Word: barth
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LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE by John Barth. 201 pages. Doubleday...
Many things can happen in John Earth's funhouse, but getting lost is not likely to be one of them. Whenever the rubber spiders and indiscreetly aimed jets of air become too threatening, the lights suddenly flash on and Proprietor Barth himself ambles in and starts explaining about the machinery. Those who take their funhouses seriously may grow confused and exasperated. But readers of The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy are familiar with Barth's impulses toward farce, his intellectual mobility, shaggy doggerel and merry nihilism. These people are apt to accept the clever gimmickry...
...yourself Möbius strip that reads (when cut, twisted and joined as instructed): "Once Upon A Time There Was A Story That Began Once Upon A Time There Was A Story That Began . . ." It could go on indefinitely, though once around is enough for anyone to get Barth's point about the cyclical nature of storytelling-or yarning, as he would undoubtedly prefer to call...
...puberty, when a youth presumably is mature enough to accept or reject his faith. Perhaps the most formidable challenge to infant baptism was made recently by Switzerland's venerable Karl Earth, in Part 4 of Volume IV of his ever expanding masterwork, Church Dogmatics. In his latest book, Barth argues that there is no Biblical basis for infant baptism and that the ritual is not an act of God's grace but a human response to it-which means that the individual must be mature enough to understand the meaning of such a decision. The traditional under standing...
...evaporated. Even John O'Hara, an acknowledged social historian, makes no plea for the special virtues of the past. For other novelists, the present may be a disaster, but there is no indication that things ever were any better. When they do turn to the antecedents-John Barth in The Sot-Weed Factor or William Styron in The Confessions of Nat Turner-it is only to show that America has been headed for catastrophe right from the start...