A fine mess you’ve gotten your self into ol’ boy Ambrose said to himself, said to himself. He had to think now; there must be some way to work his way out of this mess, and what a mess it was indeed. The world was moving too fast; he needed to. The floor offered him little comfort; its tiles layered in gum, hawker, and the occasional butted cancer stick, quite a pleasant addition to the seat of his shorts. Magda already taunted him, Peter giggled too, but father knew; he understood, and would put an arm around him and say “ ‘s alright son, ‘s alright.” Sure Magda would stop teasing, but Peter would just giggle harder, Dad’s slurring again Amby, must have been drinking, notice how he isn’t walking; the limp gets bad when he’s been drinking, doesn’t it Amb?
The process of writing an essay is often a daunting trick, especially when satire, creativity, and a distinct distaste for one’s own formal voice comes into play. Therefore the trick, then, to avoid the daunting part that is, is to somehow confuse the mind into thinking it is composing a story rather than a dull piece of non-fiction that will assuredly aid in relieving any professor’s insomnia. However, there is the added intricate problem of the nature of the essay; it should not emulate another’s voice too much or else literary suicide may occur with the sudden aerial assault of the D/F bombs. But then again, Jean Rhys used characters from Jane Eyre, so.
You could say he had grown used to the funhouse by now; he’d even created a writer of sorts, John Barth, to document some of the time there. He argued with Barth for what seemed weeks over the title. Somehow, Lost in the Funhouse was chosen. Ambrose lost a game of paper-scissor-stone, thrice. And so, Three Days to Madagascar wasn’t. Ambrose liked this Barth guy though; he provided him with hours of entertainment. He imagined whole stories of his own life designed by a character of his own creation. Barth was an interesting man. He taught at prestigious universities; he wore earmuffs in his office to deter students from bothering him; he was an acclaimed author. He was born in 1930 and.
You see, the whole point of this essay is to analyze how Lost in the Funhouse works with “Lost in the Funhouse” and vice ___. Try to think that I’m not imitating Barth but rather extending my own voice through his narrative style. By analyzing his style, in his style, you can better see how he accomplishes that which he accomplishes. So think not of me as me, but me as Ambrose, for Ambrose is the key to the fun in the funhouse.
The title of a work is often meant to describe its roots, its meaning, its life. A poorly written title will incur, often times, somnia, wrath, or a general feeling best summed up by the word “ung.” This title, “Self Serving [ ]” is meant to serve as protection from “ungness.” It has somewhat deep symbolic meaning (not really). The “[ ]” part is used to refer to an untitled work; one with a tentative title, so essentially, you get the picture. But the point is that this essay story is about the effect of my role as a narrator through my time spent “Lost in the Funhouse;” a place in which, last I checked, I was still lost in.
The worries over Magda’s taunting were forgotten for the moment; there were better fish to fry. He was thinking about a little essay that he had written for Barth to write, one that again he lost the paper-scissors-rock on and ended up with yet another uninteresting title, “The Literature of Exhaustion.” No matter (even though his title was more powerful). He talked about all the stuff that he had Barth talk about in his his newest book, Lost in the Funhouse (yet again, weak title). The best part of the whole lot was that he had Barth claim that he was of Barth’s creation; he made John Barth, who, in turn, made him. Snazzy. This whole business of fiction creating fiction about fiction, with fiction involved creating et cetera et cetera et cetera, is summed up by Ambrose summed up by Barth when talking about Jean Louis Borges, another character he created in which “someone once vexedly accused me [Barth not Ambrose] of inventing” (“Literature of Exhaustion” 33). Not the point. The point: the idea of the relevance of “the story within the story turned back upon itself” coupled with the idea of a “real piece of imagined reality in our world” (“Literature of Exhaustion” 32,33). The meaning of the point: fiction gets vitalized when literature is enhanced by fiction of reality in fiction and flipwise. He talks about talking about then how “it’s a paradigm of or metaphor for itself; not just the form of the story but the fact of the story is symbolic of the medium of the message” (“Literature o etc. 32). Somehow, Ambrose thinks, this all has something to do with the funhouse; a definition perhaps? The point of the essay?
But who am I fooling? I’m too lazy to write in an authoritative tone. Cripes, on the third page already and no real focus has been established. This is literary suicide, even without the shameless stealing of Barth’s of Ambrose’s voice. A highschool English teacher, somewhere, screams at my starting sentences with conjunctions, usage of improper MLA documentation, and fragmentary sentences (not to mention the over abundance of fun punctuation (like parentheses and ;s)). Does the reader even know that I’m trying to tie Ambrose’s lostness to the book named after the story that Ambrose gets lost in? Or how about the idea that I’d like to cover concerning his role as creating the other fiction in the funhouse while he’s lost in the funhouse? Did I mention that goal? (You did now, yes). America, Am I on target?
By the giggle of the kids outside, somewhere on the other side of the plywood enclosure, Ambrose could tell that it was half pass’d; a time he normally reserved for ruminating over his stories, of which he had 14 at the moment. Fourteen stories fantastically composed while Lost in the Funhouse. He didn’t always think about these particular stories, there were others: et cetera et cetera, but these were his favorite set. It was of this set that he “fell into his habit of rehearsing to himself the unadventurous story of his life, narrated from the third-person point of view, from his earliest memory… to the present moment” (“Lost in the Funhouse” 96). Notice that he’s talking about his own role within the story mentioned in the above parenthetical citation. But there’s stuff missing, you say. Surely his life didn’t begin in the back seat of a car at age 13 on the way to Ocean City, you say. Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to the explanation he says I say.
Ambrose often had Barth put clichés in quotations (“at that awkward age”) in effect to remove some of their tired state by forcefully making them stand out (“Lost in the Funhouse” 72). I’ve come to notice that there is not one solid thesis statement in this Aufsatz. I hate run of the mill thesis statements, ones like, “This paper will examine the role of the John Barth story ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ within the book Lost in the Funhouse with particular attention to the ramifications gained from John Barth’s essay ‘The Literature of Exhaustion.’” However, to state something that direct and clean-cut would be absurd, thus the idea has been completely sacked. But if it wasn’t sacked, I would probably feel the need to continue the paragraph in the following manner:
“These connections are evident within three major aspects of Barth’s writing: (1) the idea of fiction within fiction, (2) looking at fiction as fiction, and (3) the role of the narrator in conveying parts (1) and (2) through the vessel of the above thesis. ¶ The first part, concerning mainly with the idea of fiction within fiction is covered within Barth’s essay, ‘The Literature of Exhaustion,’ in which he talks about how Jean Louis Borges is an author of ‘intellectually profound vision with great human insight, poetic power, and consummate master of his means’ because he creates ‘an entirely hypothetical world, the invention of a secret society of scholars who elaborate its every aspect in a surreptitious encyclopedia’ (32). The reason for this extreme amount of praise towards Borges is because Borges has effectively made ‘a real piece of imagined reality in our world, analogous to those Tlönian artifacts called hrönir, which imagine themselves into existence’ (32). In short, Barth is talking about creating realistic fiction existing within fiction, a new element to the world of fiction, one with revitalizing powers to a style in which there exists a ‘used-upness of certain forms or [an] exhaustion of certain possibilities’ (29). The idea of fiction within fiction can be furthermore broken into two parts: (a) the role of metafiction within the works, and (b) the role of fiction presented as reality and its further usage as fiction representing a realistic fiction of reality et cetera. ¶ Metafiction, or fiction concerning fiction or the process of writing fiction is heavily prevalent within Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse. He uses this construct in really three different ways: (i.) incorporating other people’s fiction, (ii.) incorporating his own fiction, and (iii.) commenting upon the process of creating fiction. The first element of metafiction used within Barth’s works is that of incorporating the fiction of other authors. This element can be seen most prevalently within ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ in two or three distinct places, one while describing the train to Ocean city, not taken by the family, “as mentioned in the novel The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos’ (73). He also calls upon “The Irish author James Joyce,” to describe the sea ‘in his unusual novel entitled Ulysses, … [using] the adjectives snot-green and scrotum-tightening’ (74). Barth also continues this practice in other stories of the set, namely ‘Life-Story,’ wherein he mentions Cutler, Ribound, Shakespeare and Cervantes (129). The usage of others’ fiction within his own serves to supply itself to bolstering the second idea of fiction within fiction: the idea of reality or fictional reality within fiction, as seen in ‘The Literature of Exhaustion’ by the Borges examples. In a sense, Barth is identifying, pointing out, that you are reading fiction, but his fictitious characters also read fiction, whom likely read fiction as well; an endless cycle begins. ¶ However, the extent of Barth’s usage of external sources of fiction does not end with those pieces explicitly mentioned. Through the mastery of his craft, he creates entire stories through his narrator Ambrose that follow the lives of ancient characters of Greek Mythology. In the stories ‘Echo,’ ‘Glossolalia,’ ‘Menelaiad,’ and ‘Anonymiad’ continued references to these mythological characters are made. Like explicitly referring to outside texts, inferring characters from other texts also adds to the idea of reality existent within the reality of a fictional world, which in this case is represented by the stories told by the narrator (Ambrose). Furthermore, these inside references to other stories build upon an idea touched upon by Barth in his essay ‘The Literature of Exhaustion,’ in which he talks about re-composing others’ works as in the example of Borges writing a character, Pierre Menard, who authors Quixote. About this whole idea, Barth says,
but the important thing to observe is that Borges doesn’t attribute the Quixote to himself, much less recomposes it like Pierre Menard; instead, he writes a remarkable and original work of literature, the implicit theme of which is the difficulty, perhaps the unnecessity, of writing original works of literature. His artistic victory, if you like, is that he confronts an intellectual dead end and employs it against itself to accomplish new human work (31).
What Barth is saying is that although there was no actual rewriting of Quixote, the effect of the work is changed because it now exists as a piece of fiction written by a fictitious author. Likewise, by writing stories such as ‘Menelaiad’ and ‘Anonymiad’ about the stories from Greek Mythology, a similar effect is created, especially since Barth employs interesting new aspects of narration. These new aspects of narration, like the world’s first fiction writer in ‘Anonymiad’ or the many layered conversation in ‘Menelaiad’ provide the reader with a challenging, yet fresh look at very very old stories. ¶ Another way in which Barth uses metafictional tactics within Lost in the Funhouse occurs when he uses elements from his own stories within other stories of the set. The effect of reusing ideas in this manner creates a circle of not two-dimensional proportions, but one of three-dimensional proportions: a Möbius strip. In his forward to the Anchor Books edition of Lost in the Funhouse, he states this intent, saying
the series would be strung together on a few echoed and developed themes and would circle back upon itself: not to close a simple circuit like that of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, … but to make a circuit with a twist to it, like a Möbius strip, emblematic of-well, read the book (vii).
By using a Möbius strip as his basis for the evolution of the ideas within the book, Barth creates a many-layered effect to the different stories presented within; an effect related wholly to the notion of reusing, reinforcing, and repeating various elements of one story within the other stories. These ideas that are repeated represent many different things from things such as elements from Ambrose’s life, like the fact that he was not baptized until age 13, which appears in both ‘Ambrose His Mark’ and ‘Lost in the Funhouse,’ to little stylistic ideas like the connection between the instructions of ‘Frame Tale,’ ‘AB to ab, CD to cd’ and the sketch of Freitag’s Triangle using the same sorts of symbols in ‘Lost in the Funhouse,’ in which ‘AB represents the exposition, … CD the denouement’ (1,95). Especially in the case of the relationship between ‘Frame Tale’ and ‘Lost in the Funhouse,’ it is easy to see how the idea of the Möbius strip comes into full effect. Whereas in ‘Frame Tale’ the instructions for AB and CD are to put together the circle, the idea gets twisted slightly by the time of ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ where the function of AB and CD are exhibited as being elements of the standard progression of a story. Essentially both parts are the same, since in ‘Frame Tale,’ placing ‘AB to ab and CD to cd’ effectively builds a story, an effect achieved also through following the pattern of Freitag’s triangle later on (1). ¶ The final usage of metafictional tactics throughout the work occurs as Barth’s commentary upon the process of creating fiction. This tactic is most plainly evident in the stories ‘Frame Tale,’ ‘Night Sea Journey,’ ‘Autobiography,’ ‘Lost in the Funhouse,’ ‘Title,’ ‘Life-Story,’ and ‘Anonymiad.’ These stories about the process of writing fiction furthermore breakdown into two groups: (1) the actual mechanics of writing, and (2) those stories about authors writing stories. However, the relationship between the groups is so close that a full breakdown of which stories belong where will not be necessary; rather stories leaning in one direction more so than others will be noted as such. ¶ ‘Lost in the Funhouse,’ perhaps addresses this flavor of metafiction more than other stories in the book. Within the story, the narrator makes evident various elements of his creative process. These elements are made clear through various spots in the narrative when the narrator breaks both the action and the voice of the story to intersperse his ideas. This process starts early on in the narrative, and continues throughout, the first such occurrence being an example of this action:
He has come to the seashore with his family for the holiday, the occasion of their visit is Independence Day, the most important secular holiday of the United States of America. [Notice the abrupt change in voice] A single straight underline is the manuscript mark for italic type, which in turn is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention. Italics are also employed, in fiction stories especially, for ‘out-side,’ intrusive, or artificial voices, such as radio announcements, the texts of telegrams and newspaper articles, et cetera. They should be used sparingly. If passages originally in roman type are italicized by someone repeating them, it’s customary to acknowledge the fact. Italics mine (72).
By using these interspersed bits of fiction about his process of creating fiction, Barth brings to the reader’s mind the fictional aspect of Ambrose’s world. It also shows the rough underside of the work, an image, not unlike the one experienced by Ambrose when he gets lost in the passageways behind the actual funhouse part of the funhouse. Furthermore, this image can be extended to describe how the book’s narrator, Ambrose, can create the various works within the book: he has seen the underbelly of fiction (the funhouse), and thus since he has seen this underbelly, he is now empowered with the ability to replicate fiction by building ‘a truly astonishing funhouse, incredibly complex yet utterly controlled from a great central switchboard like the console of a pipe organ’ (97). ¶ The other metatextual aspect used by Barth within the book is one of writing fiction about an author who, in turn, writes fiction. Clearly, the main draw for this particular aspect is that of Ambrose’s role as a narrator throughout the stories of Lost in the Funhouse. However, an additional layer is added with regard to the idea that Barth has created a fictitious narrator that creates other authors who re-create historical works, such as the world’s first fiction writer in ‘Anonymiad.’ He furthers this idea of fiction mirrored within itself in part 1 ½ of ‘Anonymiad,’ when he has the anonymous narrator talk about the creation of his work the ‘Anonymiad,’ which in turn is created by Ambrose, who is a character of Barth, a very intricate and layered effect. In this particular section, the narrator of ‘Anonymiad’ talks about his changing tastes in writing literature, saying
Once upon a time I told tales straight out, alternating summary and dramatization, developing characters and relationships, laying on bright detail and rhetorical flourish…. I’m not that amateur at the Lion’s Gate; I know my trade. But I fear we’re too far gone now for such luxury (177).
Under the Möbius strip motif used throughout Lost in the Funhouse, Barth again brings forth the idea from ‘The Literature of Exhaustion,’ where creating fiction as ‘a paradigm of or metaphor for itself’ brings revitalizing energies to the literature in question. Also, he is recapitulating the idea presented in ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ revolving around commenting upon one’s own fiction within that fiction. Combined, these two ideas seem to push further the elements used by Barth thus far, and since ‘Anonymiad’ is the last tale within the funhouse, its role as a summation of experiences seems to be well placed within the organizational scheme. ¶ Much has been said already about the role of fiction functioning with reality, either as a piece of reality within fiction, or a fictitious representation as something real; there are many other variations on this theme, but ultimately they all tie somehow to the role played by fiction interacting with reality usually within a fictitious setting. However, these sorts of ideas have been mentioned but not properly defined or fully fleshed out. The main draw for this idea, as stated before, comes from Barth’s essay, ‘The Literature of Exhaustion,’ in which this idea is exemplified through Barth’s reference to the work called ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,’ by Jean Louis Borges. To recap: Borges creates ‘an entirely hypothetical world, the invention of a secret society of scholars who elaborate its every aspect in a surreptitious encyclopedia,’ and Barth finds this sort of action to be both wonderful and revitalizing because “it illustrates in other of its aspects my subject: how an artist may paradoxically turn the felt ultimacies of our time into material and means for his work” (32). Likewise, Barth employs some of these ideas within his own fiction. ¶ One such example of Barth’s usage of this effect of mirrored reality reflected into fiction occurs in the story ‘Petition,’ in which the narrator speaks of Chang and Eng, the Siamese twins. On first notice, the subject of Chang and Eng within the story seem to be little more than added background, such as setting a story in New York City, which though a piece of reality is not fictionalized, but however, what he does is take this reference of Siamese twins and build a narrator out of it, one who identifies with the twins, their lives, and their being, and ultimately takes their reality into his fictitious nature. The narrator of ‘Petition’ is an impossible narrator as presented, for it is medically impossible for Siamese twins to be connected belly to back as stated in the story. What Barth is having Ambrose do though, is to provide another venue for Ambrose to use in venting his feelings as being the little brother tagalong. The narrator takes the events documented by real Siamese twins and reflects their lives into the fictional world of Ambrose’s mind to create a new set of Siamese twins, impossibly connected, but dealing with a whole new set of identity problems that when distorted and mirrored back (like in a funhouse mirror room) into the real world would appear as the problems associated with Chang and Eng. In this sense, Barth has created a story distorted by the mirrors of fiction, but based upon a realistic event. ¶ Another example of reflecting reality upon fiction occurs within ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ when Ambrose begins creating possible endings to his story saying,
It's been forever already, everybody's gone home, Ocean City’s deserted, the ghost-crabs are tickling across the beach and down the littered cold streets. And the empty halls of clapboard hotels and abandoned funhouses. A tidal wave; an enemy air raid; a monster-crab swelling like an island from the sea. The inhabitants fled in terror (86-87).
In this example, Barth shows Ambrose creating possible realities of Ocean City being deserted. Though the stories are incomplete, mere sketches of storylines, really, it shows how Barth is playing with the reality of World War II within the mind of a character in a story. This particular example is built upon throughout the story, starting with references to the war, later expanding on the idea with the oil spills on the shore, and furthering it yet through the active Imagination of Ambrose. By doing this, Barth not only achieves this transcending power of literature that he comments upon in ‘the Literature of Exhaustion,’ but also he effectively creates an idea that would be held by all the people in Ocean City that day; they all would be wondering if they could have fireworks. They all worried that there were U-boats out there placing crosshairs over U.S. Ships. This sort of internal, controlled, hysteria of a population is not an easy sensation to build within literature, especially since the author would not want to come right out and say such a thing so plainly (for the effect would be lost immediately), therefore, by transcending literature through interspersing fictional representations of reality mirrored into itself, Barth can create this sensation without outright mentioning it. ¶ In summation before continuing to the next major element of Barth’s fiction, Barth uses fiction within itself like the mirrors of a funhouse to not only distort reality but to show gateways of sorts that lead to the underbelly of the funhouse itself to show the construction of fiction, or funhouses if the metaphor is to be followed. These elements, combined with their metafictional aspect and mirror like qualities, serve to enhance Barth’s fiction to a new level, defined within the constructs of the emerging style of Postmodernism.”
A good thing indeed, thought Ambrose. Writing an essay like that would have been just asking for a shotgun blast to the face with buckshot. At close range. Not only was that idea more boring than the… … … worm races held by the boy scouts ‘round the corner by the Jungle, it was one of the worst pieces of prose that he had ever. Look at the horrid length of the blockquotes! What? Not enough shorter quotes, more explanation you say? How about a tone and voice that does not emulate that of an? Ambrose giggles to himself, ruminating over his current monologue, and quite glad that his essay (the one he was composing right now)
He had, by now, “learned the ropes” of the place, there wasn’t a nook or cranny in those labyrinths behind the funhouse that Ambrose didn’t know (except that one spot that led to an exit, but no matter, he’d find it eventually (he’d written himself out of it enough times)). He proceeded to move to the compositorium, or the area near the area that on the other side of the wall had the mock suspension bridge, moat and fog machine. The compositorium was surprisingly well lit for the innards of the funhouse, and also relatively free of the floor goo that had so often decided to cling to the buttocks of his shorts. The area was about 5 feet and 300some centimeters square (sort of) and offered not only the soothing sounds of trickling water under the suspension bridge (supplied by a Wronco water pump on his side of the compositorium) but also the delightful sound of squeaking metal chains, and the hiss hiss of the onomatopoeia of the fog machine pumping out its funny tasting fog, really nothing more than excess Agent Orange left over from the war in Vietnam that wouldn’t begin till his author Barth wrote the story about him getting lost in the funhouse (he was a genius in this aspect).
He’s older now, the books have been released and he thinks back on their nature, what critical acclaim, “Enormous vitality and virtuosity… taken together, as Barth urges they should be” says Time, “insert critical comment here” says insert critic’s name here (Back cover, some other source). He is satisfied with his achievements; even though he is still trapped within the funhouse, he has been able to influence the minds of millions through the fiction of his fictional (pseudonym?) John Barth. And in thinking back upon his days writing those stories, he decided that he wants to perhaps author his own analysis upon his layered fiction. Then he begins to think about how many dizzying layers of fiction he had created within his fiction; the goal of writing on his writings suddenly becomes daunting. A fine mess you’ve gotten your self into ol’ boy Ambrose said to himself.
When writing an essay it is often (almost always) the practice to include outside sources within your essay as a form of validation. Otherwise, your voice doesn’t count for a damned bean. So it is beyond necessary to include some manner of citation when creating a piece of essayesque nature. Now, there are particular constructions to observe when using said citations. Styles of citing, if you will. MLA is by far the most common and often used by “true” scholars, while that other crazy one, APA is reserved for “low order” criminology majors, psych majors and the like. You need to pay very close attention to citing your sources, lest you commit. Usually, you include page numbers with your in-text citation, often an author’s name but no , at all. But if you are a sycophant, or just sick, the APA style may say that you need to dance a small jig, insert the date of birth of the publisher’s CEO’s sister-in-law in along with the in-text citation. This is the root of the difficulties, the pitfalls, of citing a paper, and also perhaps a good reason why true scholars do not bother with them. Bibliographies at the end work like a charm.
The compositorium was always a good place for Ambrose to go and work up his stories; and this time was no different than others. He was working on his thesis; something to do with the role of fiction being presented as fiction was the flavor of his endeavors. The role of fiction within fiction, as seen in John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse,” as seen written by myself is. Paradoxically, as in the state that fiction exists within “Lost in the Funhouse” can be explained in many ways:. As stated by John Barth in “The Literature of Exhaustion,” the idea of fiction presented as itself is “. Writer’s block. That evil bitch, not unlike the characterization of Error, rears her ugly head and vomits horrible sentences all over the place. Ambrose is unused to this notion of blockage, and deals with it in new and exciting ways; he breaks stuff; he changes tense; he makes a mess of the compositorium so that he no longer can rest on the floor there.
To cure himself of the whole lot, Ambrose moseyed on down to “random dark blackness part of the funhouse” and began to piece together his thoughts.
Subheadings under Fiction as Fiction topic:
The end of fiction
Creating fiction under the end of fiction (literature of exhaustion)
Ambrose looks at his imaginary manuscript. Six hours have passed, four lines have been written in the form of a rough sketch outline. This is a problem, he says to himself. I echo his sentiments.
It occurs to me that it has occurred to you that the above topic isn’t exactly an interesting one, nor does it contain enough data to constitute a 7-10 page critical paper without a large part of it consisting of a heavy layer of. Ambrose is having a really hard time with this essay business, as you can see. Perhaps, since he is only 13, he doesn’t know the intricacies of writing essays. You know, the ones that you pick up in your English 101, 202, and perhaps in some other writing-type classed taken early on by all students in Liberal-Arts universities.
Perhaps I should help him out; “give him notes.” Perhaps someone should remind him that he is a fictitious character, as he once realizes in “Lost in the Funhouse:” “he saw… how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person,” (93). Perhaps, you say, that Ambrose is not, or maybe does not (the proper context), realize that he is fictitious; you say that the above quote does not relate to this context at all; you may claim that Ambrose just realizes how invisible he is in relation to Peter, Magda, and the others. However, what you will be missing then, is the other inferences made by Ambrose in the other 13 stories of the book, where he further asserts this situation (the whole thing with him being a character). “Life-Story” does this: “yet it was a fact that in the corpus of fiction as far as he knew no fictional character had become convinced as had he that he was a character in a work of fiction,” or “his character as reader was not the same as his character as author, a fact which might be turned to account” (129, 123). But that’s not the point. Ambrose needs to write this essay; he needs to stop slacking.
Ambrose was having a difficult time. As if you haven’t already noticed. How could he go about writing an essay on the role of fiction being presented as fiction within a setting that was one of exhaustion; everything that could be written has already been done, so why should he write a section upon his own work? Surely the originality of the whole thing would be completely bereft. He didn’t like the idea of writing something that was “old hat.” He wanted to transcend. He decided that the essay should be written from the standpoint of the voice of an old author; one who had seen it all, one who had experienced it all; one who had written it all. That way he could write with “authority.”
“The simple truth of fiction is that it is of its most basic and simple nature, fiction.” Yes, a worthy beginning, he thought he thought. Ambrose liked that beginning: deep philosophical meaning yet simple enough not to talk over the heads of the audience.
The audience of your essay should always be taken into careful consideration. If you were to misjudge your audience, say write a critical paper trashing some critic, who, in turn ends up being on the panel reviewing your thesis, literary suicide may very well ensue, as well as possibly the death of one’s career if this critic decides to take the paper poorly. Therefore taking audience into account is highly important in your papers, especially your critical papers.
“The role of fiction,” Ambrose continued under his newly assumed narrator, “in a postmodern world cannot be fully realized unless the idea of “the story-within-the-story turned back upon itself” is represented through the work (“The Literature of Exhaustion” 33). There are two distinct factions that I wish to discuss concerning this issue: that concerning the current state of fiction, which is one nearing demise, and that concerning the solution for fiction under the impending demise of said fiction.
“Literature is indeed nearing the end of its lifespan; everything’s been written; there’s nothing
Order, order. Order! I’ve come to realize that I’ve written this whole thing horribly out of order. I’m thinking specifically about the essay that I didn’t write, and though I’m glad that I didn’t write it. Not to mention the structurally faulty parts of the thing including misspelled words, voice shifts. Bad syntax. The organization of the thing was so horribly botched that trying to get the thing to float even in soapy water would be not unlike getting a yak to swim the backstroke. Originally, the order was presented as the following: (1) fiction within fiction, (2) fiction as reality, and (3) the role of the narrator. The problem lies within the ordering because two of the three points in the essay revolve around the crucial notes contained within the last point of the essay. In short. The role of the Narrator belongs in first position.
As if his action was completely unexpected, Ambrose gave up altogether on the authoritative scholarly “know-it-all” voice for constructing his essay. He was quickly becoming more discouraged, and to make matters more foul, he needed to pee.
Later. Much more relaxed, Ambrose once again turned to the essay at hand. He was still discouraged, and to make matters worse he was starting to get ideas for a new work, an opus of the day (night, but does time matter to fiction?). He had decided to put off his creative endeavors for at least a few more minutes, in order to give himself time to work out his current blight. He knew there had to be something, anything that he could talk about. Seven to ten pages were not much for him to come up with, medium to small size, really. He’d had worse, but.
Visions of dysfunctional relationships: a pretty girl with a rough childhood dating a Brit, big in on the punk scene; their love lives on the rocks when
