Geek Love

Katherine Dunn wrote Geek Love over the course of ten years. It took another decade to publish. When it hit shelves in 1989, the book quickly developed a cult following. I can see why. It takes readers to strange places.

Geek Love was Dunn’s third novel. Her first two, Attic and Truck, remain largely unread. Her posthumous novel, Toad, leaves something to be desired by most accounts. But Geek Love endures.

The novel recounts the rise and fall of a traveling carnival. Aloysius “Al” Binewski and his wife Crystal Lil run the show with their children, who are human experiments. Through drugs and radioactive material, Al and Crystal Lil alter Lil’s pregnancies to produce “freaks.” Lil sees their “defects” as a form of inherited security: “What greater gift could you offer your children than an inherent ability to earn a living just by being themselves?”

The results are Arturo, often called Arty, a boy with flippers for hands and feet; Siamese girl-twins called Electra and Iphigenia; our narrator, Olympia, a hunchbacked albino dwarf; and the baby of the family, Fortunato, who has telekinetic powers. They call him Chick.

In the past, Geek Love follows Arty’s rise as a cult leader. He plays on people’s insecurities. Most are norms, carnival slang for normal people, who feel they don’t fit in. Arty inspires them to embrace what they dislike about themselves. Things get weird when he convinces them to become freaks themselves by amputating parts of their bodies. Start with the toes, see where it takes you. He also sleeps with them.

Reviewers often point out Arty’s Machiavellian nature. He controls the family, dictating the twins’ lives, using Oly as his personal assistant, and keeping Chick hidden lest greater forces try to harness his telekinetic powers. Most of the time, he acts like a dick.

Weird shit happens in Geek Love. Perhaps the most bizarre is this: at Oly’s request, Chick uses telekinesis to extract Arty’s sperm and impregnate her. Oly later gives birth to a daughter, Miranda, whom Arty quickly sends away so that Oly can focus on serving him again.

Miranda’s birth brings us to the second narrative thread, set in the present. A couple of decades later, Oly lives in a building with several other people, including Miranda. Oly watches and eventually befriends Miranda, who is unaware of their relation. Meanwhile, Miranda meets Ms. Lick, a well-off norm who pays “freaks” large sums of money to have their deformities surgically removed. Ms. Lick wants Miranda to remove her tail. Oly catches wind of this, doesn’t like it, and sets out to kill Ms. Lick.

The rise and fall of the carnival interested me more than Oly’s present-day story. Overall, the weirdness across the entire book kept me engaged. It’s easy to see why this one has a cult following.

Two passages stuck with me. In one, Oly recounts how open Ms. Lick is with her and how that reflects a broader tendency:

“She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback dwarf can’t hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our quality, by dragging out their own less-apparent deformities. That’s how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no virtues or morals. If I am “good” (and they assume that I am), it’s obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually.” 

And here, Oly reveals how she feels when speaking with “norms”:

“I’ve sometimes wondered if the Binewski view of the world stunted my sympathy muscles. We were a close family. Our contact with norms outside the show was in dashes and flashes—overheard phrases, unconnected to lives. Outsiders weren’t very real to me. When I spoke to them it was always with a show motive, like a seal trainer using varying tones to coax or command. I never thought of carrying on a conversation with one of the brutes.”

Separated by over a hundred pages, these passages offer interesting insights into how Oly views people. My sense is that some readers relate to one or both. If you scale back “freaks with deformities” to average people who don’t fit in or aren’t at ease with themselves, like Arty’s followers, you can see how they’d become sounding boards and silent therapists for “norms.” Likewise, you can imagine those same outsiders acting when they communicate with “norms.” I understand and identify with all of that on some level now, but boy, in my teens and twenties I would have identified completely. It took me a long time to be okay with myself.

I like another line toward the end of the book. It’s a clever bit: “Papa looked young again, leaning in the doorway to shout the news; his mustache bristled with power and pride, which, he used to say, ‘are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark.’”

Sharp writing. Great book. I’m glad Dunn had the fortitude to write this across ten years and spend another ten trying to publish it. Count me in as one of the cult followers.