The Production of Lateness. Rahel Rivera Godoy-Benesch

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СКАЧАТЬ issues of old age and creativity, that is, latenesslateness and late stylelate style.

      In taking up and exploring age-related topics, such as physical declinedecline, deathdeath, and issues of creativitycreativity, Barth’s latest works resemble those of many other elderly authors in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Yet, unlike some of his contemporaries, Barth does not resort to subjectivitysubjectivity and autobiographyautobiography in order to directly reveal the influences his own old age exerts on his writing. On the contrary, he approaches the theme of old age from a variety of perspectives in an attempt to convey a holistic view. The stories in The Development thus portray several elderly protagonists who live in a gated community and are all trying to come to terms with their age-related problems. Since they all have to deal with different ‘symptoms’ of old age, ranging from retirement from professional life, to loss of memory, illness, and the death of loved ones, their coping strategies are accordingly varied. Yet, they all have in common that they use writing, in one form or the other, to reassess and redefine their identityidentity in old age. This gated community thus represents a microcosm of old age and functions as a laboratory for Barth to explore the relationship between old age and writing in a safe, fictional world. In this microcosm, Barth himself is only present in the form of one of the protagonists, George Newett, who carries some autobiographical traits and functions as Barth’s alter ego. The image of the gated community – a neighborhood characterized by perfect organization and artificiality – not only represents the constructedness of the literary text, but the elderly residents’ effort in maintaining their homes also reflects their attempt at preserving their identity in view of the inevitable decline and decay of their bodiesbody, which is emphasized throughout the short story cycle.

      The fact that Barth pays such close attention to the physicality of the ageing body mirrors and simultaneously modifies his strong concerns with the adolescentadolescence body in Lost in the Funhouse. Ambrose, the boy who is about to become an artist and gets lost in a funhouse, is the protagonist of the three ‘Ambrose stories’ in the volume, which have attracted most critical attention over the years. Ranging from Ambrose’s experiences as an infant and a fourth-grader to the decisive family trip to the funfair as a teenager, these stories’ events depict the boy’s development in view of his fate to become an artist, and, in so doing, they carefully assess the role his immature bodybody fulfills. The relationship between physical reality and language, between body and text, thus becomes a core issue in Ambrose’s search for his artistic identity. Indeed, as will be suggested in the discussion of the ‘Ambrose stories’ below, Lost in the Funhouse, despite its parodicparody attitude towards the genre of the Künstlerroman, copies the traditional move of the artist away from reality and his turn towards the abstractionabstraction of art, thus simultaneously affirming psychological life-spanlife span theories proposing that artists in their early phases reject and transform, or even ignore, objective reality (Cohen-Shalev, “Self and Style” 296). In a similar way, in The Development, the elderly protagonists’ physical realities are initially foregrounded through detailed descriptions of their decliningdecline faculties and healthhealth problems. Yet, in contrast, these ageing bodiesbody are not easily converted into a coherent narrative: the physical reality of the decaying body, illness and pain seem to resist narrative closureclosure. Following life-span creativity research, one can easily discern the“[f]ragmentationfragmentation by design, incompleteness, internal contradictioncontradiction and emotional ambivalenceambivalence loosen[ing] the boundaries between inner and outer realities” (Cohen-Shalev, “Self and style” 297), which Barth dramatizes in the opposition between the physical and the textual.

      Yet, the fact that bodiesbody – aged and pubescent – are marked by rapid change is not the only connection between The Development and Lost in the Funhouse. Both collections of short stories question and reassess the traditional roles of author and narrator: they search for the origin of fiction and they do so mainly through structural means. When young Ambrose is lost in the funhouse and finally decides to “construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator” (Lost in the Funhouse 97), he merges with his work of art, since a symbolic reading of the funhouse suggests that it represents literature.2 Moreover, it is also the last time Ambrose appears as a character. As Zack Bowen points out, the remaining stories of the volume are

      projections of events and attitudes in the Ambrose narratives, and, as [Ambrose] becomes distanced in time and more overwhelmed by the problems of composition, we can see him identified with the self-conscious author-narrators of the later stories. (52)

      Thus, a complete symbolization of the artist as protagonist takes place, since Ambrose’s body literally and figuratively disappears in the literary funhouse as the stories unwind. For Ambrose, this means that, as a writer, instead of telling stories about himself, he will become the “secret operator” of funhouses – he will write fictional narratives (Lost in the Funhouse 97). In Lost in the Funhouse, therefore, one can observe a clear progression from reality to abstractionabstraction: Ambrose begins by narrating his own childhoodchildhood and youthyouth in chronological order and realist fashion and then digresses from his path as he “takes a wrong turn” in the funhouse (95). It is ‘the right turn’ for an artist in the Künstlerroman, however: as a prospective writer, he takes the decision to look at reality through the mirror of art.

      In The Development, the methods for coming to terms with issues of creative production are more varied. Whereas some of the elderly writers, in a somewhat naïve manner, simply record what is going on in their community, others actively shape their life through writing. Whether their stories are images of their reality, or vice versa, is not always determinable. George Newett, who is the only true artist-type in the volume, makes a reverse development in comparison with young Ambrose: while Ambrose started out with the narration of his life story, Newett begins with fictional accounts of elderly people in his neighborhood. (Not until the fourth story, “The Bard Award,” is Newett featured as a protagonist, although he has made an occasional appearance as a character before). Yet, he must soon realize that these stories are somehow unsuitable to his purpose and he begins to write about himself as a character. The result is a highly complex and metafictionalmetafiction text, in which Newett takes the role of both producer and product. Hence, whereas Lost in the Funhouse shows the process of abstracting the story from its author’s life, one can observe the opposite structure in The Development: as an aged artist, narrator Newett sets out from fiction and turns towards autobiographyautobiography.

      The active use of content-related and structural means from the Künstlerroman in the late-style narrative – of course not only in Barth’s oeuvre3 – leaves no room for doubt that a thorough knowledge of the Künstlerroman as a genre is a prerequisite for critically studying and assessing late-style narratives. Hence, the discussion of Lost in the Funhouse below shall serve two functions: on the one hand, it shall provide an overview of the structure and themes of the Künstlerroman, most especially in contrast to the BildungsromanBildungsroman. On the other hand, it shall discuss how Lost in the Funhouse portrays the artist and his stance towards language and textualitytextuality. In this way, the section below shall disclose some of the early Barth’s poetics regarding issues of literary creativitycreativity – a poetics that will be challenged and revised in Barth’s late-style narrative.

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