Monday, May 4, 2009

Mary Shelley Video...



Though Mary Shelley was a British author, I made this video for my media & tech. class and Jennifer posted hers, so I thought I'd post mine =). Hope you enjoy!

Lost... in the Funhouse


I know that there is more to John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" than I am perceiving, but quite frankly I found the story to be distracting, frustrating and at times confusing while I found the narrator to be pompous, overzealous and down-right egotistical. I assume that Barth's purpose in addressing his audience like child-minded idiots is because he feels superior in his literary/grammatical skills and has to share them contextually every single paragraph. I, in no way, found his "tips" helpful; they were distracting and detracting. Barth wrote a decent story which has a fairly interesting story line, but this, in my opinion, gets drowned out by his continuous paranthetical inserts which are completely unneccessary. I actually really like Barth's boldness - he wasn't afraid to add the nitty gritty sexual details that would go through an average teenage boy's mind. I found this "free-thinking" refreshing, but that's about all I found pleasant about this story.

Some of the most distracting features about "Lost in the Funhouse" is the narrators repetition, his unfinished sentences and his off-the-wall "do we really need to know this?" information.

Though I am sure I am completely underappreciating the literary genius that Barth is probably embodying in this work, I wouldn't give this story the time of day, nor would I recommend it to anyone who understands and appreciates literature for what it is.