THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SIDESHOW GEEK

Prepare to be transported into a world like no other in The Rise and Fall of the Sideshow Geek. This book is not merely a historical account; it is a captivating journey that will mesmerize you from the very first page. With its well-researched narrative and vivid storytelling, it resurrects the forgotten world of sideshow entertainment, revealing the secrets and controversies that surround it.

An enthralling journey into the forgotten realms of carnival history. With meticulous research and an unflinching dedication to detail, the author unveils the captivating stories of the sideshow geek and its adjacent genres of live entertainment. This book provides a comprehensive and unbiased account, separating fact from fiction with ease.

I had no idea what a sideshow geek act was before I picked up this book, and Nathan Wakefield certainly taught me. Although the subject matter of this book is revolting, the book itself is fascinating and impossible to look away from, like the geek act itself. Wakefield’s research is thorough, covering everything from the origins of the geek act to the lingering traces of it in modern day entertainment, even including a chapter on the entire history of collegiate goldfish swallowing. Wakefield is also open about the exploitative nature of the geek act itself, and how unhoused individuals and people struggling with addiction were sucked into doing such brutal work.

I've got a real affection for books about magic, the circus and the carnival -- and my favourite reading material in that arena is the carnival sideshow. So Nathan Wakefield's book, The Rise and Fall of the Sideshow Geek was always going to be an easy sell to me. It's an area that there's so very little material written about it, that anything that he produced was going to be a serious contribution to the literature. But if I imagine the book I would have wanted to read on the subject, that's the book that Wakefield delivers.

In his introduction to the book, Wakefield describes how his obsession with the subject developed, and given how closely it parallels my own experience, I can only assume that it's going to be true for most of his audience. For me, it began with a re-run of the original Nightmare Alley back in the late 60's or early 70's, and an interest in the history of magic led me down this obscure little pathway. I'm old enough to have seen some of the dying embers of the trade -- a Hoochie Coochie show named 'Midnight Madness' with a travelling fair in the UK. A papier-mache 'Two Headed Giant' at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. The occasional deformed animal show. But really, the business was coming to a close by the time I was old enough to look out for it. And so the only access I had was through the history books and the occasional resurrectionist associated with the magic scene.

The one aspect of the scene that is fairly well documented is the freak show. But Wakefield is interested in a much narrower segment of the sideshow scene -- specifically, the geek show. In Nightmare Alley, the geek is portrayed as the bottom rung on the Circus/Carny ladder -- the alcoholic who is paid to act as a wild man, scaring the pants off the paying customer by biting the heads off live animals.

Wakefield does a fantastic job of surveying pretty well everything that is known about the individuals who played this role in the past, and the illustrations make the book somewhat reminiscent of the best work of Ricky Jay, whose Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women ploughed similar territory, albeit in a much less focused way.

While the main focus of the book is on the geek -- both glomming and non-glomming varieties, Wakefield also surveys related professions, such as the Wildman show and Human Ostriches. Wildmen are people who profess to come from strange different lands who have not yet been civilized. Some early pinheads were labelled as falling into this category. Human ostriches are the people who swallow strange things like glass, nails, chains, live animals, etc. Though these are sometimes gaffed, the vast majority of such performers did their act for real.

After surveying what we know about historical geekdom, Wakefield provides us with an edifying discussion of the decline and fall of the geek show and then it's place in popular culture after it had died out as a carnival phenomena, followed by a brief discussion of how some of the effects were achieved. I was surprised not to see any coverage of Mirin Dajo -- the man who was repeatedly stabbed with a sword that went right through his abdomen. Nevertheless, I learned so much about so many characters from the past that I can hardly complain that one of my own favourites have been left out.

I really can't rate this book highly enough. If you have any interest at all in the subject matter, you should run to your nearest book shop and buy yourself a copy. It really is the definitive work on the geek show. The information that Wakefield shares here just can't be found anywhere else. And his personal passion for the subject and the people that he writes about shines through on every page.

I loved this book. Five stars.