John Barth has taken what he considers the moribund genre of the traditional novel and has revived it with a series of imaginative and inventive "fictions." Barth writes, "If I were a painter, I would...
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In a writing career that spans five decades, John Barth has established himself as the premier writer of the postmodern novel in America. Perhaps more than any other contemporary writer, Barth has man...
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Kiernan is an American educator and critic. In the following essay, a small portion of which was included in CLC-3, he discusses the story sequence of Lost in the Funhouse as demonstrative of a K�...
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Bowen is an American educator, critic, and editor who frequently writes on James Joyce and the literature of the Irish Renaissance. In the following essay, he argues that in Lost in the Funhouse Barth...
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Tharpe was an American critic and educator. In the excerpt below, he offers a stylistic and thematic analysis of Lost in the Funhouse.
Despite its disconcerting form and its content, Lost in the Fu...
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Morrell is a Canadian educator, nonfiction writer and novelist. Highly acclaimed as a science fiction and fantasy, action, and western writer, he is perhaps best known to popular audiences as the auth...
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In the following excerpt, Vitanza analyzes the properties of the Möbius strip from "Frame-Tale," arguing that the story contains the framework for the entire collection and suppor...
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Harris is an American educator and critic who specializes in modern American literature. In the following excerpt, he analyzes the relationship between sex and language in Lost in the Funhouse.
One...
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In the excerpt below, Woolley argues that self-consciousness in Lost in the Funhouse presents an affirmative interpretation of narrative reflexivity.
In contemporary criticism a myth has emerged, w...
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In the following excerpt, Walkiewicz maintains that the Möbius strip "Frame-Tale," which opens Lost in the Funhouse, serves as an analogy for the entire collection, which cycles b...
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Gorak is an English-born critic and educator. In the following excerpt, he examines Barth's focus on the individual in a godless world in Lost in the Funhouse.
When Barth's Lost in th...
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In the essay below, Slaughter discusses the subject-object relationship as presented in Lost in the Funhouse from a Cartesian-Kantian perspective, asserting that Barth moves beyond the paralyzing post...
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Mark Grotjahn’s large abstract drawings are so meticulously crafted and striking in effect that, looking at them, I wonder why they don’t excite me more. The pieces are all handsome and...
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John (Simmons) Barth
Critical Essay by Robert F. Kiernan
Radical Perspectives: Grotjahn\'d5s Singular Focus
