Book Review: Shocked and Amazed… On & Off the Midway
(White Tops Circus Magazine, September 1995)
Sideshows-if not in real life, certainly culturally- are hot right now; the distinctive artwork, the personalities, etc.
Witness Johnny Meah’s Freaks, Geeks & Strange Girls– Sideshow Banners of the Great American Midway. It is 170 pages of beautiful artwork, authoritative text, a title chosen more for novel effect than expose’, all slicked up ($40) and proper for any living room coffee table.
Now comes James Taylor’s Shocked and Amazed… On & Off The Midway!
This “1st Bizarre Issue,” as Taylor labels this collection of material on the outer/other world of the circus/carnival sideshow, is not for everybody’s coffee table.
Younger Fans know little of this side of circus history. Some will find it too strong for their politically correct taste.
But interviews with Ward Hall (an attraction at this summer’s national CFA convention) and albino sword-swallower Sandra Reed (remember her? Lady Sandra, Queen of Swords, married to 750-pound [his claim] Harold Spohn) are worth the time.
Throw in some sideshow pulp fiction, a carnival/freak show bibliography, a wide variety (stress the word wide) of photos, artwork and illustrations, and you have 80 pages of STRANGE.
Taylor plans to come up with a second issue in about six months, and maybe more after that. It depends, he says, on gathering more of this stuff. We hope he does.
It’s too bad, however, that Taylor must share catalog space with Atomic Books’ other offerings. An order undoubtedly will land you on the catalog list, and we’re talking (directly from the catalog cover) “drugs, sleaze, mayhem, fringe, freaks and trash- literary finds for mutated minds.”
Don’t say we didn’t warn you. —J.F.