The Funhouse - chained to a rock in the midst of the waves.

it's myself I address. If I am, who am I? Such are the questions that beset my intervals of rest. I can believe them because they are absurd.

victims of their unremitting joie de nager. I have seen the best swimmers of my generation go under. Numberless the number of the dead!

[I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,]

Yet these same reflective intervals that keep me afloat have led me to wonder, doubt, despair-strange emotions for a swimmer!-have led me, even, to suspect . . . that our night sea journey is without meaning.

I continue to swim--but only because blind habit, blind instinct, blind fear of drowning are all still more strong than the horror of our journey.

[Ginsberg]
The rest: John Barth, "Lot in the Funhouse, Night-
Sea Journey"
Munch, "The Scream"