I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me’s no joke.

In that period he came to know "the remarkable short fiction" of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges which inspired his collection Lost in the Funhouse. Barth has since insisted that he was merely making clear that a particular stage in history was passing and pointing to possible directions from there.