Early on in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, the nameless man passes a series of pre-independence commercial buildings. He then walks by a big hotel named the Atlantic-Caprice. In this context, the phrase, “a festival of crazy joy,” occurs.

The festival aspect of the concept could relate to the liminal features of Ghana. It’s in a transition period, moving from a British colony to an autonomous nation. Like a festival, the conditions of Ghana aren’t supposed to be permanent. After all, a festival has a limited duration. A music festival, for instance, isn’t unending. It’s not an everlasting event. It appears on a set date, then vanishes after a few days.

The crazy part of the concept could convey how the festival is actually something like a permeant feature of everyday life in Ghana. Ideally, the corruption that the man witnesses will, like a festival, end. Yet that's not the case. As the omniscient narrator notes, there's still the “same old stories of money changing hands and throats getting moistened and palms getting greased.” It’s possible to argue that Ghana’s inability to behave like a typical festival and move on to a different, less corrupt phase has made it a bewildering, disturbing, and “crazy” place.

Finally, the joy component of the concept acknowledges how pleasurable the festive craziness can be. The decadent, unstable environment is satisfactory to many Ghanaians. It gives them fancy cars and nice food. Like the bus driver in the novel’s first scene, people seem drawn to the “marvelous rottenness” that’s produced by Ghana's “festival of crazy joy.”