CONSTRUCTING A FUNHOUSE

We typically encounter a literary work in its polished, final version. It is easy to forget how much painstaking labor the writer has put into crafting a given piece, and how many preliminary stages the work must pass through before it is published. Here, we can trace the evolution of Barth’s story “Lost in the Funhouse” as it progressed from an initial handwritten draft through various typescripts and proof stages, ultimately destined for publication in The Atlantic and, finally, in the short story collection Lost in the Funhouse.