Book Summary and Review.

1. Lost In The Funhouse
-By John Barth
Name- Alisha Nanda
Roll no- 20202116
Stream- MBA-1
Section- C

2. About the Author
• John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the
postmodernist and metafictional quality of his work.
• Barth began his career with “The Floating Opera” and “The End of the Road”, two short novels
that deal wittily with controversial topics, suicide and abortion respectively. They are
straightforward tales.
• The short story collection “Lost in the Funhouse” and the novella collection “Chimera” are even
more metafictional than their two predecessors.
• Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-
consciousness and wordplay on the one hand, and the sympathetic characterization.

3. Awards and Recognitions
• He received the National Institute of Arts and Letters grant
in literature in the year 1966 .
• He was awarded with The Brandeis University creative arts
award in fiction in the year 1965.
• He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and
Letters in the year 1974.
• Later in 1997, he won the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for
Outstanding Achievement in American Fiction.
• In 1998, he got the Lannan Foundation Lifetime
Achievement Award.
Other Notable Works
• Giles Goat-Boy (1966) is a bizarre tale of the career of a mythical
hero and religious prophet.
• It was followed by Chimera (1972), a volume of three novellas,
and Letters (1979), an experimental novel.
• The novels Sabbatical (1982) and The Tidewater Tales (1987) are
more traditional narratives.
• The Book of Ten Nights and a Night (2004) and The Development
(2008) are collections of interconnected short stories.
Bibliography

4. Lost In The Funhouse
-By John Barth

5. Summary
• It is a post modern story as it shows self reflexivity, self consciousness and self reference
throughout the story.
• A teenage boy named Ambrose travels with his family to Ocean City, Maryland. There he
likes a girl named Magda.
• He wanted to confess to her and eventually invited her to join him and go to the funhouse
together.
• As seen in the story later Magda trails off with Ambrose’s brother, Peter leaving him
isolated and lonely in the funhouse.
• In the rest of the narrative, the author explains Ambrose’s thoughts and dissatisfaction
caused by both his inability to express his feelings and his inability to escape the funhouse.

6. • There are three perspectives which can be seen in the entire story . The
perspective of the protagonist, the author and the speaker.
• Ambrose being a teenage boy with a fragile mindset faces woes while
analyzing his own precociousness and dealing with contradictory issues
that comes in the way of every teenager.
• His mental strength which is suffering from over-thinking is also
explained well.
• The author also describes how often the thoughts of teenager are
considered to be “unrealistic” or “too advanced” for their age.
• The author describes the general pattern of the fictional narratives
following exposition, conflict, complication, climax and resolution
through a diagram .

7. Characters
• Ambrose- Main Character
• Father- Father of Ambrose
• Mother- Mother of Ambrose
• Fat May- The laughing lady who welcomes them.
• Magda- Ambrose’s love interest
• Peter- Brother of Ambrose
• Uncle Karl- Uncle of Ambrose
Favorite Character :
Ambrose
His innocence, natural desires and
thoughts as a teenager outshines all other
characters.

8. Critical Reviews
• The stories in the volume Lost in the Funhouse received mixed reviews
when they appeared in 1968.
• Writing in the New York Times Book Review in October 1968, Guy
Davenport called Barth’s book “thoroughly confusing” and not “quite
like anything for which we have a name handy.”
• On the other side of the critical divide, Walter Harding says the book’s
title story and a few others “are outstanding and have all the verve and
hilarity” of Barth’s novels.
• R.V. Cassill, another early reviewer calls the book “pure folly” and
“blitheringly sophomoric”.
My Review :
• The elaboration of the feelings of a teenager which
is often ignored by adults is narrated by the author
in a detailed manner.
• The part I didn’t like in the story is the use of word
“funhouse” as it was only relevant to those who
actually had some good time there not to the
others.

9. References
• The pdf of the book was obtained by researchgate.net
• The bibliography about the author was taken from britannica.com
• The critical reviews were taken from schoolbytes.com.

10. Thank You