Happy Endings | Literary Precedents
The most obvious precedent for the self reflexive, metafictional style of "Happy Endings" is "Lost in the Funhouse," the comic yet poignant title story of John Barth's 1968 collection of short fiction. Other works are Richard Brautigan's surreal novel, A Confederate General from Big Sur (1964), which ends with a chapter titled "2,000 Endings Per Second," and Edward Albee's absurdist one-act play, The Sandbox (1960), in which Mommy and Daddy hear "an off-stage rumble" and the Young Man admits that "the studio" has yet to give him a name. Albee has claimed that realism is the...
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