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John Barth has advocated his idea of "repetition" in
"Literature of Exhaustion" (1967). To extricate one from the
aporia of the "used-upness" of literature, one may, as Barth
claims, deliberately repeat or parody the old forms to produce
something "new and solid." This thesis will start with Barth's
idea of the repetition with a difference as declared in his
essay above and then dwell on a discussion of the self/other
dialogue in John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse. For Bakhtin,
life is an event of co-existence and the self is formed
somewhere in the borderline in the self/other dialogue. Yet,
the protagonists in Lost in the Funhouse are portrayed as
entrapped in a narcissistic circle which has rendered the self/
other dialogue impossible. Moreover, in their narcissistic
monologues, the protagonists have shown their enthrallment to
the Symbolic Father which has reduced them into the repetition
of It. Engrossed by the image of an ideal Father--the Good
Form, the protagonists are compelled to repeat in a symbolic
universe of difference. The outlet or the "loophole" out of
the narcissistic circle, however, is inherent in the
protagonists's utterances running throughout the whole series.
This "carnival impulse" to break from the narcissistic circle
is released at the final story of Barth's oeuvre. The nameless
minstrel of the last story in the series has come to affirm the
difference within repetition in a constant self/other dialogue
as if in a "strange and continuing love letter" (LF 200). As a
refraction of his intention, Lost in the Funhouse has embodied
John Barth's attempt at a literature of exhaustion. In his
deliberate repetition of the old novel form, John Barth has
achieved something "new and solid."
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