The Carnivalesque in Illness: Hollis Seamon’s Somebody Up There Hates You

This article analyzes Hollis Seamon's Somebody Up There Hates You in light of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque as it is developed both in Rabelais and His World and in Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. The novel shows the power of carnivalesque episodes and ironic laughter to question both the conventional approach to illness and death, and to illness literature in general. However, it also exposes the limits of parody and laughter in the face of death-no matter how regenerating this carnivalesque novel may prove to be for literature as a whole.