[2] When Barth began attending Johns Hopkins University in 1947, he enrolled in one of only two creative writing courses available in the US at the time.

Barth cited a number of contemporary writers, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, and especially Jorge Luis Borges, as important examples of this.

[6] Jorge Luis Borges was a primary influence,[7] as acknowledged by Barth a number of times, most notably in "The Literature of Exhaustion".

[15] "Autobiography", which is "meant for monophonic tape and visible but silent author", is a self-aware story narrating itself and decrying its father, John Barth.

Told out of sequence, the speaker could at any point be (or is simultaneously) Tiresias offering his prophecy in the third person, Narcissus repeating it to himself, or Echo mirroring either (or both).

In what is apparently an argument between a couple with problems in their relationship, Barth rejects giving details of names and descriptions, instead just using the words "fill in the blank".

In keeping with the book's subtitle—"Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice"—the "Author's Note" by Barth indicates the various media through which a number of these stories can be conveyed.

The play starred Tim McDonough and Bill McCann as the Siamese twins, and was staged at Boston's Theater Works October 8 - November 21, 1981.

[19] The story "Lost in the Funhouse" had an overt influence on David Foster Wallace in the final novella of Girl with Curious Hair, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way".

The protagonist takes a creative writing course at a school near Johns Hopkins, taught by a Professor Ambrose, who says he "is a character in and the object of the seminal 'Lost in the Funhouse'".