Lost in the Funhouse

The motif of immortality, and of a story that extends into infinity, is a motif on constant loop in Lost in the Funhouse. Barth’s continued allusions to Greek mythology, and stories like “Menelaiad,” which give voice to mythic characters, suggest stories written thousands of years ago remain unfinished. The book ends in the voice of a minstrel from the Odyssey imaging his tale afloat “drifting age after age, while the generations fight, sing, love, expire” (193). How can a character who may be an author’s inventionfrom thousands of years ago speak today? Barth suggests the power of literature to raise a voice from the dead, and the ability of this voice to speak across ages.

If various stories, such as “Night-Sea Journey” and “Life-Story,” touch on the motif of immortality, the very structure of some stories represent or symbolize infinity. “Frame-Tale” wants to tell and resemble a story that never ends, a world that loops in on itself; “Lost In The Funhouse” also embodies this concept. Ambrose imagines he gets trapped in the Ocean City boardwalk funhouse for eternity. This is comic, but tragic, too. Meanwhile, in “Echo,” the narrator suggests, “we linger on forever on the autognostic verge–not you and I, but Narcissus, Tiresias, Echo” (100).