SOURCE: "Seams in the Seamless University," in John Barth: The Comic Sublimity of Paradox, Southern Illinois University Press, 1974, pp. 91-104.

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 Funhouse generally presents the pattern of the life of the traditional hero. Barth's acknowledged reading of [Joseph] Campbell only helped to crystallize what was forming in his mind in great part as a result of what was occurring in Western culture. As archaeologists and others, such as Lord Raglan and Otto Rank, wrote syntheses of their discoveries about the old myths, novelists of various sorts were dealing with heroism. Joyce may have inspired Barth to his treatment of the artist as a young man, but Western culture was generally interested in defining heroism.

Lost in...