John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

"Story of my life," did I just hear me say? And (somewhere back there) "I've been told…"? Boyoboy, friends, have I ever, a hundred hundred times over! Being told, you might say, is the story of my life and the life of my story; told over and over, whether by different tellers or by the same teller at different times and in different ways: straight up and slantwise, minimally and maximally, realistically and fantastically, comically and tragically — and as narrative or drama, in prose/verse/song, set in sundry locales at sundry "times" with sundry casts of characters, but under all those trappings the same old me, Same Old Story, starring same old Oedipus/Perseus/Odysseus/Aeneas aka Peripatetic Pete or Freaked-Out Fred, all of whom and a shitload more I've "been" and none of whom's me, as I may've mentioned already, inasmuch as I'm no really real person (granted, we all feel that way now and then) nor even "really" a Fictional Character like those hero types abovementioned. Fact is, friends, I'm a fucking fiction, know what I'm saying? Just an old-fart story, maybe the oldest in the books — but let's just call me Fred. If I seem to ramble here and there, that may be because I ramble here and there, as geezers will. Or it may be (Reader take note) that I only seem to ramble, while actually getting a bunch of that left-hand business done.

O.-F. Fred, then, whose Whole Story compriseth no fewer than four full "acts," although various of my tellers have contented themselves with just one or another thereof. If you know the drill already, skip this paragraph. If not, let me remind you that I "begin" (you know what I mean) with my star-of-the-moment's Unusual Conception (Mom a Royal Virgin, literal or figurative; Dad rumored to be a God, ditto) and Imperiled Infancy (Threat and Rescue, Wound and Scar — the last of those useful for later ID); his Obscure Childhood "in another country" (lit. or fig.); his eventual Summons to Adventure; his Setting Out with help of Helper (and/or magical Weapon, Token, Password), bound either Homeward or Bottom-of-Thingsward or both, and his loss of Way/Weapon/Sidekick/Whatever as he approaches or crosses the Threshold of Adventure, from Day-lit Waking World to Twilight Zone. Sound familiar? I should hope so, unless you were born yesterday (in which case, watch your back, kid, and keep your guard up). My Act Two? Obstacles and Adversaries! Riddles and Combats! Tests and Trials of every sort and size, overcome with help of re-found Helper or whatever else my guy lost back there at the Threshold. Descent to Underworld's dark heart; slaying of ultimate Dragon or Ogre; penetration of Mystery's innermost sanctum and/or of Captive Princess's. Sacred Marriage, is what I'm saying: mystical Illumination, consummate Consummation, Transcension of Categories, un-mediated Knowledge, and like that? No wonder (Act Three) the bloke often needs goosing out of bed and back on course: a Summons to Return home-baseward from the Axis Mundi, delivered just about one-eighty around the Heroic track from where he got his original marching orders. So back upstairs he goes, maybe with Ms. Pronged Princess in tow or some other souvenir from the Bottom of Things, and maybe shifting shapes and costumes en route to give pursuers the slip, so that when (Act Four) he recrosses through Customs to the World Upstairs, he may be either in drag or else so morphed by his Adventures Thus Far that the homeland-security folks draw a blank till he flashes his afore-established Scar or other unequivocal ID. Which done, he Routs the Pretenders, assumes his rightful place as his hometown's Chief-in-Chief (or founds a New Burg, either on a hilltop or, like a stop-at-nothing real estate developer, in a marshfill), lays down the Law, and rules the waves, so to speak — he having, so to speak, waived all the rules — for, oh, eight years or thereabouts? Couple of Olympiads, let's say, or U.S. presidential terms? Anyhow, until he wakes up one not-so-fine morning to find himself and his administration inexplicably Fallen from Favor with gods and parishioners alike: the old magic flown, his authority kaput. Nothing for it, tant pis, but Exile (voluntary or otherwise) from his City, and the lonely trudge toward his Mysterious Finis — most often in a Sacred Grove, so I'm told, on a more or less Magic Mountain or at least a Spooky Hilltop, not un-reminiscent of the Square One site of his Unusual Conception. Where his remains remain, nobody's certain, but several towns claim that touristical attraction. Some say the chap's not really dead, just taking a sabbatical leave from Heroing. Some swear that he'll be back, one of these days.

Heard that tune somewhere before, have you, luv? Then it should come as no surprise that after so many remakes and reruns I find myself "identifying," as they say nowadays, with my Protagonists: those serial slam-bangers from every age and culture who after a while amalgamate into one, and whose story becomes my story. Consider, s.v.p.: Mom a Virgin Queen and Dad a Maybe-God? You'd better believe it; how else did I get to be the Boss-Man Story I am, or anyhow was? Oldest in the book, first out of Ma Muse's womb and lord of the litter, sired by we-might-as-well-say Divine Imagination. And as for Imperiled Infancy and the rest, what tale's not in mortal danger till its testicles descend and it finds its voice? Which is to say, its Sidekick/Helper — in my case, the ablest yarnspinners on Planet Earth, whose words have been my Magic Passport. Obstacles and Adversaries? Try book burnings and other censorships, lost manuscripts and sacked libraries, whole civilizations destroyed or petered out, not to mention trivialization, Disneyfication, bumbling bards, and other such hazards. I marvel that I'm here at all! But upon my own Princess/Queen, the Muse of Archetypes, I've sired a worldwide web of Guys-Like-That tales, codified and commentaried by mythologers and pedants of every stripe.

A not-bad career, in short, and over its long course each episode in turn has been the one that seemed most Me-like. Until recently that had been the Triumphal Reign bit, from which I would look back with proprietary satisfaction (and not a little headshaking relief) at those harrowing earlier installments — just as, in ages past, I'd looked forward, eagerly, to the episodes ahead, while feeling most akin to Endangered/Abandoned Tot, Fledgling Adventurer, Full-Fettled Dragonslayer/Princess-Penetrator, and Returnee-in-Disguise about to rout Pretenders and reclaim Throne. Each in turn, I say, has felt like Where I'm At; 'tis a symptom of encroaching old-fartity, I don't doubt, that a time came when I found it ever harder to see myself as Oedipus the Rex, Odysseus the Suitor-Slayer, Aeneas the Empire-Founder, the Ur-Tale Victorious. What I got to sensing instead was… oh, I don't know: something like a fidget in the audience? As if the old shtick were losing its shine, like one of those smash-hit TV sitcoms that's dulled its edge because it's become its own adversary: its own hardest act to follow, if you follow me. So many dead Dragons, routed Pretenders, punctured Princesses and newfounded Cities — who needed yet another? It wasn't the Perseuses and Aeneases I came to feel most akin to, but the Lears and Prosperos: "my magic all o'erthrown," my City urban-blighted and suburban-sprawled, my Laws crusted and clotted with niggling amendments and commentaries-on-commentaries. Budget deficits, creaking infrastructure, cabinet ministers and heirs at sixes and sevens, calls for impeachment, even, and the barbarians arming out in the boonies! So okay, you might say: Who doesn't sometimes feel like a stranger in his/her own house, her/his own skin? But with O.-F. Fred it was no longer "sometimes."

Truth to tell (and we myths do that, believe us or not, in our old-fashioned fashion), I got to feeling just about ready to hang it up, pack it in, bid the homefolks hasta la vista, and clear out of here; hobble offstage while I could still hobble, and hit the old road again, to wherever. There's that Hilltop I'd so often told or been told of, somewhere Out Yonder; maybe it was time for me to trudge thataway? But I couldn't help half wishing — just reflex, I suppose; long-established habit — that I could pull off one more Biggie before I bowed out; close my curtain with a bang. Problem was, even we big-boss mythic-wandering-hero-tale types can't dream up our own specifics and tell ourselves: We need a particularizer, a reorchestrator, an inventive sidekick/mouthpiece — in a word (dot dot dot) a Teller.