I’ve read a few books about freak shows. I loved Nightmare Alley, and I seem to recall a Tom Piccirilli novel featuring a geek. I read Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love a few years ago but decided against reviewing it here despite really enjoying it. I quite like freaks. I feel a cetain kinship with them. I was on holidays during the summer and read a book called Freakshow that came out on Loompanics. I had no idea what it would be like, but Loompanics was an alternative publisher that used to put out books on drugs and conspiracy theories, so I had high hopes.
Freakshow – Jacquin Sanders
Freakshow was originally published in 1954, and it used to be titled Strip the Heart. I thought it was pretty good. It’s about Bat Fidler, a cranky, violent asshole who gets a job as a carnival wrestler. He sparks up a relationship with a stripper, but ends up falling in love with a woman with no arms who is exhibited in the Freakshow as “Fishgirl”. He ends up murdering a lad. There’s a mentally challenged lad in the carnival called Egghead who likes having eggs thrown at his face. The whole thing is rather grim, and I think it qualifies as noir. (I’m still a little unsure of the boundaries of that genre.) Either way, this was an enjoyable holiday read that got me thinking of what life was like for carnival freaks. I decided to seek out a nonfiction book on this topic.
Freak Babylon – Jack Hunter
I didn’t spend much time figuring out the best book on freaks to read. I just went with the first book I could get my hands on. It was Jack Hunter’s Freak Babylon.
The first section confused me by listing the Necronomicon as a source, but I looked up other books referenced here, and they were all real. Much of the book is taken up describing freaks from history. Unsurprisingly, most of these people lived very sad lives, and many of them were horribly exploited. There’s not a huge amount of detail for many of these characters, and at times it feels like the author is struggling to fill pages. There is a section describing the atrocities performed on deformed or disabled people by Joseph Mengele in Auschwitz. There’s another on thalidomide babies. I was repulsed reading these sections, but in fairness to the author, I think his point in bringing these topics up was to highlight the hardships faced by anyone born different. Still, I would have prepared more of a focus on carnival freaks.
There’s lots of pictures in here, including some shots of people with deformed genitals. You probably like that kind of thing.
There’s 2 large appendices here, one describing the life of the Elephant Man and the other discussing Tod Browning’s Freaks. Both felt like filler. I went back and watched Freaks for the first time in ages. It’s a classic.
Honestly, this was a depressing read. Human beings are truly despicable creatures. We’re mere decades away from locking up and displaying mentally handicapped children for fun. As a species, we’re utterly compassionless, and our capacity to exploit others is limitless. The sooner we’re gone, the better. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this book to make me feel this way.
