John Hawkes' "Travesty" and the idea of travesty

Abstract

John Hawkes' novel "Travesty" is a travesty in a broader as well as in the strict sense of the term, what might be termed an "existential" as well as a "literary" travesty: for it travesties, on the one hand, Albert Camus "La Chute" and, on the other hand, Camus' philosophical speculations on the existential implications of suicide as well as his somewhat mysterious death in an automobile accident. Hawkes' "Travesty" finally takes the shape of an apotheosis of death itself: not as a fictionalized instance of the Freudian death-wish, but as the narrator's preoccupation with death as the form for life. The narrator's lifelong concern with pornographic photography as well as his concept of "ideal" suicide in a planned automobile accident force debris to appear as design and thus elevate him to the status of ultimate artist.