“Lost in the Funhouse”

Abstract

In this dialogue one actor (“the interlocutor”) questions another (“the funster”) about his claim to have been and to be still lost in the funhouse. The funhouse is used as a metaphor for the universities in which the funster has studied or worked throughout his career. The funster claims that the dialogue provides a brief life-story that he admits is both a faction of verifiable life-facts and a fiction of imagined life-fables. The funhouse is described as the main location in which the lost funster struggles to find or create his own identity. In the final part of the dialogue, the funster concludes that it was when he concentrated on improving his own writing and that of his students that he had, and is having, his best time ever in the funhouse, lost or found.