The Protean Nature of Landscapes in John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse

Abstract

This paper analyzes John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse from the particular perspective of the status of spaces in an attempt to show how landscapes tie in with Barth’s attitudes towards storytelling and how the shifting nature of those landscapes becomes the object of focus. Examined in the paper is the connection between the protagonists’ identities and the landscapes. Alterations including the landscapes are simultaneously part of what is referred to here as the protean nature of space and a challenge to any passivized approaches to a text. Two levels of comparison are applied in order to achieve this goal: Barth’s theoretical essays – primarily “ The Literature of Exhaustion ” and “ The Literature of Replenishment ” – are examined in relation to the collection of short stories whereas narrative strategies concerning landscapes are compared to those which primarily deal with protagonists and plots. When everything else fades, be it atypical narrators, heroes and eventually even audiences, only art and experience endure – or more precisely – storytelling and love.