"Frame-Tale" is a work of short fiction by John Barth published in Lost in the Funhouse (1968) by Doubleday & Co..Walkiewicz, 1986 p. 161: Selected Bibliography. Note subtit
Lost in the Funhouse was nominated for the National Book Award (1968).Walkiewicz, 1986 See Chronology (after Preface)
Plot and analysis
"Frame-Tale" serves as a three-dimensional representation of the stories that comprise the Funhouse collection as a whole.Walkiewicz, 1986 p. 89: The story is "emblematic" of the stories in the entire Funhouse collection. If the reader follows Barth's directions, a Möbius strip will be constructed from a portion of the page on which the story is printed in large font in capital letters. The story will read "ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A STORY THAT BEGAN" endlessly.Walkiewicz, 1986 p. 86: "For in joining headpiece to tailpiece, the reader helps to bring into being a story that reads…(ad infinitum)."
Biographer and critic Edward Walkiewicz suggests that "Frame-Tale" represents a "recycling of elements from Barth's own fictions and of the oral-literary tradition" as well as Barth's fascination with the ancient tale of Scheherazade in A Thousand and One Nights.Walkiewicz, 1986 p. 86-87Kaufman, 2024: "As his foremost inspiration, Mr. Barth cited Scheherazade…"
Barth, in his retrospective Preface, comments on conceiving "Frame-Tale" and the Funhouse volume:
If the "headpiece" of the collection is "Frame-Tale," the final story, "Anonymiad," is the "tailpiece" of the series, returning to Barth's literary "labyrinth."Walkiewicz, 1986 p. 108-109: The final story "may be interpreted as beginning the cycle again, leading us back to retrace our way through a labyrinth we may never leave."
Footnotes
Sources Barth, John. 1968. Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice. Doubleday & Co., Garden City, N. Y. (Hardback, first edition) Barth, John. 1988. Lost in the Fun House. Anchor Books, New York. (Paperback). Barth, John. 1987. Preface to Lost in the Fun House. Anchor Books, New York. pp. v-viii. (Paperback). Kaufman, Michael T. and Garner, Dwight. 2024. John Barth, Writer Who Pushed Storytelling's Limits, Dies at 93. New York Times, April 2, 2024.https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/books/john-barth-dead.html#:~:text=John%20Barth%2C%20who%2C%20believing%20that,of%20storytelling%20with%20imaginative%20and Accessed 20 December 2025. Walkiewicz, Edward P. 1986. John Barth. Twayne's United States Author Series, Warren French, editor. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts.