15 Now-You-Know Facts For Everyday Use

"The Ghost in the Machine," by John Barth, appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine on November 25th, 1963. It describes the experiences of a young man who has been haunted by an angry and frustrated ghost who is trapped within a robot that has no means to express its anger. Barth's narrator describes a series of interactions in which he attempts to placate, console, and eventually confront the ghost. In each case the ghost expresses anger at being trapped in this state, at having no means to act out its frustrations or communicate with anyone else, and Barth shows how these frustrations lead to further frustration and despair as the narrator fails to provide solutions and ultimately gives up. The ghost's increasing frustration leads it to attempt suicide by destroying the robot in which it is trapped, causing a chain of events that finally ends the ghost's life. Strangely, the book ends by listing fifteen facts, and that list goes ...