Revisiting Geek Love, a Real American Horror Story
I first read Katherine Dunn’s 1989 novel Geek Love several years ago on the recommendation of my friend Robin. At that point, she still lived in Arkansas, and I’d just come through on tour with a heavy metal band from Georgia. She insisted I give it a chance, ignoring my insistence that I don’t usually read fiction. Her plot synopsis sold me; after all, I was born with ectrodactyly and have always been drawn to stories about fellow physically abnormal folk. As usual, Robin was right, something I discovered very quickly as I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the riotous world of the Binewskis. Mile after mile, truck stop after truck stop, I fell in love with, then recoiled in horror from, the characters rendered so lavishly within its pages.
Geek Love follows the twisting, turning saga of the Binewskis, a family of circus folk whose extravagantly mustachioed patriarch Aloysius “Al” Binewski and his flaxen-haired wife “Crystal” Lil hatched a plan to create their very own brood of freaks to revitalize their failing Fabulon show. By dint of drugs and radioactive materials, Lil eventually gave birth to four surviving children: Arturo (“Arty”), a boy born with flippers instead of limbs; Olympia (“Oly”), a hunchbacked albino dwarf who also serves as the story’s narrator; Electra (“Elly”) and Iphigenia (“Iphy”), a pair of violet-eyed conjoined twins; and finally, Fortunato, known as Chick, the normal-looking son whose telekinetic powers proved to be the most dangerously freakish of all. Dunn’s writing is lyrical and earthy, and crackles with energy; her characters are so flawed, so human, that you’re left wondering who you’re actually meant to root for. It’s full of richly-pigmented vignettes—the consuming adoration Oly has for her brother (with its whispered implications of incest), the mutilated horse, Lil singing to the jars full of failed “experiments,” Elly’s death and resurrection, the hollows under Chick’s eyes. They bleed into a grand, horrifying portrait of a family that is irredeemably broken, yet clings together with an animal ferocity until the bitter, bitter end.
One of the book’s most thought-provoking aspects is its portrayal of just how much the Binewskis value their oddities. They relish their freak status, looking down upon the poor normals, with their boring limbs and boring lives. They despise normality so much that any child born without physical abnormalities is regarded as a failure. When Fortunato was born, his parents were all set to abandon their “normal” son and haul ass down the highway until, at the eleventh hour, his telekinetic powers made a spectacular entrance.
It’s a direct contrast with the attitude found in what may end up being the next big hallmark in the history of the freak show in American pop culture: FX’s newest entry in the American Horror Story series. In American Horror Story: Freak Show, the performers in Fräulein Elsa’s Cabinet of Curiosities don’t look down upon their neighbors in Jupiter, FL; rather, characters like the handsome “Lobster Boy” Jimmy Darling (played by Evan Peters) show their yearning to be accepted as normal. “We’re just like everyone else” is a common refrain, and Darling’s frustration at his “freak” status is more than a little heartbreaking. His character is caught between two worlds: his easy charm and good looks appeal to waitresses and scam artists, but his allegiance to his freak show family and his own syndactyly place him firmly in the “other” camp as far as the denizens of buttoned-up Jupiter are concerned. He’s good enough to come to town and secretly pleasure frustrated housewives, but he must always leave out the back door once they’ve gotten their thrill. He’s a very sympathetic character; any of us who’ve landed in the “other” category because of how we were born or how we live have felt the way his character feels more times than we’d like to count.