Lost in the Funhouse

Here, Barth reimagines Greek mythology, retelling–in baroque lyrical imagery–the Odyssey’s different accounts of Menelaus’s quest to win back his wife, Helen, from her lover, Paris. From the first sentence we’re told: “Menelaus here, more or less” (127). The story is framed around Telemachus’s visits, with sister Peisistratus, to Menelaiad, who recounts his experience stranded in Egypt on the beach at Pharos, on the way home after the Trojan War, and after killing Paris. Menelaus demands to know why Helen caused such trouble. Her answer is love. Helen suggests: “Your wife was never in Troy. Out of love for you, I left you when you left, but before Paris could up-end me, Hermes whisked me on Father’s orders to Egyptian Proteus and made a Helen out of clouds to take my place” (158).

So many players from Greek mythology appear here, one needs solid knowledge of Greek mythology to know Proteus, Eidothea, and the lesser-knowns of the cast. Throughout, Barth deploys complex dialogue tags, inserting quotation mark inside quotation mark, as many as seven times, to represent shifting voices. This creates ambiguity, at times leaving a reader unsure who’s speaking and furthering Barth’s concept of exploring just who is telling the story.