the authorial voices, like “Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction” and “Menelaiad,” and even parodied and reorganized them. In addition, the oracle’s answer in “Menelaiad,” which has seven sets of quotation marks and is nothing at the center, is also a kind of decentralizing the origin.

On the other hand, the most remarkable example is “Autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction,” and it is obviously recorded on a tape or a disc and is played by “novel device” (36). In “Night-Sea Journey,” the sperm is the storyteller and narrator of the whole. “Menelaiad” is also composed in the same way, but it is more radical because there are seven layers with different people. Menelaus articulates when he is “switched on” (130), “Not my voice, I am this voice, no more, the rest has changed, rechanged, gone” (167), and “this isn’t the voice of Menelaus; this voice is Menelaus, all there is of him” (13). It is the authorial voice and self-consciousness of the character. Fulmer proclaims that “[n]arrators question their existence and pray the reader to read on so that they might live, or at other times, to quit reading so that they might die” (346). It echoes back the narrator in “autobiography: A Self-Recorded Fiction” at the beginning of the narration: “You who listen give me life in a manner of speaking” (35). The speaker not only emphasizes the audience who are listening but also begs their replies or reactions because the narrator’s awareness and essence depend on the cooperation of the audience (Krier 105).

However, according to “An Interview with John Barth,” there has become no origin since Barth originates the literature:

There is no period at the end [of ‘Autobiography’]. The tape, in the performed version back in the 1960s when we were doing these things on the lecture circuit,…had the tape spin out and the reels keep going around. The author, myself, steps out of the wing at that point and pushes a button on the tape machine, aborts the narrative. Or permits it to be prepared for rewind.

The tape is ready to rewind and ends up with blank; that is to say, recorded authorial voice can be “recycled” (Zhang 203) infinitely. Once Barth successfully reoriginates the used-up literature, rewriting and parodying classical Greek mythology, the origin has faded away. That is because literature becomes a circle, and writers can only convolute in the infinite. It is impossible to keep origination since someone has reached the origination; in addition, literature becomes “repetition” (Zhang 203). Therefore, reorigination is actually deorigination. Zhang proclaims that “[i]n ‘Menelaiad’ Barth connects the two ends—the past and the future with a twist to make a vicious circle in which the old myth is de-stereotyped, de-originated and dehistoricized” (204). Not only “Menelaiad,” but also Lost in the Funhouse is “a vicious circle.” The series, except for plotless “Frame-Tale,” begins with “Night-Sea Journey,” and ends up with “Anonymiad,” which is very similar to “Night-Sea Journey.” Their narratives start in the middle of the stories and in the ocean. The former is origination; the later is reorigination and parody. In “The literature of Replenishment,” Barth quotes Thomas Browne’s saying: “every man is not only himself…men are lived over again” (The Friday Book 74). In other words, literature has become circular repetition through reoriginating; that is “official Heritage” (Lost in the Funhouse 12) of the sperm/love/sexual activity – the way literature is replenished.

Since Barth deoriginates the origin of literature, Lost in the Funhouse has become a frame-tale. On the one hand, parody itself is a frame because the author must have to adopt the original text(s) and then rewrite and reconstruct it/them; otherwise, the writing is an origin not a parody. Krier states that “Echo’s existence is limited to Narcissus’ words or voicing of those words, but she ‘edits, heightens, mutes, turns others’ words to her end’ (p.97)” (111-2). Echo, as an editor of the originality, creates a parody out of her limitation of the curse. In “Menelaiad,” the characters, too, tell the story through seven layers of quotation marks, letting the audience lose in the narrative, and make the whole dialogue become a frame-tale. Except for “Frame-Tale,” the whole series is a frame-tale, and “Frame-Tale” has already hinted the audience that Lost in the funhouse is a frame-tale. “Once upon a time there was a story that began…” (Lost in the funhouse 1-2). “Frame-Tale” tells the story circularly and repetitiously, so is Lost in the funhouse. However, the audience still get lost in Barth’s funhouse. Gillespie indicates that “[e]ach half of the cycle Lost in the funhouse moves through seven stories; each half is parallel in the way it unfolds from a nucleus story containing the generative cosmic propositions” (225). Every tale refers to the former or echoes the later, and “Lost in the Funhouse” is the center of the text. It is Barth’s fun gimmick[1] of the Möbius strip – an endless, repetitious, and circular night-sea journey of literature. “On with the story. On with the story” (Lost in the Funhouse xii).

Barth, John. The Friday book: essays and other nonfiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

---.“An Interview with John Barth.” Chicago Review Ed. William Plumley 40.4 (1994): N. pag. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

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Fulmer, James Burton. “‘First Person Anonymous’: Sartrean Ideas of Consciousness in Barth's Lost in the Funhouse.” Studies in Contemporary Fiction 41.4 (Summer 2000): 335-47. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

Gillespie, Gerald. “Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse’: Short Story Text in Its Cyclic Context.” Studies in Short Fiction 12.3 (1975): 223-30. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafiction Paradox. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1980.

Krier, William J. “Lost in the Funhouse: ‘A Continuing, Strange Love Letter.’” An International Journal of Literature and Culture 5.1 (Fall 1976): 103-16. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

Mistri, Zenobia. “Absurdist Contemplations of a Sperm in John Barth’s ‘Night-Sea Journey.’” Studies in Short Fiction 25.2 (Spring 1988): 151-152. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

Rice-Sayre, Laura. “The Lost Construction of Barth's Funhouse.” Studies in Short Fiction 17.4 (1980): 463-73. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

Worthington, Marjorie. “Done with Mirrors: Restoring the Authority Lost in John Barth’s Funhouse.” Twentieth Century Literature 47.1 (Spring 2001): 114-36. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

Zhang, Benzi. “Paradox of Origin(ality): John Barth’s ‘Menelaiad.’” Studies in Short Fiction 32.2 (Spring 1995): 199-208. Ebsco. 15 Dec. 2008. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.

[1] Thom Seymour, “One Small Joke and a Packed Paragraph in John Barth’s ‘Lost in the Funhouse,’” Ebsco 16.3 (Summer 1979), 15 Dec. 2008 <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search>.