Abstract
“Petition”, the sixth piece in John Barth’s Lost in the Fun House, is a letter from a Siamese twin to a visiting Siamese king, requesting financial support for an operation to separate the twin from his boorish and unpleasant brother.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Lost in the Funhouse (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), p. 59.
Ibid., p. 60.
Phaedo, 66b-e; trans., Hugh Tredennick.
R. D. Laing, The Divided Self (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965). David Morrel calls attention to the mind-body theme in “Petition” in his John Barth: An Introduction (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), pp. 86 and 110.
In Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, eds., The Philosophical Works of Descartes (United States: Dover Publications, 1955), Volume I, 152.
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1098a; trans., J. A. K. Thomson.
Lost in the Funhouse, p. 61.
Ibid.
D. Hume,A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 1888), 415.
Ibid.
The Floating Opera, revised edition (New York: Bantam Books, 1972), p. 62.
Ibid.
The End of the Road (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), p. 68.
Ibid.
Ibid.
For further discussion of these novels, see my “Nihilism, Reason, and Death: Reflections on John Barth’s Floating Opera,” in A. T. Tymieniecka, ed., The Philosophical Reflection of Man in Literature (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1982), 137–51
For further discussion of these novels, see my “Nihilism, Reason, and Death: Reflections on John Barth’s Floating Opera,” in A. T. Tymieniecka, ed. The Ideal of Rationality (Atlantic Highlands, NJ.: Humanities Press International, 1985), ch. 2.
Lost in the Funhouse, p. 68.
Descartes, Meditation VI.
Lost in the Funhouse, p. 110.
“Song of Myself”, Section 32. Interestingly, these lines appear as the opening epigram in Bertrand Russell’s book, The Conquest of Happiness.
My thanks are due to Linda Nathanson and Bill DeAngelis for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nathanson, S. (1990). The Plight of the Siamese Twin: Mind, Body, and Value in John Barth’s “Petition” . In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Elemental Passions of the Soul Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: Part 3. Analecta Husserliana, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2335-5_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2335-5_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7550-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-2335-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive