Stages of the clown -- Transformation: Dostoevsky's Idiot and Kafka's "metamorphosis" -- Alazon: the theme of intrusion in Great expectations and The trial -- Faulkner's one ring circus: Light in August -- World upside down I: Flannery O'Connor -- World upside down II: William Burroughs's Naked lunch and Nabokov's Lolita -- Harlequin: the character of the clown in Saul Bellow's Henderson the rain king and John Hawkes's Second skin -- Which way is up?: Ralph Ellison's Invisible man, Günter Grass's Tin drum, and Samuel Beckett's Trilogy -- Incarnate word was never known to laugh.