Carnival

True open seriousness fears neither parody, nor irony,
nor any other form of reduced laughter, for it is aware
of being part of an uncompleted whole.
— Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World

I had forgotten this epigram by the time I finished reading Carnival. I was musing about this book and trying to think what it reminded me of and it seemed liked it owed a debt to both Infinite Jest and A Confederacy of Dunces, not in a derivative way, but in an overall feeling. I looked up some reviews of A Confederacy of Dunces and see that it is considered Rabelaisian, and so I suppose that epigram was chosen carefully and the form of this book is a nod to works I do know and also those I don't. Perhaps that's why it didn't quite work for me: Carnival reads to me like a typical sophomore effort in which the author has the confidence to expand on his earlier works, putting on the page the full extent of his ideas that he hesitated to include before; an experiment that's partially lost on me because I don't know the foundational material.

Rawi Hage is a Lebanese-born Canadian and I loved his earlier works, De Niro's Game and Cockroach, for the immigrant-as-outsider POV, and though the main character in Carnival, Fly, is also an immigrant outsider, he reads as angry and off-putting. While I don't need for main characters to be nice or sympathetic, in this case, I was simply put off; Fly consorts with the underbelly of society -- the prostitutes and drug dealers, anarchists and perverts -- having only disdain for the law abiders and tax payers. He rages against the racism experienced by his fellow immigrant taxi drivers, which is understandable, but also indulges in his own racism. Fly is anti-religion and anti-capitalism and anti-medicine and anti-society and anti-social. 

On Catholics:

Well, Father, I think the only evil is you and your lot of delusional believers who make women suffer, who tell Africans to abstain from sex and not protect themselves. I believe you are a hater of misfits, a suppressor of clowns' laughs, scissors to the ropes of mountain climbers, chains to the wanderer, and a blindfold to the knower: a hater of men. But you are also a lover of yourself, a lover of power and buffoon dictators, a protector of arms dealers and thieves, pardoner of hypocrites with pious tongues and dirty hands…

This contempt is not reserved just for Catholics, however, as Hage also discusses and lampoons Muslims (and especially his neighbour Zainab). Here he is with what I assume to be a mockery of all religious people:

I took the wheel and my car flew through the marketplace and the Carnival, and I fancied myself a bird, then a tightrope walker in a clown's attire, singing and testing the rope with my empirical feet. Now the clown becomes a Joker, then a prophet chanting to the festive masses: I shall chase the clouds and stop the rain and save your lives from this endless charade of puppets and strings! Ladies and gentlemen, the Temple of Wonder is yours to enter, watch your head as you enter the tent, and kindly take off your shoes, a new life is waiting for you just inside. Here is your chance, ladies, to come back as a tiger, a lion, or a mockingbird, here is your chance, gentlemen, to see the eternal light and be saved from the burden of your daily life. Just sit tight in your seat, clap when you're told to, and leave when you hear the buzz of the Joker, or when the light above the door goes long and horizontal. Hurry, the show is about to start! Step inside and all your troubles will be forgotten. But do not eat from any of the forbidden foods, the big cat might get excited. And kids, do not sneeze when the man reaches with his bare hands for the lion's throat. Do as the others do and you will see miracles and illusions of flying horses, the revival of the old and the greatness of the divine! Come into the temple of bliss and joy and you will be given a new mask, a new life for eternity ever after.

Quite a lot of Fly's speech comes out as long and listing monologues, and from the passages I tend to select from the books I read, I have a fondness for long and listing monologues. Here's another bit I liked, even if I'm not sure I fully understand it:

Hospitals are a carnival of death. A masquerade of haggard eyes gazing at the white, purgatorial walls, a faint chaos of hunchbacked mothers chasing orderlies, of doctors disguised in aprons, pointing magic wands at nurses in angelic uniforms and muffled tap shoes, waving bandages mistaken for egg rolls. Hospitals are asylums with flying ambulances, bed bells to summon the physician's spirits, sponge baths above white linen, janitors swinging mops over hazy floors, evening moans at the last sunset, and fridges full of ice for arrested hearts.

If it's fair to compare books, I much preferred A Confederacy of Dunces, for although Ignatius J. Reilly is an unlikable misanthrope like Fly, he's also funny and ironic. And while Reilly has a fixation on his own body and its functions, he's not the historical-fantasy-induced onanist that Fly is (and while that might sound tantalising, it's a constant and rather dull quirk). I probably can't stop thinking of the comparison to ACoD since it's set in New Orleans, a Carnival city, and if Carnival is meant to be set in Hage's home city of Montreal (as assumed but not stated), I don't think of it as carnivalesque beyond the Cirque du Soliel. This book has led me to put in an order for Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel, and so perhaps with more foundational knowledge, I will be able to better appreciate Carnival itself.

There's something else that's bothering me about this book and that's the criticism of our society by the angry outsider. When the Israel-Labanese War of 2006 occurred, it was the first time that I had heard of the 30,000 people who live in Lebanon yet have Canadian citizenship. As was reported at the time, these are mainly people who came to Canada as immigrants and refugees, met the minimum requirements for obtaining a Canadian passport, and then returned to the country they consider their true home. They live and work in Lebanon, pay no taxes to Canada, but will happily return to take advantage of the "free" medical care or other social services. At the height of the conflict, these people demanded that the government of Canada evacuate them, and when nearby cargo ships were hired for the purpose, these same people complained that it took too long and the accommodations were too basic. These citizens of convenience are costly to Canada and contribute nothing and I resent them, utterly. On the other hand, while Rawi Hage was born in Beirut, his wikipedia page lists him as a Canadian writer, and as a country, we are richer for having him here. However, just like I wouldn't want to hear one of my lovely sisters-in-law, someone who married into my family, criticise my family, I am turned off by an immigrant who criticises my country: Even if this isn't how Hage himself views Canada, if the words put in Fly's mouth are meant to expose the character's views as ugly and negligible (although I don't know if that's the case), the irksomeness of the 2006 conflict is too fresh in my mind for a Lebanese-Canadian character to get away with calling we Canadians racist and ignorant. I love Canada and not least of all because we open our borders to both skilled immigrants and desperate refugees; I believe that we are enhanced by their inclusion. And although I know that our country is not above reproach, I can't help but feel defensive, and in the case of the character Fly, am not sad to see him float off into the sunset on his semen-stained carpet..