Empty "Text," Fecund Voice: Self-Reflexivity in Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse"

Author(s): Deborah A. Woolley

Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 460-481
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208117
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EMPTY "TEXT," FECUND VOICE: SELF-REFLEXIVITY

IN BARTH'S LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE
Deborah A. Woolley

In contemporarycriticisma myth has emerged, whereinnarrativeliterature, released from its bondage to novelistic convention and mimetic
tradition, becomes the freeplay of language speakingto itself, infinitely
reflecting and rewriting its own structures. The "text," figured in the
criticalmythology as "parafiction,""surfiction,""metafiction,"ecriture,
"antinovel," nouveau roman, nouveau nouveau roman, and so forth,
is envisioned as an "absence"undercutting the sense of presence that
language evokes. Thus, according to Sollers, a text "n'apparait que
pour s'effacer et reciter cette apparition qui s'efface ("appears only
in order to erase itself and to recitethis apparitionwhich erasesitself").1
By constantly playing upon the tension between words as signifiers
and words as signs, the "text"purportedlydenies any dimension beyond
language. Drawing upon an ethical vocabulary of oppositions such
as pure and impure, free and fixed, new and'old, fluid and rigid, the
criticism substitutesa heroics of text and language for the older heroics
of creative genius and imagination.2 The "text" heroically foregoes
the old securities of presence-signification, thematic unity, totalizing form - and accepts the existentialist challenge to confront the lack
of a center at the heart of language and to dwell in that void. Hence,
runs the deconstructionist myth, the lack of meaning at the center of
'Phillippe Sollers, L'ecritureet l'experience des limites (Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1968), p. 51; my translation.
2Raymond Federman, in his essay "Imagination as Plagiarism" (New Literary
History, 7, No. 3 [Spring 1976], 563-78), sees a shift from the traditional notion of
imagination as invention to a "new"view of imagination as imitation, copying, proliferation; with this shift, the old myths of originality and of a center of meaning
are left behind.
0010-7484/85/0004-0460 $1.50/0
Contemporary Literature XXVI, 4
?1985 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

a text is a truer and more authentic meaning, the play of language

a truer realism.
This reading of the postmodern text is by no means confined to
literary theory; it has made inroads into the popular criticism. Take,
for instance, the hyperbolic introductory essay to the anthology Surfiction:
In the fictionof the future,all distinctionsbetweenthe realandthe imaginary,betweenthe consciousand the subconscious,betweenthe past and the
present,betweentruthand untruthwill be abolished.... Thus,the primary
purposeof fiction will be to unmaskits own fictionality.3
However dubious such a reductive statement is as commentary on
literature, it is interesting rhetorically as an example of this vein of
critical discourse.
The heroism extends to the reader. Barthes's lisible and scriptible
distinction, for instance, beyond its primary function of differentiating two sorts of texts, refers to the role of the reader. Lisible narrative, which draws upon conventional forms and meanings, makes of
the readera consumer;it furthersbourgeois society'sneed to perpetuate
its own assumptions and conventions, and involves the reader in those
ends. The scriptible text, on the other hand, refuses to participate in
this tyranny of convention and capitalistic economics; it grants the
reader freedom:
L'enjeudu travaillitteraire(de la litteraturecomme travail),c'est de faire
du lecteur,non plus un consommateur,mais un producteurdu text!e.Notre
litterature est marquee par le divorce impitoyable . . . entre le fabricant et

l'usagerdu texte, son proprietaireet son client,son auteuret son lecteur...

la lecturen'est plus qu'unreferendum.
. . [Le] texte scriptible, c'est nous en train d'ecrire.4

In this view, the acts of reading and interpretation are no longer a

matter of tracing the text to its center, but of recognizing the abyss
3Surfiction:Fiction Now... and Tomorrow, ed. Raymond Federman (Chicago:
Swallow Press, 1975), p. 8.
4"Thegoal of the literary work (of literature as work) is to transform the reader
from a consumer into a producer of the text. Our literatureis characterizedby a relentless separation ... between the text's producerand its user, its owner and its customer,
its author and its reader....
Reading is no longer anything more than a
referendum. ...
"... [The] writerly text is ourselves in the process of writing." Roland Barthes,
S/Z (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), pp. 10, 11; my translation.

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461

at the centerof the labyrinthinetext and participatingin its infinite

combinationsand recombinationsof language.Accordingly,Derrida
distinguishestwo interpretiveactivitiesthat correspondto Barthes's
two sorts of text: "Theone seeksto decipher,dreamsof deciphering,
a truth or an origin which is free from freeplay. . . . The other, which

is no longer turnedtowardthe origin, affirms freeplayand tries to

Derrida'sheroicreadertranscends
passbeyondman and humanism."5
humanityin the sense of man as "the name of that being who . . .
has dreamedof full presence,the reassuringfoundation, the origin
and the end of the game."6In Iser'sstudy of the reader'srole, the
text is seen as containinga seriesof gaps that readinguncovers;the
readerhelps create the literarywork by "activating"this unwritten
dimensionof the text.7To refusethis task is to admithow far we fall
short of heroism,to be unequalto the freedomthat the text offers
us: "We may be annoyed by all these gaps . .. but this would be like

a confessionon ourpart,for it wouldmeanthatwe preferto be pinned

down by texts, foregoing our own judgment."8
Surelythereis a self-servingqualityto this vein of criticism.For
not only does it remove from the critic's shouldersthe burden of
addressingthe questionof whatthe literaryworkhas to say to us (all
literaryworksbecomingversionsof the samestatement-namely, the
impossibilityof final statement,the ironicrelationbetweenlanguage
and world)and the anxietyof choosingbetweeninterpretations,but
this mode deceivesitself about its renunciationsas well as about the
text'sfreedomfrom meaning.For the criticalstanceaffirmsmeaning
and hierarchicaldistinctionsin the very termsit employs.As Camus
cautionedin the "L'hommeabsurde"sectionof Le Mythede Sisyphe,
the acceptanceof absurditymayleadto a denialof absurdityin a heroic
posturethat is merelya newversionof anti-absurdisthumanism.One
sensesthat the romanticdreamof freedomfrom the oppressionsof
convention,of the past, of rationalism,is beingreenactedon the stage
5Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences," in The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structuralist
Controversy, ed. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1970), p. 264.
6Derrida, pp. 264-65.
7Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978).
"The work is more than the text....
The convergence of text and reader brings the
literary work into existence" (pp. 274-75).
8Iser, "Indeterminacyand the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction," in J. Hillis
Miller, ed., Aspects of Narrative (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971), p. 40.

462

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of narrativetheory. The critichas found a heroicvocation for himself and his subject,that of the liberatorand rebel.Ecriturebecomes,
for Derrida,"l'affirmationnietzscheenne,l'affirmationjoyeusedu jeu
du monde et de l'innocencedu devenir,l'affirmationd'unmonde de
signessans faute, sansverite,sans origine,offert a une interpretation
active."9

More importantlyfor readersof postmodernfiction, the criticism is short-sighted:in its enthusiasticattackon the myth of correct
interpretation,and its consequentattentionto the play of language,
it obscuresthe doublenatureof all fiction, includingself-reflexivefiction. When postmoderncriticismclaimsthat the lack of meaningof
the "text"is its meaning,that the lack of referentialvalueto language
is its truth,it dissolvestwo types of tensionessentialto narrative:the
linguistictension betweenreferenceand self-reference,and the narrativetension betweenmimesisand poesis. Self-reflexivefiction certainly does confront us with the fact that languageand convention
are merelysurfaces.Yet the complexityof this type of fiction is due
in part to the fact that it simultaneouslycreates and undermines
presences.To turn from the criticismback to the fiction itself is to
experienceas readershow self-reflexivenarrativeconstantlycultivates
this tension. 0

For instancesof this lost tension, we need only look at the many
criticalstudiesof John Barth'sfictionthat cite his workas an example
of the "empty"postmodern"text."Whileone vein of the criticismhas
focusedon Barth'svisionof existentialabsurdity,1 the dominantcriti9"Nietzschean affirmation, the joyous affirmation of the world and of the
innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without any defect, truth,
or origin, a world which is available to active interpretation." Jacques Derrida,
L'ecriture et la difference (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967), p. 427; my translation.
O?JonathanCuller stresses this tension in his discussion of the various ways in
which readers "naturalize"a text: "Ourmajor device of order is, of course, the notion
of the person or speaking subject, and the process of reading is especially troubled
when we cannot construct a subject who would serve as source of the poetic
utterance. . . . it is more fruitful to stress the impersonality of writing and the meaning that is produced by the attempt to construct a fictional persona than to speak
of the disappearanceof the subject."StructuralistPoetics (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
1975), p. 170. While Culler is speaking of lyric poetry here, I find his observation
equally applicable to narrative.
I Two representativeexamples will suffice. Harold Farwell, "John Barth'sTenuous
Affirmation: 'The Absurd, Unending Possibility of Love,'" The Georgia Review,
28, No. 2 (Summer 1974), 290-306, sees a central tension "between cynical doubt
and an all-encompassing affirmation of possibilities." Jerry Powell, "John Barth's
Chimera: A Creative Response to the Literature of Exhaustion," Critique, 18, No.

BARTH

463

cal approach for the past ten years has been a focus on Barth's narrative and linguistic nihilism. James Rother, for instance, sees Barth's
fiction as a recurrent demonstration of language's power to "abolish
determinismsof beginning and end,"'2and Tony Tannernotes the characteristic "nonprogressive mutterings" of a voice wandering through
the "lexicalplayfields"of narrativeform.13For Beverly Gross, Barth's
fiction "existsto announce its own inadequacy," and "proclaim[s].. .
the impossibility of narrative."14Even Campbell Tatham, arguing for
the relevance of Barth's fictional world to the world outside the text,
can grant it only the most limited sort of relevance: "Barth's novels
are commentaries on theories of the novel; insofar as novels are a part
of life, Barth's novels are a commentary on a part of life."'5 This is
a slim defense indeed against charges of self-reflexive emptiness.
Christopher Morris has attempted to shift the critical discussion
away from debate about Barth'saffirmations or negations- from concerns with what Morris calls the "inescapablenexus of Barth'snihilism"
versushis "grim'resolutions'of absurdityor tautology"- and to address
the problem of language. 6 His deconstructionist reading merely reinforces the argument for Barthian nihilism, however. For Morris, the
central motif in Lost in the Funhouse is "the rupturebetween the visual
and perceptibleworld, centered in the self, and the world of language,
which exists without a center." Language is "wholly independent of
everything outside it, even the speaker who uses it." Consequently the
work expresses Lacan's idea of the "loss of the subject . . . at the

expense of a discourse which incoherently speaks man rather than the

reverse." For Morris, Lost in the Funhouse is characterized by the
absence of the subject and of signification. "Selfhood in Lost in the
Funhouse is altogether ignored, except as a farcical or sentimental
entity, and the locus of 'narrative'affliction is ultimately reduced to
2 (1976), 59-72, finds Barth reaching out in a "tenuous affirmation of value" in the
face of "exhausted possibilities." (The latter term is, of course, adopted from Barth's
1967 Atlantic Monthly essay.)
12James Rother, "Parafiction: The Adjacent Universe of Barth, Barthelme,
Pynchon, and Nabokov," boundary 2, 5, No. 1 (Fall 1976), 21-43.
13TonyTanner, "No Exit," Partisan Review, 36, No. 2, 297 (the "lexical playfields" is borrowed from Nabokov).
14BeverlyGross, "The Anti-Novels of John Barth," in Critical Essays on John
Barth, ed. Joseph J. Waldmeir (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), pp. 33, 31.
'SCampbell Tatham, "John Barth and the Aesthetics of Artifice," in Waldmeir,
p. 45. Tatham's observation that "narrativeobjectivity" is impossible since patterns
of response imply a narrator anticipates my argument in some respects.
16ChristopherD. Morris, "Barth and Lacan: The World of the Moebius Strip,"
Critique, 17, No. 1, 69-77.

464

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the purely linguistic problem of substitution." The only viable option

for the writer, according to Morris's reading of Barth, is to combine
and recombine phonemes. The novel thus demonstrates the "collapsible, substitutive nature of language."
I have summarizedMorris'sargumenthere at some length because
in its sophistication it illustrates the rationale for what is, I believe,
a widespread misreading of Barth's fiction and of postmodern fiction
in general.17 It is surely true that this fiction is preoccupied with the
deterioration of language in general and of narrative forms in particular. But it does not follow that self-reflexive fiction is nihilistic
or devoid of "presence."For while some aspects of self-reflexive narrative lead toward emptiness, others lead toward fullness. 8 By offering
an alternate reading of Lost in the Funhouse I hope to underline the
inadequacy of the deconstructionist reading and to show how Barth
deepens our appreciation of the constructive uses of narrative
reflexivity.19
'7In Jac Tharpe's John Barth: The Comic Sublimity of Paradox (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1974), the only book-length study of Barth's fiction
prior to Charles B. Harris's 1983 volume, we find the same emphasis on linguistic
nihilism: "Bartheventually finds silence at the heart of language. The discovery reveals
a secret-and that is pleasant-but the truth itself is very unpleasant.
"Ultimately, Barth says nothing-positively. There is nothing positive to say.
No truth to tell. All one can do is tell the story. By implication, one says a very great
deal, of course, about all that need not be said. But it is all negative. A statement
of the human condition is an outline of black upon gray...
"The knowledge that Barth's characters acquire is a terrifying awareness of the
heart of darkness"(pp. 116-17). Tharpe's discussion of the many ways in which Lost
in the Funhouse fulfills its Moebius-strip beginning is nevertheless illuminating.
"In a discussion of "the neo-Romanticism of the postmodern author" that bears
on my discussion above, Heide Ziegler has this to say about the tension between narrative deterioration and creation: "the history of the literature of irony can be described
as the history of the various attempts to reflect upon the fundamental paradox of
self-creation and self-destruction and of the various attempts either to flee or to
embrace that paradox." See "John Barth's 'Echo': The Story in Love with its Author,"
The International Fiction Review, 7, No. 2 (Summer 1980), p. 91.
'9The criticism is beginning, perhaps, to focus on this tension in postmodern
fiction. An as yet unpublishedstudy by Patrick O'Donnell, Passionate Doubts: Designs
of Interpretation in Contemporary American Fiction, includes a chapter on Barth's
LETTERS which begins with the customary problem for the Barth critic-"we are inevitably caught in the hermeneutic game that causes us to question whether the revealed
patterns are only arrestinglyplayful, or indicative of something more significant about
the narratives we make of ourselves" (p. 84)-and persuasively identifies the essential issue about the self in Barth: "Is the 'self,' like an unoriginal text, merely a product
of generic and historical repetitions?" (p. 103). O'Donnell's answer to that question
is to see an affirmation of the self in the text's resistance to those infinitely regressive

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In Chimera, which picks up from Lost in the Funhouse the motif

of the artist-hero,20Barthgivesus a model for reflexivityin the form

of two documentscontainedin a jug which Bellerophonfinds floatfiction,
ing acrossthe marshes.Proposinga "new,""quintessential"
they echo deconstructionistrhetoricand concerns.The first makesa
case for an "utterlynovel revolution"whose goal will be the "first
genuinelyscientificmodel of the genre";it will "of necessitycontain
nothing original whatever."21The second is Jerome B. Bray's appli-

NovelNOTES,"a sciencationfor a grantto pursuehis "Revolutionary

tific fiction whichwill "representnothingbeyonditself, have no content exceptits own form,no subjectbut its own processes"(C, p. 266).
"Languageitself it will perhapseschew,"divestingas far as possible
the literarysign of its signification:in the maw of Bray'scomputer,
literatureis reducedto a list of motifs, plot-structures,and patterns
that re-emergeas mathematicalformulaeand geometricaldiagrams.
But the parodicqualityof the documentsmakesit clearthat this
enthusiasmfor ecritureblancheis to be taken neitherat face value
nor as Barth'sown. For scribbledat the bottoms of Bray'sproposal
is an editorialresponsethat impliesboth the trivialityof that ultimate
reductionof fictionto patternandthe possibledangerof sucha reduction: "File. Forget. Throw back in the river. No need to prosecute (or
and repetitive relations between its elements: "As an ill-fated revolt of the romantic
or originary self against the social, written conception of the self in LETTERS, many
of its writers try to break out of the historical, linguistic systems in which they define
themselves. In one sense, the failure of these rebellions indicates Barth's rejection
of a 'self that could exist outside of or before the history of its own narrative. But
in another sense, the anti-systematic impulses of the novel are as essential as its overwhelming presentation of 'relationality.' LETTERSsuggests that it is through the
resistance to the repetitions of the past, or by the creation of 'noise' within a system
of communication, that self or narrative reorganize themselves" (p. 108).
I have also been pleased to find an excellent new book-length study of Barth
that supports my own reading in emphasizing the importance of this tension. Charles
B. Harris's Passionate Virtuosity: The Fiction of John Barth (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1983) discusses the pull in Lost in the Funhouse between the impulse to
"get it all said," to exhaust the various narrative possibilities, and the impulse to continue "filling in the blank." Harris's study also advances the critical dialogue by relating the themes of love and sex in Lost in the Funhouse and Chimera to narrative
issues. In an earlierarticle, Harris saw the need for a study of narrativevoice in Barth's
fiction. (See Charles B. Harris, "John Barth and the Critics: An Overview," Mississippi Quarterly, 32, No. 2 [Spring 1979], 267-83.) This article is one response to that
call.
20This motif is discussed at length in Jac Tharpe's study.
21Chimera(Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Crest, 1972), p. 254. Further references,
abbreviated as C, are cited in the text.

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reply)"(C, p. 267). However fascinated Scheherazadeand the Genieanother of Barth's avatars -may be with questions of fictional technique, with the relations between frame and tale, such questions are
for Dunyazade less important than what the stories are about. As
the narrator of "Life-Story" puts it, "What sort of story is it whose
drama lies always in the next frame out?"22The question is rhetorical:
no kind of story, he implies- at least no story we can care much about.
"If Sinbad sinks it's Scheherazade who drowns; whose neck one
wonders is on her line?" (LF, p. 117). The problem with "scientific
fictions" and postmodern "texts"is that they sacrifice passion for the
arid pleasures of technique. In the maze of literature-as-signs, of
ecriture blanche, what Barth refers to as the "felt ultimacies" of our
lives are lost. The postmodern writer'ssophistication regardingliterary
form is such that not only must all forms seem derivative, but all statements seem the foregone conclusion of the writer's choice of a given
form. As the narrator of the "Anonymiad," having invented writing
and made the discovery of fiction, fills jug after jug with (in order
of their historical appearance) the various subgenres of narrative and
then "run[s] out of world and material" (LF, p. 187), he finds himself
in the postmodernist dilemma: "as my craft improved, my interest
waned, and my earlier zeal seemed hollow as the jugs it filled. Was
there any new thing to say, new way to say the old?" (LF, p. 188).
The answerto that question is "yes,"a response proposed by Barth
in the Funhouse where the narrator of "Life-Story" realizes that his
lack of "ground-situation"may in fact be his "ground-situation," and
where the interlocutor in "Title"suggests that the narrator try to "turn
ultimacy against itself to make something new and valid, the essence
whereof would be the impossibility of making something new" (LF,
pp. 115, 106). It is, of course, a paradoxical"yes,"and one that requires
us to think of fiction's statements differently from the way in which
we ordinarily think of statements. For the writer must address his and
our situation; and yet self-consciousness turns all statements ironic,
self-negating. Barth's fiction reflects an awareness that the relation
between words and what we would have them say is always ironic.
That awareness creates a state of self-alienation that rendersus unable
to complete a statement or a story, to connect with a listener or a lover.
What Barth stages, then, is the drama of the erosions of self-consciousness and the struggle against those erosions. While it is true that
he points out the absence at the heart of language, he gives us another
22Lostin the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice(New York: Bantam,
1969), p. 117. Further references, abbreviated as LF, are cited in the text.

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467

sort of presence:namely,our resistanceto that absence.The collapsibilityof language,the arbitrarinessof fictions, the infiniteregressof
statement,aremerelythe stagefor the drama.Self-reflexivitycreates
a labyrinthof mirrorsthat turns fiction into "text";but the quest in
theFunhouseis for a contextthatwillenablefictionto resistthatreduction and to counterthat loss.
Self-consciousnessis exploredon two planesin Lost in the Funhouse, the existentialandthe linguistic,whichcometogetheras problems of narrativevoice. Existentiallyits effects are felt as a loss or
dispersalof self, a themepresentin Barth'searlier,nonreflexivefiction.
In Chimera and Lost in the Funhouse, self-consciousness becomes an

aspectof languageas well; and the earlierissues of authenticityand

role-playing,power and paralysis,are posed in terms of writingor
narrating.Barth'slaternarrators,typicallywritersor storytellers,tend
by virtueof their self-consciousnessto lose personalityand pale into
merevoice. "Theopinionsechoedin these speechesaren'tnecessarily
the speaker's"(LF, p. 150);"thisvoice persists,whoseverit is" (LF,
p. 99).

Thereis a first"feltultimacy,"then, in self-reflexivelanguage-in

its tendencyto become"shards"
independentof speakersandsignificasituatesthe Funhousestories in the tension betions. "Frame-Tale"
tweentale-which bearsthe marksof a speakerand his or her intentions-and text. For the phrase"onceupon a time"conveysa sense
of the storyteller'spresence,of a person relatedto us by the act of
telling a story; while the following clause, "therewas a story that
began,"tells us that story is a predeterminedtext. Moreover,by virtue of the instructionsfor turningthe page into a Moebiusstrip,that
secondphrasetextualizesthe first:"therewas a storythatbegan,'Once
upon a time'" embedsthe tale and storytellerwithin a text.
As the storiesoscillatebetweentale and text, language'sreferential functionis weakened.Accordingly,Barth'snarratorsgrowincreasingly unnervedby the gap betweenthe word and its object. The narratorof "Night-SeaJourney"has been reducedto a voice addressing
itself and ponderingwhatself-consciousnessimpliesaboutlanguage's
powerof reference:"'Is the journeymy invention?Do the night, the
sea, exist at all, I ask myself, apart from my experienceof them?"'
(LF, p. 3)-questions that immediatelygeneratequestionsregarding
narrators: "'Do I myself exist . . . And if I am, who am I? The Heri-

tage I supposedlytransport?But how can I be both vessel and contents?'"

468

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In "Autobiography"the autonomy of voice is pushed even further,

threatening to overshadow the tale completely:
I see I see myself as a halt narrative:first person, tiresome.Pronounsans
ante or precedent,warrantor respite. Surrogatefor the substantive;contentlessform, interestlessprinciple;blind eye blinkingat nothing.Who am
I. A little crise d'identitefor you. (LF, p. 33)
Self-reflexivity has advanced another step-"I see I see myself'-as
voice admits it is "nothing but talk" and the narrator "a figure of
speech." Like the Night-Sea narrator, it tells a story, "the tale of my
forebears,"the autobiography of a voice born of "a mere novel device"
and the paternal hand that "cursed"him. But story has become entirely
subject to language:the narratorremindsus that his existenceis literally
"only a manner of speaking" and that the tale exists only as a series
of puns-"Dad" begets story with his "pointless pen," "Mother"is "a
passing fancy" (Coleridgean, we suppose). The sign has no reference
apart from self-reference.
The motif of Ambrose's mark crystallizes this problem of language. Through its range of associations, the sign fans out into a range
of signifiers, each with its own range of significations (Ambrose leads
to ambrosia, honey, honig, mother; or bee, be, B, Barth, being). But
this only complicates the problem of what the name signifies, and
undermines the principle of reference:
one feels complexlytowardthe name he's called by, whichtoo one had no
hand in choosing. It was to be my fate to wonderat that moniker,relish
and revileit, ignoreit, stareit out of countenanceinto hieroglyphandgibber.
(LF, p. 32)
Self-reflexive language slides into "hieroglyph and gibber," enigmatic
signs that promise but do not yield significance. His "water-message,"
which Ambrose reads as emblematic of "that greatervision, vague and
splendrous," expresses the double nature of language: empty, yet
capable of carrying a message. Thus, at this stage, Ambrose celebrates
the emptiness of referential content, as it allows him to envision
"currents as yet uncharted," "fishes as yet unnamed" (LF, p. 52).
But elsewhere the emptiness breeds confusion and despair. The
ambiguity of the sign infects the narrator's sense of self: "I and my
sign are neither one nor quite two," says Ambrose (p. 32). We are and
are not identical to ourselves, since the self is both consciousness and
object of consciousness. In "Petition"the division is made literal, and
it is a burden: "To be one: paradise! To be two: bliss! But to be both
B A R TH

469

and neither is unspeakable" (LF, p. 68)- unspeakable in the sense of

agonizing, and literally unspeakable: how can it be expressed? With
the title story, doubleness has won out. The hall of mirrors makes
literal the effects of reflexivity upon identity. Ambrose wonders, "will
he become a regular person?" (LF, p. 93). Personality, he realizes,
is a fiction, but a necessary one if "fame, madness, suicide; perhaps
all three" are to be avoided.
What makes this well-worn theme compelling in Barth's fiction
is that it is posed as a problem of narrative voice. As the "Night-Sea"
narrator's "both vessel and contents" implies, narrative voice has a
double nature: it is both personality and the vehicle by which personality is conveyed-both signified and signifier. The motif of doubleness repeatedly appears in the first half of the Funhouse, firmly establishing the problem of identity as a condition of language. As "Autobiography" puts it, the "I"is "surrogate for the substantive": a standin for a noun, with referential value only by virtue of the noun it
replaces. The narrator's"I"is troubled by "absenceof presence." Like
Ambrose's name, "I" is a linguistic sign without a fixed referent. In
"Petition" the self has split into an all-too-solid "he" and an empty
"I." Ambrose's meditations on his name, the "Autobiography" narrator's autonomy from "Mom" and "Dad," the "Night-Sea" voice's
journey between "Maker"and "She," the Siamese-twin pair of "Petition"- all express the tenuous connection between narrativeconsciousness and narrative person.
In the title story, Ambrose's awareness of language has developed
into the capacity to reflect upon his own and others' use of language
and to exercise a range of voices. Ambrose's growing awareness of
the elusiveness of the self-"he saw once again, more clearly than ever,
how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person"-is
accompanied by his growing sophistication regarding language. For
one thing, he has become skeptical as to the adequacy of linguistic
description,particularlyits abilityto convey passion. "Hiseyes watered,
there aren't enough ways to say that" (LF, p. 80). "Ambrose's throat
ached; there aren't enough different ways to say that" (LF, p. 91).
Ambrose's insight into the gap between word and object-"Nobody
knew how to be what they were right" (LF, p. 81); "If you knew all
the stories behind all the people on the boardwalk, you'd see that nothing was what it looked like" (LF, p. 87)-leads to multiple voices. We
hear lines that sound like psychology textbooks, instructions on effective writing, histories of fiction, handbooks on grammatical conven-

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tions. The story may be read as psychologicallyrepresentational:

Ambroseis trying on a numberof voices in an attemptto establish
his own voice. We witnessAmbrosetryingto conform to narrative
convention,but not yet comfortablewithit -"the smellof UncleKarl's
cigarsmoke remindedone of' (LF, p. 71)-or revisinga sentenceto
renderits style more conventionally"literary"-"thoughwithoutthe
extra fun though withoutthe camaraderie"(LF, p. 70); "whoteases
him good-naturedlywho chucklesover the fact"(LF, p. 93). We can
make sense of the repetitions("unbeknownstunbeknownstto him"
[LF,p. 92];"Wewoulddo the latter.Wewoulddo the latter.Wewould
do the latter"[LF, p. 76]) by readingthese as Ambrose'smind dwelling on certainwordsandphrasesthat for one reasonor anotherarrest
his attention:foreignness,awkwardness,interest.The narrativeblanks
("Itsprincipalevents ... would appearto have been A, B, C, and
D" [LF, p. 92]) show that Ambroseis awareof what conventionrequires,but is not yet enoughof a storytellerto be able to fill in those
blanks;the self-commentary
("Whatis the story'stheme?"[LF,p. 76];
"Thiscan't go on much longer;it can go on forever"[LF, p. 91]) is
Ambrose reflectingon the story he is in the process of composing.
The above readingcasts "Lostin the Funhouse"as Barth'sPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Certainly the story encourages

us to do so, with its questionsregardingthe narrative'sverisimilitude:

"Isit likely... that a thirteen-year-old
boy couldmakesucha sophisticated observation?"All the commentaryon narrativeconvention,
however,mightjust as plausiblybe readas anothervoice, that of the
anonymousnarratorof this story, whose difficultiesin managingthe
tale correspondto Ambrose'sdifficultiesin copingwiththe funhouse
of family,sexuality,and identity.Ambrosefull of voices, all his, none
him; or a narratorfull of voices, includingAmbrose's.Is Ambrose's
voice within the tale, or enclosingit?
Like "Frame-Tale,"
this story dependsupon a tension between
impersonal"text"and person, or betweenconventionand voice. At
times, the narrativevoice is that of Ambrose,thereforepersonal;at
othertimes, it is that of an impersonalstoryteller.But sinceAmbrose
is an apprenticestoryteller,the personalmergesinto the impersonal.
Thereare, in addition,conventionalizedimpersonalvoiceswithinthe
tale (the "textbook"voices) whichcan be read as personal(Ambrose
tryingthem out). The twist, of course, is that the storytellerbecomes
a characterwithinthe story,lost in the funhousewithAmbrose,unable
to controlor foreseethe directionof the tale. Thusthe narrativevoice
is locatedon the Moebiusstrip,whereoutsidebecomesinsideandinside

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becomesoutside. In the hall of mirrors,the reflectionsand refractions go on infinitely, blurringand distortingAmbrose into notAmbrose.As the self-reflexive
languageundermineslanguage'sreferential function, it underminesour sense of the narratoras person. We
have a sense of a mind informingthe story, but it is not strictlypersonal: Ambrose"deceiveshimself' and us "into supposinghe [is] a
person"(LF, p. 90), for he existsonly as self-consciousnessassuming
a rangeof voices, some personaland some conventional.Our sense
of narrator-as-person
is replacedby narrator-as-voices.
The dilemmasof self-consciousnesscontinuein the second half
of Lost in the Funhouse, crypticallyimaged in the next story as
Narcissus'sdilemma:self-absorption.Whatlies behind"Echo"is the
effort to anchorvoice in person, to limit the obsessivechain of selfreflectionso that storycan begin. "Title"and "Life-Story"
initiatethe
out
of
the
way
labyrinthby expressingthe narrativeproblemas an
existentialone. Whereasin the title story the tension betweenvoice
as personand voice as languageis neverresolved,here the narrative
voice is clearlypersonaleven at the height of self-reflexivity.Even
as the languageundercutsitself, underminesstatement,and creates
absences,those processesare made humanlysignificantthroughthe
narrators'personalsituations-being "fullof voices,"self-absorbed,
awareof theirown "absenceof presence,"unableto connectwithanything but echoes.
In "Title,"the soundand furyof self-multiplyingvoice has come
to signifynothingand to state that fact. The story is at once a demonstrationof the emptinessof self-reflexivelanguageand a dramaof
the narrator'seffortsto fill that emptiness:"Everything
leadsto nothing. ...

Can nothing be made meaningful?" (LF, p. 102). The title,

"Title,"exemplifiesthe story'sbasicdevice:to establisha blankspace

by supplyinga filler that does not carryany content, thus ensuring
that the form remainsthe objectof our attention.Someof the blanks
are grammatical:"I'll fill in the blank with this noun here in my
prepositionalobject"(LF, p. 102);"Thenovel is predicateadjective"
(LF, p. 105);"Apersonwho can'tverbadverboughtat leastto speak
correctly"(LF, p. 104). Othersare syntacticor rhetoricalelements:
"asis the innocentanecdoteof bygonedays"(LF, p. 105);"thememorable simile that yields deeperand subtlersignificancesupon reflection, likea memorablesimile"(LF,p. 104).Narrativeelementsbecome
mereslots, namedbut not filled:"Conventionalstartlingopener"(LF,
p. 102);"A tensemomentin the evolutionof the story"(LF, p. 104),
the narratorsays. The tale oscillatesbetweenself-referenceand refer-

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ence to an existential situation where men and women are caught in

the frustrations of love and communication. The narrative's selfreflexivity is directly suggestive of what has gone wrong in their failing relationship: "Standard conflict. Let's skip particulars. What do
you want from me? What'll the story be this time? Same old story"
(LF, p. 102). Perceived as convention, as cliche, the relationship has
become a blank with nothing to sustain interest. The characters perceive each other in terms of conventional behavior and conventional
emotions:
Whydo you supposeit is, she asked, . . thatliteratepeoplesuchas we talk
like charactersin a story?Even supplyingthe dialogue-tags,she addedwith
wry disgust .... The same old story, an old-fashionedone at that. (LF,
p. 104)
The story simultaneously addresses the state of their relationship and
that of contemporary fiction - "Love affairs, literarygenres, third item
in exemplary series, fourth-everything blossoms and decays, does
it not, from the primitive and classical through the mannered and
baroque to the abstract, stylized, dehumanized, unintelligible, blank"
(LF, p. 105)-denying the possibility of artistic and sexual completion. Fiction and love are on the rocks, and the cause is pinpointed:
the narrator's self-consciousness has made it impossible for him to
bring the story, and his lover, to a climax and to fill in the blank or
the womb- in other words, to create. (This association between technical virtuosityand artisticimpotence appearsalso in the "Anonymiad,"
where his "professional sophistication, at the expense of his former
naive energy, was to be rendered as a dramatical correlative to the
attrition of his potency with Merope ... or vice versa" [LF, p. 173].)
Thus the story establishes language's tendency to dissolve into
emptiness and makes that very tendency its content -a human content, a problem of storytellers and, here, lovers. People and their relationships have become conventions perceived as such, pale shadows,
mere pronouns open to infinite substitutions. Yet we sense the possibility of fuller selves, fuller characters and tales than self-conscious
fiction allows, a fuller sense of self than self-absorption permits:
Sometimesit seems as if things could instantlybe altogetherdifferentand
moreadmirable.The timesbe damned,one still wantsa manvigorous,confident, bold, resourceful,adjective,and adjective.One still wantsa woman
spirited,spaciousof heart,loyal, gentle, adjective,adjective.Thatman and
that woman are as possibleas the ones in this miserablestory, and a good

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deal realer.It's as if they live in some room of our house that we can'tfind
the door to, thoughit's so close we can hearechoes of theirvoices. Experience has madethemwise insteadof bitter;knowledgehas mellowedinstead
of souringthem;in theirfortiesand fifties, evenin theirsixties,they'regayer
and strongerand more authenticthan they were in their twenties;for the
twenty-year-oldsthey haveonly affectionatesympathy.So? Whyaren'tthe
couplein this storythat man and woman, so easy to imagine?(LF, p. 107)
If those voices could replace this self-conscious one, if fiction would
recognize that people still live their lives "in more or less conventionally dramatic fashion, unfashionable or not" (LF, p. 109)-that
is, in a mannerresemblingfiction's conventions of linearplot, of motive
and character-then this love affair and fiction would presumably be
saved. But this is wishful thinking, for even as the narrator states,
"that my dear is what writers have got to find ways to write about
in this adjective adjective hour," he demonstrates its impossibility.
Carried away by the force of his assertions, he loses hold on his statement and ends in the same self-reflexive quandary. This is the hour
of "adjective adjective," of "accursedself-consciousness," of mimetic
fiction's bad faith. The force of "Title"is in the human implications
of the linguistic (and fictional) problem-the real poignancy of that
vision of a couple aging together in the fullness of affection, as set
against the abrasive hostility to which these voices are driven by their
self-absorption and their frustration with it. The self-consciousness
that prevents them from speaking humanly to each other is precisely
what makes the story speak humanly to us.
"Life-Story" continues the effort to get beyond reflexivity, first
of all by critiquing it. For one thing, self-reflexivity is a convention
of twentieth-century literature: "Another story about a writer writing
a story! Another regressus in infinitum!" (LF, p. 114). It's dreary, a
tiresome mode for both writer and reader: "Who doesn't prefer art
that at least overtly imitates something other than its own processes?"
(LF, p. 114). The fictiveness of fiction is an obvious truth, hardly
enough to sustain even the shortest of tales: "Self-consciousness can
be a bloody bore."23The question, as the narratorof "Life-Story"comments, is one regarding the human implications of that truth: "what
were to be the consequences of D's . . . disproving or verifying his

suspicion [that the world is a fiction and he himself a character in a

fiction], and why should a reader be interested?" (LF, p. 114). We
23Barth, in Joe David Bellamy, The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative
American Writers(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 11.

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evaluate the fiction, and we respond to it, according to the resonances

of what is expressed. The suggestion made by Barth in the "Literature of Exhaustion" essay and found in "Title" as well-to write of
"the impossibility of making something new" and thereby "turn ultimacy against itself' (LF, p. 106)-recurs in "Life-Story": "'You say
you lack a ground-situation. Has it occurred to you that that circumstance may be your ground-situation?'" (LF, p. 115). But this content
is too thin; with that tale, Scheherazade's life is on shaky ground.
Various hypotheses are given, in the second section of the story,
to account for the persistence of this self-reflexive mode which so
plagues the narrator and subverts the story: social decline, physical
aging, the metaphysical problem of reality as fiction, his choice of
marital love over "a less regular, more glamorous style of life." But
these explanationsare, of course, neitherhere nor there. Self-reflexivity
persists, interfering- as in the case of every Funhouse narrator except
the impersonal narrator of the first two Ambrose stories-with the
narrator's ability to sustain and complete a story.
And yet he does manage to complete it, thanks to two interruptions in his obsessive self-consciousness. First, as he comes to the end
of a reflection on narrative structures in general and his life's in particular, he reaches the words "the reader," and they initiate a burst
of aggressive energy that begins the third section of the story. It is
as though the narrator has suddenly discovered the reader; for the
first time he acknowledges the reader: "The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else"
(LF, p. 123). He refuses to let us recede into our accustomed passivity,
and pulls us in - "For why do you suppose- you! you!" (LF, p. 124)taunting us and daring us to stop reading. After this bout of sparring
with the reader, the narrator describes three options for how selfconscious fiction may regain the authority of conventional fiction:
1) fiction must acknowledgeits fictitiousnessand metaphoricinvalidityor
2) choose to ignorethe questionor deny its relevanceor 3) establishsome
other, acceptablerelationbetweenitself, its author,its reader.(LF, p. 125)
"Title" has dispensed, as we have seen, with the first option on the
grounds of its obviousness and ultimate triviality; the second option
is attempted by the "Life-Story" narrator as he tries to "tell his tale
from start to finish in a conservative, 'realistic,'unself-conscious way"
(LF, p. 113); the entry of the reader signals the third. The way out

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of the labyrinth of self-consciousness will be found neither by making

self-consciousnesscentralnor by denying it. The blank cannot be filled;
no statement will hold. Fiction's authority must come from a source
other than definitive statement.
What follows this claim, then, is a second interruption, this time
the
narrator'swife, who walks into his study unexpectedly. Blockby
ing his view of the page and wishing him a "Happy Birthday," she
symbolically puts an end to his self-absorption (and the self-absorbed
narrative)and affirms his identity as more than - in fact, as other than
-self-consciousness. His existence confirmed by her (having just
reached that affirmation himself via logical deduction), he is finally
able to "cap his pen"-in contrast to the earlier Funhouse narrators
who end in mid-sentence or otherwise inconclusively.
Filling in the blank, and finding one's way out of the self-reflexive
funhouse, means both restoring the capacity of fiction to speak of
something other than itself and liberatingthe narratorfrom solipsism.
Barth finds a solution in the power of voice: the capacity to establish
a connection between writer and reader, the capacity to express qualities of the speaker and to address a receiver. As long as we look to
statement itself for meaning, self-conscious fiction will seem empty,
like the answer Menelaus receives from the oracle or the "message"
Ambrose receives from the sea. Ambrose and Bellerophon, questers
both, find the same grail-a bottle with a message in it:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN...
YOURS TRULY

The lines betweenwere blank, as was the space beneaththe complimentaryclose. (C, p. 268; LF, p. 53)
But their reactions are opposite: Ambrose feels the thrill of new knowledge and "other truth"; Bellerophon sees a blank. In terms of statement, Bellerophon is of course right. But for Ambrose, the message
consists in the fact of its occurrence. He sees it as an act of address:
Pastthe riverandthe Bay, fromcontinentsbeyond,thismessengerhadcome.
Borneby currentsas yet uncharted,nosed by fishes as yet unnamed,it had
bobbedfor agesbeneathstrangestars.Thenout of the oceansit had strayed;
past cape and cove, black can, red nun, the word had wanderedwilly-nilly
to his threshold.(LF, p. 52)
It is literally "his truly," a message of concern to one who feels shut
off from others and from those mysteries. Bellerophon sees a blank

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becausehe looks for a statement;Ambrosefinds his meaningin the

fact of receivinga message.Thisexplainsthe curiousendingof "WaterMessage,"whereAmbrose, havingnoticed that the paperon which
the messageis writtenis composedof coarse fibers, now "embraces
that fact."Ambroseembracesthe medium-not merelythe material,
the paper, but the letter itself-as evidenceof an intentionalact of
addressand as groundon which senderand receivermay meet. The
act itself is a message:it says, "I- someone besidesyourself-exist,
and so do you." The blank is filled by the communicativeact itself,
by the capacityof voice to "message"someoneand thus to establish
relationship.
Relationshipis, for Barth, a basic condition of narrative.His
"Night-Sea"narratortries to deny it: "it is myself I talk to, to keep
my reasonin this awful darkness.Thereis no She! Thereis no You!"
(LF, p. 10). Butthe statementdeniesits own content,for, as dialogue,
it is addressedto someone.Ambrose'sadolescentfantasiesare based
upon an image of himself as independentof others-the lone hero,
the lone martyr.But independenceis preciselya fantasy,a hysterical
claim based on fear or pride. "Life-Story"explicitlystates the interdependenceof narratorandreader:just as the narratorexistsby virtue
of the reader'sattention,the readerexistsinsofaras the narratorspeaks
of him. The isolateself easilyloses identity:the "Life-Story"narrator
suspectingthathe'sa characterin a fiction;Menelaus,resistingHelen's
love, wondering"Who am I?"; the Anonymousnarrator,alone on
his beach, forgettinghis name. The self-absorbednarratortends to
fade into impersonalor conventionalvoice. Thusthe narratorof the
"Anonymiad,"havinglost his identityalong with his zeal for writing,
is cheeredby the discoveryof a water-message
of his own. Undecipherable, it neverthelesscarriesthe messageof the existenceof someone
like himself. Perhapsthat someone is actuallyhimself: "No matter,
the principlewas the same: that I could be thus messaged,even by
that strangermy formerself, whetheror not the fact tied me to the
world, inspiredme to addressit once again"(LF, p. 190). Why does
it matterlittlewhetherthe authorof that messageis himself?Because
it is the act of addressingand of being addressedthat constitutesthe
meaning. That is why Ambrose is not disheartenedby the conventionalizednatureof his messageand why the narratorof "Life-Story"
does not need to finish his sentencein orderto completeit. Connection, relationshipwith an Other, has occurred.
"Messaging"is an inherentlymeaningful,but also irrationalact.
Menelausbecomesmore and more frustratedas long as he attempts

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to get a definiteanswerto his questionof why Helenchosehim. What

she asks of him is an act of faith, a belief in a patentabsurdity-that
she was neverin Troy- as absurdas the oracle'sanswerto his "Why?"
and equallydefinitive.In runningfrom the terriblevoid of his identity (the oracle's answer to "Who am I" is "' "' "' "

"' "' "' " [LF,

p. 153]), he must affirm a possibility,consent to an improbability.

For Menelaus,as for the self-consciousself, to be in relation-as the
Funhousepresentsrelation-requires a suspensionof disbelief:"To
love is easy; to be loved, as if one were real, on the orderof others:
fearsomemystery!Unbearableresponsibility!To her, Menelaussignified somethingrecognizable,as Helen him. Whateverwas it?"(LF,
p. 151). To be loved is to be compelledto consent to the fiction of
one'sown substanceand to acceptthe unknowablenessof the Other.
Confrontedwith the oracle'sanswerto his "Whoam I?" Menelaus
rushesoff, "donewith questions,"to "re-embrace"
Helen(an act that
reenactsAmbrose'sembraceof the mediumthat messageshim) and
"claspherpast speech,neverlet go, frigunderstanding"
(LF, p. 153).
Whatwill fill in the blankis an act of relationship,ratherthan a fact
to be understood.Ambroseearlierhada visionof love as perfectunity:
in the worldtherewas a youngwomanwithsuchsplendid
"Somewhere
understandingthat she'd see him entire, like a poem or story"(LF,
p. 88). But neitherstories nor selves are "entire"in Barth'sfiction.
They are self-reflexive,complex, and take on meaningonly through
an act of willing participation.
It is in this sensethat love becomes"base-factand footer to the
fictioncrazy-houseourlife"(LF, p. 159).Lovedemandsthe sameirrational affirmationof the Otherand the self that the narratorof the
"Anonymiad"
expressesas he sendsout his endlessfictions-in-bottles.24
He imagineshis tale driftingpast "the unknownman or woman to
whoseheart,of all heartsin the world, it could speakfluentest,most
balmly-but they'retoo preoccupiedto reachout to it"(LF, p. 193).
He knowsthat these projectionsof himselfwill likelygo unreceived,
andconsequentlythatthiswould-beact of communication
is irrational.
Neverthelesshe continuesto sendthemout, derivingsatisfactionfrom
the act emphasizedby the eccentrictypographyof the last line of the
story- andthe novel:"Wroteit."His affirmationrepresentsa triumph
24HaroldFarwell sees the "Menelaiad"as the turning point in Lost in the Funhouse where fulfillment, having been sought in art, is linked to the affirmation of
love; Menelaus abandons the quest for absolutes and decides he might as well love,
since existence is absurd anyway. Farwell points out that Barth "increasingly identifies the dilemmas of lovers with those of artists" (p. 290).

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over the despairthat the earlierFunhouse narratorsexpress at knowing

their fundamental isolation.
Barth brings us to the point where writing itself becomes of ultimate value, not because of what is expressed but because of what the
act involves: faith, commitment, in the face of absurdity. As Wallace
Stevens puts it elsewhere:
The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction,
there being nothingelse. The exquisitetruthis to know that it is a fiction,
and that you believe in it willingly.25
Knowing that there is no "Menelaus," that the only identity we can
know is "first-person anonymous," Menelaus finds the will to cry out
to Helen, "Menelaus here!"; for only as Menelaus, a fiction, can he
be loved by her. That act of affirmation does not deny his self-consciousness, but it does take him beyond its bounds into relationship.
The personal dilemma and the writerlydilemma as Barth presents
them, both products of the mind's and of language's capacity for selfreflection, have the same solution: voice, or rather what voice makes
possible-the expressionof human qualitiesand concerns. One of those
concerns is the alienation and fragmentation of the self; another is
the reduction of language to signs and self-references. Yet another is
the need to address an Other and the desire to be "messaged." Voice
creates the possibility of relationship and imbues the meaningless word
with the mystery of human intentions and human significances, as
Ambrose discovers:
Vanityfretsabouthis name, Pridevauntsit, Knowledgeretchesat its sound,
Understandingsighs;all live outsideit, knowingwell that I and my sign are
neitherone nor quite two.
Yetonly giveit voice:whisper"Ambrose,"as at raretimescertainpeople
have-see what-all leaves off to answer! Ambrose, Ambrose, Ambrose,
Ambrose!Regardthatbeast,ungraspable,mostqueer,prickedup in my soul's
crannies! (LF, p. 32)

Voiced, the sign takes on personal meaning for Ambrose; it reaches

into the soul and evokes a response. At those moments when the name
becomes the means of one person "messaging"another - and it is not
incidental that the name is whispered: the context is intimate, perhaps
erotic - the gap between the self and its sign scarcely matters. So, too,
25WallaceStevens, "Adagia," in Opus Posthumous, ed. Samuel French Morse
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), p. 63.

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in fiction, where the lack of correspondence between convention and

the "realworld" pales beside the question of how the writer uses those
conventions to stage his own concerns and to speak to us.
Self-reflexivity leads to the awareness that language is fictionmaking, that the self and the world are fictions. What, then, can selfreflexive fiction speak of authoritatively? Barth's answer is that it can
speak of an existential situation, the dilemma of users of language.
Even while Barth disintegrates the tale, the teller, and the mediumsuperficiallydenying human concerns- he portraysthe efforts to make
language signify, the desire to speak and be heard, to display oneself
and call forth a response. For narrative voice, self-reflexive or not,
carriesthe sense of person and the implication of relationship: "Where
there's a voice there's a speaker"(LF, p. 33). As the narratorof "Title"
fervently hopes for, Lost in the Funhouse does manage after all to
speak of "what goes on between" people, of how "we grow old and
tired, we think of how things used to be or might have been and how
they are now" and of how "we get exasperated and desperate and out
of expedients and out of words" (LF, p. 109), but not by evading the
self-conscious mode as the narratorbelieves he must, not by any naive
-and impossible-return to purely representationallanguage. By playing at emptying and filling the blanks that self-reflexivity creates, narrative voice dramatizes desire, frustration, love, despair, belief. The
gaps between "I"and "he,"voice and receiver, word and object, name
and self, are still there; but rather than absences, they become what
Stevens calls "prolific ellipses"26which generate common human concerns.
In Politics and the Novel, Irving Howe offers a criterion against
which fiction must be judged: "how much of our life does it illuminate? how ample a moral vision does it suggest?"27The deconstructionist mythos presented in the opening of this essay regards selfreflexive fiction as immune from such considerations; it would per26The phrase appears in the penultimate stanza of Stevens's poem, "Someone
Puts a Pineapple Together":
It is more than the odor of this core of earth
And water. It is that which is distilled
In the prolific ellipses that we know,
In the planes that tilt hard revelations on
The eye, a geometric glitter, tiltings
As of sections collecting toward the greenest cone.
27Forbringing Howe's remark, from Politics and the Novel (New York: Horizon
Press, 1957), p. 24, to bear on Barth, I am indebted to Campbell Tatham, p. 52.

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suadeus that we becomeheroicreadersto the degreethatwe renounce

such concerns.But self-reflexivenarrativeis still narrative;as such,
it is pervadedby voice. Any tendencyof postmodernfiction to colby narlapseinto linguisticfreeplayor mere"text"is counterbalanced
rative'sirrepressibleevocation,throughvoice, of a narrativepresence
characterizedby certainacts, qualities, and intentions-which may
evenbe an intentionto purifyvoice of self. In narrativethe verymeans
of negotiatingabsenceis inescapablya mode of presence,pullingselfreflexivelanguagein an oppositedirection,towardsanotherkind of
alternativeto reference.Ignoringthis essentialnarrativetension, the
deconstructionistreadingreducesnarrativeto what it contendswith,
and substitutesits own mythologyfor the actualcomplexityof what
writinggenerates.
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