Carnival and Fuddy Meers

Dan Buck

Contemporary Theory

December 15, 2008

A Postmodern Carnival…How Romantic

Bakhtinian Grotesque and Fuddy Meers

For one day a pauper could be a king, a bawd could laugh with a bishop, and the strict

hierarchies of medieval Europe evanesced amidst the music and revelry of the festival. To the

outside observer the Feast of Fools—and similar carnival events—might have seemed like an

excuse for public drunkenness and general debauchery. However, the details and significance of

those chaotic revelries have captured the imaginations of theorists several hundred years

removed from the sounds of the celebratory festivals. Mikhail Bakhtin, in his seminal work

Rabelais and His World, depicts the power of the carnival spirit by claiming that it offered “the

chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to

enter a completely new order of things” (34). Carnival has enjoyed a number of manifestations

and transformations throughout history but, as Bakhtin notes the use of puppets, masks, laughter,

and the grotesque were consistent throughout history.

Carnival and all its capacities are not limited to the streets. In fact, the primary goal of

Bakhtin, in his most well-known volume addressing the subject, is to contextualize the works of

sixteenth century novelist Rabelais within a carnivalesque paradigm. Literary allusion to

carnival does not end with Rabelais, however. Through the centuries writers and visual artists

have invoked carnival devices in the service of their work. With each new age of thought and

A Postmodern Carnival…How Romantic Buck ‖ 2

emergent genre, carnival is recontextualized and appropriated. Postmodern art and literature is

no exception. I am specifically interested in the use of carnival in David Lindsay-Abaire’s dark

comedy Fuddy Meers. Its comedy, tone, and theme anchor it solidly within postmodernism, but

there are a host of carnival images and devices at play as well. I intend to explore the utilization

of carnival in a postmodern context. For a model, I will be looking to Catherine Nichols’s article

“Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival; David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest”. She is interested in

the novel, and I am more interested in the classification of the novel as “postmodern carnival.” I

will be assessing and often utilizing her application of Bakhtin to postmodern literature in order

to better illustrate Lindsay-Abaire’s use of it in Fuddy Meers. I will first follow Bakhtin’s path

of inquiry regarding the nature of grotesque. Then, using Nichols’s analysis of Infinite Jest, I

will assess her definition of postmodern grotesque, and determine if it informs the carnival spirit

of Fuddy Meers.

Medieval and Romantic Carnival

Days of carnival, by Bakhtin’s definition, are those that shirk the typical hierarchal

paradigms with satire and revelry. Rituals, contests, and parades are occasions for those with the

lowest social status to laugh at and with those with all the power. Behaviors seen as sinful only

one day earlier, are the order of the day during festival. Carnival is often closely tied to religious

or civic feasts, which were far more somber affairs. In religious feasts, hierarchies and societal

roles were reinforced. While official rituals were interested in stasis, the accompanying folk

festivals made comic commentary on their social paradigm.

Unlike the earlier and purer feast, the official feast asserted all that was stable,

unchanging, perennial: the existing hierarchy, the existing religious, political, and moral


values, norms and prohibitions. It was the triumph of a truth already established, the

predominant truth that was put forward as eternal and indisputable…The true nature of

human festivity was betrayed and distorted. But this true festive character was

indestructible. (Bakhtin 9)

So indestructible was the carnival spirit that it moved from the streets to the page. The primary

focus of Rabelais and his World is to contextualize the grotesque and carnival elements found in

the literary work of Rabelais. In his introduction, Bakhtin follows manifestations of grostesquery

from medieval folk ritual to romantic, and even modern literature. The literary version of the

grotesque is very similar in purpose to the folk festivals.

The carnival-grotesque form exercises this function: to consecrate inventive freedom, to

permit the combination of a variety of different elements and their rapprochement, to

liberate from the prevailing point of view of the world, from conventions and established

truths, from clichés, from all that is humdrum and universally accepted.(34)

Bakhtin clearly sees the grotesque in literature as containing the same subversive seeds of social

dissent as those once planted by raucous feasts. The grotesque, specifically, is imagery very

often rooted in the body that distorts through enlargement, multiplication, or juxtaposition

everyday elements to humorous effect. Oversized masks, blackface paint (with exaggerated

features), and disfigured marionettes are some of the clearest examples of the grotesque that have

made appearances in festivals around the world. These half-formed or deformed images are

reflections of the societal longing for change, a corporeal longing for the new, or for, as Bakhtin

writes “death and birth, growth and becoming” (24).


Carnival also impacted language. The familiarity of the carnival spirit inspired new

speech patterns that would have been considered inappropriate for official use. The bulk of these

involved profanities and abusive language. Bakhtin explains,

The familiar language of the marketplace became a reservoir in which various speech

patterns excluded from the official intercourse could freely accumulate. In spite of their

genetic differences, all these genres were filled with the carnival spirit, transformed their

primitive verbal functions, acquired a general tone of laughter, and became, as it were, so

many sparks of the carnival bonfire which renews the world. (17)

The language of the carnival was both heterogeneous and familiar. Bakhtin calls it “dialogic

heteroglossia.” Diverse in its origins, the linguistic conglomeration of tongues high and low,

young and old, rich and poor was merely another manifestation of the “second life” that carnival

invariably created for the people of its culture.

Before addressing the nature of postmodern carnival, I believe it will be helpful to view

the first major metamorphosis of the grotesque. Bakhtin himself records and analyzes the

transformation of literary use of the grotesque that occurred with the advent of romanticism. One

element of the change was the move of carnival’s focus from the group to the individual.

Bakhtin points out that medieval manifestations of the grotesque in literature were directly

related to the folk culture and therefore represented the movement and ethos of all the people of

the society. And yet for the Romantics “it became, as it were, an individual carnival, marked by a

vivid sense of isolation. The carnival spirit was transposed into a subjective, idealistic

philosophy” (37).

In addition to Romanticism’s shift of the grotesque toward a personal and individualized

carnival, there was also a move toward terror. As Bakhtin describes,


The world of Romantic grotesque is to a certain extent a terrifying world, alien to man.

All that is ordinary, commonplace, belonging to everyday life, and recognized by all

suddenly becomes meaningless, dubious and hostile. Our own world becomes an alien

world. Something frightening is revealed in that which was habitual and secure. (59)

This attitude toward terror is a pronounced step away from earlier carnival which reduced

elements of terror to playful monsters. Anything alien or mystical was given a bodily form and

summarily ridiculed alongside the fools and kings of the medieval festivals. Romantic grotesque

kept the terror as a more abstract and frightening element alien to man and his daily traffic. In

addition, Romantic grotesque tends to mark madness as a tragic aspect of individual isolation,

and removes the imagery from its medieval habitat of regenerative laughter. Medieval grotesque

treats madness as a gay parody of logic and reason; Romantic grotesque sees madness as an

horrific end to man’s inability to connect with other members of his society (39). This turn

toward terror in the Romantic grotesque also changed the meaning ascribed to masks,

marionettes, devils and demons. Ultimately, the Romantics moved the starting time of festival to

after sunset. The revelry and laughter of folk festivals had once taken place in broad daylight,

but the Romantics broke out the candles and turned the party into a haunted house of sorts.

Literary use of carnival retains this tone, at least in part, even today as is evidenced from the

culture now associated with carnivals and traveling fairs. Sideshow “freaks” became a regular

installment of carnivals in the 18th century and even today there is an unmistakably dark ethos

surrounding carnival visible in its portrayal in film, literature, theatre, and television of the last

century.

It is also worth noting that along with Romantic grotesque came the image of the

controlled marionette. Certainly puppetry was used in folk festival culture, but the metaphor of a


puppet controlled by a higher, even malevolent force was unique to Romantic carnival. Clearly,

the Romantic grotesque had a different, perhaps more complex approach to carnival. It was still

designed for laughter and fun, but its insertion of darkness, madness, and controlling exterior

forces into the world of carnival created a more ambivalent form. The celebration of life was

closely juxtaposed with the fear of death. Public celebration and fun was often underscored by

an awareness of isolation.

Postmodern Carnival

Bakhtin’s writings on carnival were published at the dawn of postmodernism and could

not have predicted the way it would have adopted and altered the grotesque. So, we turn to a

contemporary analyst who attempts to read postmodern literature through a Bakhtinian lens.

Catherine Nichols dissects Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, a novel that she describes as

clearly postmodern and yet also strongly influenced by the carnival spirit.

Set in the eerily familiar near-future, Wallace’s America has merged with Canada… In a

classic Bakhtinian inversion of the hierarchal distinctions between high and low, the new

republic is presided over by a former Las Vegas crooner named Johnny Gentle, who

bears the distinction of being ‘the first U.S. President ever to swing his microphone

around by the cord during his inauguration speech’ (Wallace 383). Time, the perennial

yardstick of teleology, has ceased to depict the progression of linear history and has been

replaced by…the timelessness of corporate sponsored years. That the thrust of the

novel’s action takes place in the ‘Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment’ presents the

ideal milieu for a culture where the ‘lower stratum’ of the body is emphasized. (Nichols

4-5)


In addition, there are a host of characters and cultural elements within Wallace’s world which

exemplify Bakhtin’s grotesque deformity. The main characters possess enlarged arms, legs, or

heads; while the fictional republic is populated by insects the size of Volkswagen automobiles

and giant infants who sometimes crush houses as they roam the land. The attention to bodily

distortion clearly marks the novel as grotesque.

Wallace also utilizes linguistic devices to allude to carnival. As noted earlier, language of

carnival was essentially heterogeneous and varied. Infinite Jest excels in heterogeneous

narrative structure. Wallace formats his prose in alternating structures including email, interview

transcripts, first person accounts, third person accounts, newspaper headlines, and even (making

a double-reference to carnival) a puppet show script depicting a presidential cabinet meeting

(Nichols 5). In addition to a varied narrative form, Wallace imposes an extra-textual device of

excessive footnoting. The footnotes are often vital to the story. Nichols implies that this might

be Wallace’s effort to convey the bodily grotesque, confusing the head for the foot even within

the pages of the novel itself (6).

It is here, that Nichols believes she has recognized a disparity between Bakhtinian

carnival and Wallace’s use of carnival.

Perhaps the first indication that Wallace’s polyphonic, heterogeneously peopled textual

inverse falls short of Bakhtin’s utopian ends is the troubling presence of a dark chasm

that lurks around its kaleidoscopic edges. Wallace weaves a dense skein of carnivalesque

intertexuality only to rupture it with glimpses of a fearful Otherness that cannot be

assimilated into its cacophonous dialogue. Despite their athletic celebrity and prodigious

intelligence, the brothers Hal and Orin Incandenza suffer from harrowing nightmares.

Orin awakes from these dreams ‘soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic


darkness where you’re dreading whatever you think of’ and filled with ‘the soul’s

certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and

then going to sleep again will be like falling, again, of something tall and sheer’. (6)

Nichols fails to mention Bakhtin’s acknowledgement of the grotesque’s evolution into a darker

form in the hands of the Romantics. Despite Nichols’s implication that Wallace has stepped into

new territory, he is still well within the tradition of carnival by incorporating dark menace and

terror into his novel. However, Nichols is correct is noting that this is a turn away from

Bakthin’s utopian vision of medieval carnival. Bakhtin clearly sees the folk festival’s bright

celebratory revelry as the most socially equalizing force of carnival.

Nichols notes another turn away from the earliest and purest Bakhtinian carnival in

Wallace’s use of masks. Masks were originally used in festivals as a tool of liberation from

one’s self. The poor could pretend to be rich; the pious could play at lasciviousness. As Bakhtin

states, Wallace’s masks, however, are clearly designed to conceal the self, not to liberate it. This

too, was a change first implemented by Romantic grotesque. Bakhtin notes,

In its Romantic form the mask is torn away from the oneness of the folk carnival concept.

It is stripped of its original richness and acquires other meanings alien to its primitive

nature; now the mask hides something, keeps a secret deceives. The Romantic mask

loses almost entirely its regenerating and renewing element and acquires a somber hue.

A terrible vacuum, a nothingness lurks behind it. (40)

This is exactly the use of masks that Nichols notes in Infinite Jest where the deformed create a

support group aptly called U.H.I.D. (Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed). The

goal of the group, whose members wear veils to the meetings, is to “be open about their essential

need for concealment” (as quoted in Nichols 7), a purpose that could not be more contradictory


to folk carnivals of the type Bakhtin emulates. It is important to note that even though Wallace

is using masks to hide instead of liberate, the way he presents the masks is with humor. Just as

Bakhtin noted about the Romanticists’ grotesque, the original gaiety may be gone, but laughter is

still elemental to the form. Costumes and disguises are also used in Infinite Jest to conceal the

identity of FBI-like agents. This is truly anti-liberation masking. The officers of the established

rule are donning civilian costumes in order to better monitor and maintain the status quo. But

even in this context comedy is utilized. The agency is known as the Office of Unspecified

Services and as quoted by Nichols the disguises are also humorous.

…men as women, women as longshoremen or Orthodox rabbinicals, heterosexual men as

homosexual men, Caucasians as Negroes,…Healthy males as cephalic boys or epileptic

public-relations executives. (9)

The very fact that Wallace lets us laugh at this ironic carnival is emblematic of the ambivalence

of Romantic grotesque.

Ultimately, Infinite Jest may not deserve its title of postmodern carnival. In terms of

stylistic elements and narrative devices, the novel closely follows the spirit of Romantic

grotesque nearly half a millennium old. As far as themes go, Wallace comes out somewhat

conservative as postmodern novelists go. He demonstrates a desire for dialogic redemption in a

monologic culture. Wallace even said in an interview,

What’s been passed down from the postmodern heyday is sarcasm, cynicism, a manic

ennui, suspicion of all authority, suspicion of constraints on conduct, and a terrible

penchant for ironic diagnosis of unpleasantness instead of an ambition not just to

diagnose and ridicule, but to redeem. (Nichols 4)


Carnival Meers

Fuddy Meers is a textbook example of contemporary carnival literature. The title is a

reference to the “funny mirrors” found in a carnival fun house, where bodies are disfigured and

distorted into the grotesque. In fact, the carnival itself is a recurring theme. It is a pivotal

mnemonic device for Claire. She continually hears carnival music as she is trying to recall her

past through her amnesia. One also might consider the plot itself—with its fast-paced twists and

turns—a narrative carnival ride. The play’s tone is quite similar to the ironic Romantic

grotesque that contains both the terrifying and the humorous. There are several deformed

characters, masks literal and symbolic, a puppet, costumes, and heterogeneous speech. The

evidence of the play as a part of carnival is abundant. What must be determined is whether it

most closely follows the festive folk festivals of medieval carnival, the ambivalent and ironic

Romantic grotesque or if it, unlike Infinite Jest, contains elements which mark it as distinct from

the long existing forms of carnival literature. Is Fuddy Meers the postmodern carnival Nichols

claims Infinite Jest to be? To determine the answer we will look at the carnival elements and

determine how they are used and to what end.

The first element of carnival that deserves some attention is Lindsay-Abaire’s use of

deformity and mask. The play contains a good amount of both. The first example we see is in

Philip. He is described in the cast list as a lisping, limping, half-blind, half-deaf man with

secrets. He emerges from under Claire’s bed in a ski mask, which he later explains is designed to

hide his deformity, playing the same role as the veils of Wallace’s U.H.I.D. group in Infinite Jest.

His ski mask is only one of the “masks” he wears. He also claims to be Zack, Claire’s brother,

when in fact, he is her abusive ex-husband. Heidi, Philip’s “woman on the inside” is also

wearing a mask. In a true act of carnival topsy-turvy, even though she has broken the law by


helping Philip escape prison, she has disguised herself as a police officer. Richard, Claire’s

current husband, is wearing a mask of sorts as well. Despite a checkered past, he is playing the

dutiful husband and father. He is constantly worried that his past decisions will catch up with

him. Millet, Philip’s primary accomplice, carries a puppet with him at all times, which

occasionally—seemingly of its own will—reveals secrets or spews profanities. In many ways,

Mr. Hinky Binky, as the puppet is called, plays the role of the original festival mask, liberating

the inner nature of Millet. Mr. Hinky Binky also has a strong propensity toward lower region and

scatological allusions like the grotesque humor so common to carnival. One could even argue

that Claire’s teenage son is utilizing a mask. Hidden behind the haze of his marijuana and teen

angst he is able to avoid the unpleasantries of his family life for the bulk of the action. Philip’s

ski mask is not the only literal mask in the play. While being guarded by Millet in the basement,

Claire discovers a monster mask in a box of old toys. Meanwhile, she is trying to convince

Millet to reveal the story of what’s happened to her.

MILLET. I can’t. I’m just here to saw my manacle. I’m sorry.

CLAIRE. (playful) Oh. You’re sorry? (puts on mask, silly monster voice). Millet’s sorry

he can’t talk about Claire’s amnesia.

(MILLET laughs nervously.)

CLAIRE. (creeps to him, monster voice) Well, what if I made you talk about it? (points

squirt gun at him)

MILLET. I thought you were gonna put that away.

CLAIRE. (threatening monster voice) What if I tortured you until you had to talk about

it? (She puts down squirt gun, and grabs the saw from him.)

MILLET. Hey.


CLAIRE. (grabs MILLET’s arm) What if I said I’d cut off your hand if you didn’t tell

me about my amnesia?!

MILLET. (petrified) That’s my puppet hand.

CLAIRE. Tell me what happened, Millet!

MILLET. Please!

CLAIRE. Tell me!

MILLET. I can’t!

CLAIRE. (whips off mask) Kidding! (she screams with laughter. He just stares at her,

frightened.)

CLAIRE. What’s the matter? (pause) I wasn’t really gonna do it. I’m not like that Millet.

I don’t have it in me.

MILLET. (beat) Yes you do.

CLAIRE. (pause) What’s that supposed to mean?

MILLET. Nothing. (68-69)

Claire uses the liberating mask of medieval folk festival which allows her to transgress her usual

sweet and compliant composure, all in the service of trying to discover who she really is. So,

Lindsay-Abaire is clearly interested in calling on the rich history of masks to create his carnival

world. He utilizes both the medieval mask of liberation and the concealing mask of Romantic

grotesque.

The heteroglossia of Bakthin’s marketplace and Wallace’s dystopia can be found in

Fuddy Meers as well. Closely tied to the grotesque deformity, Philip speaks with a pronounced

lisp, Gertie speaks in an largely unintelligible aphasic gibberish, and even Binky the puppet


speaks in a ridiculous voice. From this cacophonous interplay of strange linguistics, the carnival

atmosphere is reinforced.

Tonally, Fuddy Meers straddles the line between the light of medieval folk festival and

the dark of Romantic grotesque. The play is unmistakably anchored in laughter, with visual and

wordplay gags at every turn. And it is not a sardonic, cool laughter aimed at social institutions,

but a free, light-hearted comedy. With the exception of the basement scenes, the play occurs in

bright, well-lit spaces. Yet, there is clearly darkness around the edges of this play. Lindsay-

Abaire gives a note to directors in one published version of his play.

Claire’s world is like a funhouse, where anything can happen. A floor can drop. A room

can suddenly be filled with noise. Something terrifying can pop out of the darkness.

Giddiness can turn into horror the turn of a corner…Claire lives in an unsettling world

where mad fun and genuine danger are wrapped around each other. (17)

Bakhtin noted the innovation of Romantic grotesque in the use of the marionette as man

controlled by higher forces of society or the universe. Fuddy Meers is centered on this motif.

Claire, whose unique ailment forces her to reconstruct her identity on a daily basis is hopelessly

dependent upon the forces around her. The first scene feels strange, but safe because she has the

seemingly earnest Richard providing her with the “facts” of her life in a neat little book. But this

security is quickly shattered with the appearance of the ski-masked Philip. Like Claire, the

audience is now suspicious of everything told her. In true form to Romantic grotesque, the

traffic of her every day is turned into a terror-filled nightmare. As Bakhtin writes, “Our own

world becomes an alien world. Something frightening is revealed in that which was habitual and

secure” (38).


Claire and the audience are immediately cast in the play as marionettes with stings pulled

by the characters in Claire’s life. Even before Philip arrives, we get a sense of the effort of

others to prescribe identity onto Claire.

RICHARD. (holds up dress) How about this today?

CLAIRE. You mean for me?

RICHARD. You like this dress.

CLAIRE. Oh, it’s hideous.

RICHARD. You wear it all the time. You wore it to Jackie’s Thanksgiving party.

(motions to coffee) That’s your coffee. You can drink it.

CLAIRE. Who’s Jackie?

RICHARD. Your cousin.

CLAIRE. Oh. (takes coffee) Aren’t you having coffee?

RICHARD. I don’t drink coffee. I had some juice

CLAIRE. Oh, juice is nice.

RICHARD. No, you don’t like juice, sweetheart.

CLAIRE. I don’t?

RICHARD. No.

CLAIRE. I don’t think I like that dress.

RICHARD. You do.

CLAIRE. I don’t.

RICHARD. You do, darling. You like it very much.

CLAIRE. This is very unsettling. (20-21)


Claire’s familiar world is foreign to her. In fact, her daily amnesia requires her to live a sort of

hyper-Romantic grotesque where there is never a familiar. Her predicament is further

complicated by the arrival of Philip who tells her that Richard is not who or what he says he is.

He throws her tenuous grasp on her own identity out the window with her notebook of labeled

photos that Richard gave her. According to Philip’s accomplices, his plan is to merely apologize

for abusing her. But, ultimately, we realize Philip has been masking his intentions and his end

game is to permanently abduct Claire and presumably convince her the next morning that they

are a happy couple, doing essentially what Richard does on a daily basis. We even hear from

Millet that Philip calls Claire his “blank thlate”.

It is no mistake that the aphasic word Gertie uses to say Claire’s name is “Clay”. Claire is seen

as a piece of clay by those around her, with a pliable identity easily shaped by whoever is with

her when she awakes. And yet, on the day the play takes place, something is different. Claire

asks questions. She is abducted and her fragile identity is shaken. She is brought to her home and

interacts with her mother. Within Claire’s very bones there is a vague remembrance of who she

is. She hears sounds and music that act as clues for her investigation of herself. Carnival music,

dogs barking, and flashes of the past come to Claire despite the effort of those around her to

sterilize her reality. Joseph Roach in his study of Mardi Gras talks about this bodily memory

that can resist prescribed narratives. Carnival in its purest form is a collective remembering acted

out through rituals, gestures, dance, and laughter. Roach calls the phenomenon “kinesthetic

imagination.”

The kinesthetic imagination exists in the virtual. Its truth is the truth of simulation, of

fantasy, or daydreams, but its effect on human action may have material consequences of

the most tangible sort and of the widest scope. This faculty, which flourishes in that


mental space where imagination and memory converge, is a way of thinking through

movements—at once remembered and reinvented—the otherwise unthinkable…

Kinesthetic imagination is not only an impetus and method for the restoration of behavior

but also a means of its imaginative expansion through those extensions of the range of

bodily movements. (27)

It is in this kinesthetic imagination that Claire, while walking in the house where she grew up,

playing with the toys she once owned, and performing nursing duties on her son and ex-husband,

not only remembers who she is, but takes a step toward reimagining who she can be. As the play

settles into denouement, Claire shows us that she is no longer willing to be shaped by others.

When Philip’s plan is foiled, Richard tells Claire, “You’re doing okay, Claire.” And she snips

back “Richard, don’t tell me how I’m doing” in direct contrast to her earlier acquiescence about

what she likes to drink and wear. Then, in final scene, while looking over the book Richard has

created to remind her who she is each morning she makes an important request.

CLAIRE. This book needs to be updated.

RICHARD. Aye-aye, General.

CLAIRE. There are a lot of things missing.

RICHARD. The doctors don’t want you to know everything.

CLAIRE. Why not?

RICHARD. They said getting that upset every day would take its toll.

CLAIRE. On who? (beat) Well, now that I’m fully informed and capable of making

decisions, I’m telling you to put it all in. The first sentence: Your deformed husband beat

you hard and often.

RICHARD. This is how you want to start your day.


CLAIRE. Just put it in.

RICHARD. You’re the boss. (139-140)

She is no longer willing to accept the distorted and grotesque images of her identity that

she sees in the funhouse mirrors people keep showing her. For good or for ill, she chooses an

individualized, supremely subjective road to identity.

Postmodern Smackdown

In looking at Wallace’s carnival in Infinite Jest and Lindsay-Abaire’s in Fuddy Meers it

is not particularly easy to sort out which most exemplifies a postmodern carnival. For that matter

I have neither the will or ability to determine which work is more postmodern, a question about

as legitimate as asking “Which band rocks harder?” However, I think it is beneficial to see how

the two works utilize carnival devices. Wallace seems pretty well anchored in Romantic

grotesque. When it comes to devices his use of mask and deformity are designed to explore

alienation and terror. Tonally, his novel is dark and utilizes sardonic laughter to satirize the

hegemonic forces of society. Thematically, however, he is a bit more hopeful than many

postmodern authors, offering his characters the glimmer of redemption. Wallace uses Romantic

grotesque to criticize the absurd and illogical world, but presents a path toward meaning.

Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers borrows from both sub-genres liberally—a postmodern

tendency in itself. His use of puppets, masks, and disfigurement are sometimes brightly comic

and in the service of liberation and other times are sardonic and designed to conceal. His tone is

mostly bright. The entire play takes place in daylight hours and the humor has a distinctly playful

nature to it. Thematically, Fuddy Meers follows Infinite Jest but is slightly more ambivalent in

its ending. Although Claire seems to have grown and reached a new level of self-awareness the


play ends with her falling asleep unsure of how much of her identity she will retain in the

morning. It’s as though Lindsay-Abaire is telling us, no matter how free you felt on carnival

day, you still have to go back to work tomorrow.

Both works, while certainly postmodern in character and subject matter, can be best

described as Romantic grotesque. As Bakthin reminds us, “Romanticism made its own

important discovery—that of the interior subjective man with his depth, complexity, and

inexhaustible resources” (44). In essence, the characters of both Infinite Jest and Fuddy Meers

make this discovery. Through masks, mirrors, and marionettes they each discover the subjective

and individualized truth that is written on their very bones.


Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail M., and Michael Holquist. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helene Iswolsky.

New York: Indiana University, Folklore Institute, 1984.

Lindsay-Abaire, David. Fuddy Meers. New York: Overlook P, The, 2001.

Nichols, Catherine. "Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest."

Critique 43 (2001): 3-16.

Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead : Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia UP,

1996.

Documents

Carnival and Fuddy Meers