Lost in the Funhouse
Lost in the Funhouse (1968) is a short story collection by American author John Barth. The postmodern stories are extremely self-conscious and self-reflexive and are considered to exemplify metafiction.
Though Barth's reputation rests mainly on his long novels, the stories "Night-Sea Journey", "Lost in the Funhouse", "Title" and "Life-Story" from Lost in the Funhouse are widely anthologized. The book appeared the year after the publication of Barth's essay The Literature of Exhaustion, in which Barth said that the traditional modes of realistic fiction had been used up, but that this exhaustion itself could be used to inspire a new generation of writers, citing Nabokov, Beckett, and especially Borges as exemplars of this new approach. Lost in the Funhouse took these ideas to an extreme, for which it was both praised and condemned by critics.
Overview
Each story can be considered complete in itself, and in fact several of them were published separately before being collected. Barth insists, however, on the serial nature of the stories, and that a unity can be found in them as collected. Barth shows his pessimism in the stories, and says he identifies with "Anonymiad".
The Funhouse
The Funhouse is a 1981 American horror film directed by Tobe Hooper. It was written by Larry Block and stars Elizabeth Berridge, Kevin Conway, William Finley, Cooper Huckabee, Miles Chapin, and two-time Academy Award-nominee (Midnight Cowboy and Farewell, My Lovely) Sylvia Miles. The film's plot concerns four teenagers who become trapped in a dark ride at a local carnival and are stalked by a deformed killer.
Plot
A masked intruder attacks Amy as she showers (resembling the famous shower scene from Psycho). The "attacker" turns out to be her younger brother Joey, a horror movie buff, and his "weapon" is merely a realistic-looking plastic knife. He has played the first of several practical jokes on her.
Against her father's orders, teenager Amy visits a sleazy traveling carnival with her new boyfriend Buzz, her best friend Liz, and Liz's irresponsible boyfriend Richie. At the carnival, the four teens smoke marijuana, peep into a 21-and-over strip show, heckle fortune teller Madame Zena, visit the freaks-of-nature exhibit, and view a magic show.
The Funhouse (novel)
The Funhouse is a 1980 novelization, by best-selling author Dean Koontz, of a Larry Block screenplay, which was made into the 1981 film The Funhouse, directed by Tobe Hooper. As the film production took longer than expected, the book was released before the film.
Koontz originally published the novel under the pseudonym Owen West.
Plot synopsis
Ellen comes from a very religious background, where her mother ruled the house with strict Catholic traditions. After killing her first baby, Victor, and fleeing from her husband, she begins a new life in Royal City by marrying Paul Harper. Ellen raises her two children, Amy and Joey, with the same stringent rules that her mother used on her. She is haunted by the image of her first child and is constantly worried that her children may contain some of the evil qualities found in Victor. She drinks constantly to avoid these fears, and her habit increasingly affects her family's life.
Conrad is the owner of the carnival funhouse and was married to Ellen in his early twenties. After she murdered their son, he vowed revenge with the death of any future children she might have. With every new town the carnival arrives in, he looks out for any children resembling Ellen. Later he married and had a child with Madame Zena, the carnival fortune teller. They divorced due to his unpredictable temperament, but she helps with his search by obtaining information on children he suspects could be Ellen's. Conrad believes the evil found in his second son Gunther is a sign that the devil is helping him achieve revenge against God for taking Victor. After he obtains his revenge, he believes a new Dark Age will begin.
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