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The Show That Smells
“Derek McCormack has written a mini-masterpiece that keeps swelling with invention long after you’ve put it down.”-Guy Maddin, filmmaker
class="MsoNormal">“A hilarious, strange and altogether ghoulish little freak show of a book . . . A book like The Show that Smells…demonstrates that innovative literature, if such a thing still exists, can be accessible and even fun, especially for those of us with a dark sense of humor.”-Miami HeraldThe most shocking story ever shown on the silver screen!It's also the tale of Jimmie-a country music singer dying of tuberculosis-and Carrie, his wife, who tries to save him by selling her soul to a devil who designs haute couture clothing! Elsa is a powerful Parisian dress designer, and a vampire. She wants to make Carrie look beautiful, smell beautiful-and then she wants to eat her! Will Carrie survive as her slave? Will Jimmie be cured? Starring a host of Hollywood's brightest stars, including Coco Chanel, Lon Chaney, and The Carter Family. The Show that Smells is a thrilling tale of hillbillies, high fashion, and horror!Derek McCormack is the author of Grab Bag (Akashic Books) and The Haunted Hillbilly (Soft Skull Press), which was named a “Best Book of the Year” by both the Village Voice and the Globe and Mail, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He writes fashion and arts articles for the National Post. He lives in Toronto.
class="MsoNormal">“A hilarious, strange and altogether ghoulish little freak show of a book . . . A book like The Show that Smells…demonstrates that innovative literature, if such a thing still exists, can be accessible and even fun, especially for those of us with a dark sense of humor.”-Miami HeraldThe most shocking story ever shown on the silver screen!It's also the tale of Jimmie-a country music singer dying of tuberculosis-and Carrie, his wife, who tries to save him by selling her soul to a devil who designs haute couture clothing! Elsa is a powerful Parisian dress designer, and a vampire. She wants to make Carrie look beautiful, smell beautiful-and then she wants to eat her! Will Carrie survive as her slave? Will Jimmie be cured? Starring a host of Hollywood's brightest stars, including Coco Chanel, Lon Chaney, and The Carter Family. The Show that Smells is a thrilling tale of hillbillies, high fashion, and horror!Derek McCormack is the author of Grab Bag (Akashic Books) and The Haunted Hillbilly (Soft Skull Press), which was named a “Best Book of the Year” by both the Village Voice and the Globe and Mail, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He writes fashion and arts articles for the National Post. He lives in Toronto.
110 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2008
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329 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 9, 2009
This book was a delicious, delicious surprise. I picked it up after reading the plot summary on Dennis Cooper’s blog (the book is published by Cooper’s “Little House on the Bowery” series). I expected a delightful, quirky and enjoyably subversive summer read. I was completely unprepared for what “The Show That Smells” really is: startling, funny, full of unexpected twists and morsels of horrific glee. It is almost a novel in verse, and reading it is more like the experience of watching an unusually wonderful contemporary silent film than anything else. It smells like Edward Gorey, Kathy Acker, Ed Wood, Guy Maddin, and Jean Genet all at once, but is really its own singular work full of punning vampire queens, sexual slapstick, Lon Chaney and righteous queer carnie power. I can’t wait to read it again.
April 27, 2012
Endorsed by both John Waters and Guy Maddin -- which should give you some idea of Derek McCormack's immaculately freewheeling short novel that explores the intersection of iconic hillbilly singers, vampires, carnival freaks, haute couture, and perfume in the midst of a mirror maze. There's a good review of it here.
November 2, 2009
Derek McCormack's The Show that Smells assaults the senses like an opium-induced train-wreck into absurdity.
That is to say, it is a wild ride that is all but impossible to turn away from.
Staccato sentences collide with gruesome grotesquerie, with a collusion of familiar faces - Lon Chaney, The Carter Family, Coco fucking Chanel, a myriad host of others - interacting as if infested with hornets inside their living brains. Narrative? None to be seen. ...Or at least, nothing so overwrought as to be comprehended as such.
The Show that Smells takes place inside a funhouse, a maze of mirrors, which fails to reflect the vampiric version of Elsa Schiaparelli (who, it is clarified, is not actually a vampire in real life. Probably.) and yet casts a horrific pall on the other characters; the Vampire from Vogue, and the tubercular Jimmie Rodgers, for instance. The Show that Smells is a delusion, an illusion of queer customers masked by mirrors and madness, plagued by puns and peccadilloes of the most peculiar sort.
What smells, exactly, about the titular Show? The Show, as it were, refers to the most abhorrent of carnival geek parades, only more sputum-stained. Innards on display, festering and bloating, create the unpleasant olfactory sensation that is referred to in the title. The Show that Smells. And the barrage against sanity continues as The Show grows within the imaginations of those hosting it.
But - rest assured - The Show does not take place within this title. Instead, it is merely discussed, and/or alluded to. The characters themselves are far too absorbed with trying on sequined gowns, and finding the proper way of suiting legless, armless torsos, or perhaps promenade-bound Siamese twins. And the tasting of blood. And the inhalation of various fluids, herein referred to as eau de toilettes but are, in actuality, tinctures of guts, gore, and guano.
Waiting for Godot it isn't. And yet, somehow, inexplicably, is.
The Show that Smells "is a work of fiction. It is a parody. It is a phantasmagoria." The Show that Smells is Michael Brodsky, with a delirious sense of humour. The Show that Smells is Samuel Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," with a cock-eyed regard for both rhyme and reason - and no decreed pleasure dome, be it stately or otherwise. The Show that Smells is simultaneously the floor waxed with mop-wringings from Carlton Mellic III, and blanketed with clippings from Kevin L. Donihe's shag carpet. The Show that Smells is the brain-damaged grandchild of Tod Browning's Freaks!, and The Show that Smells is one hell of a brain-tingling, mind-rattling descent into those depths that McCormack has so pleasingly plummed for us.
What remains to be said is that this book is brief, though challenging enough to be almost (but not quite) instantly gratifying.
That is to say, it is a wild ride that is all but impossible to turn away from.
Staccato sentences collide with gruesome grotesquerie, with a collusion of familiar faces - Lon Chaney, The Carter Family, Coco fucking Chanel, a myriad host of others - interacting as if infested with hornets inside their living brains. Narrative? None to be seen. ...Or at least, nothing so overwrought as to be comprehended as such.
The Show that Smells takes place inside a funhouse, a maze of mirrors, which fails to reflect the vampiric version of Elsa Schiaparelli (who, it is clarified, is not actually a vampire in real life. Probably.) and yet casts a horrific pall on the other characters; the Vampire from Vogue, and the tubercular Jimmie Rodgers, for instance. The Show that Smells is a delusion, an illusion of queer customers masked by mirrors and madness, plagued by puns and peccadilloes of the most peculiar sort.
What smells, exactly, about the titular Show? The Show, as it were, refers to the most abhorrent of carnival geek parades, only more sputum-stained. Innards on display, festering and bloating, create the unpleasant olfactory sensation that is referred to in the title. The Show that Smells. And the barrage against sanity continues as The Show grows within the imaginations of those hosting it.
But - rest assured - The Show does not take place within this title. Instead, it is merely discussed, and/or alluded to. The characters themselves are far too absorbed with trying on sequined gowns, and finding the proper way of suiting legless, armless torsos, or perhaps promenade-bound Siamese twins. And the tasting of blood. And the inhalation of various fluids, herein referred to as eau de toilettes but are, in actuality, tinctures of guts, gore, and guano.
Waiting for Godot it isn't. And yet, somehow, inexplicably, is.
The Show that Smells "is a work of fiction. It is a parody. It is a phantasmagoria." The Show that Smells is Michael Brodsky, with a delirious sense of humour. The Show that Smells is Samuel Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," with a cock-eyed regard for both rhyme and reason - and no decreed pleasure dome, be it stately or otherwise. The Show that Smells is simultaneously the floor waxed with mop-wringings from Carlton Mellic III, and blanketed with clippings from Kevin L. Donihe's shag carpet. The Show that Smells is the brain-damaged grandchild of Tod Browning's Freaks!, and The Show that Smells is one hell of a brain-tingling, mind-rattling descent into those depths that McCormack has so pleasingly plummed for us.
What remains to be said is that this book is brief, though challenging enough to be almost (but not quite) instantly gratifying.
November 28, 2021
Vampire fashion wedding in a mirror maze set to an old country western soundtrack. And it's technically a movie. I couldn't say anything worth saying about this book because I think I haven't read it enough. McCormack is seriously reinventing novels. It's just so thrilling to watch a writer play around at such daunting heights. Every book is like a high wire act, except there's no net and the high wire is made of shit.
May 31, 2024
strange and absurd as always. i loved it. reading writing that actually feels like it’s an artform, not just information or entertainment, is always amazing, so i cannot wait to explore more of mccormack‘s work <3
June 3, 2012
The Show that Smells is a book for when you start feeling like you'll never read anything that surprises you
This book is insane. I didn't know books could be like this. It is a mirror maze of a book. It is a string of dead baby jokes and high fashion references. it is a vampire love story, loaded with gay sex and the monster hunting, gospel singing Carter Family. I have never read anything like it.
I think Derek McCormack is easily the best writer in Canada.
This book is insane. I didn't know books could be like this. It is a mirror maze of a book. It is a string of dead baby jokes and high fashion references. it is a vampire love story, loaded with gay sex and the monster hunting, gospel singing Carter Family. I have never read anything like it.
I think Derek McCormack is easily the best writer in Canada.
August 18, 2018
lyrical, fun, campy. the guy maddin/john waters endorsements make a lot of sense. why wait until the end for the gay stuff though? i wanted that right from the getgo. anyway, i read this in one sitting at work, and it passed the time well. i don't know how long it'll stay in my head but if you want something with a flair for the melodramatic this is for you.
February 18, 2023
McCormack is an absolute favorite writer for me. His work is so much fun to read, but in that "fun," there are so much brilliance and nuance, even through short works that lean into an almost abstract minimalism. There's kitsch and camp. There's haunts. There's the kaleidoscopic wonder of childish visual dragged through a true grinder of absolute macabre. "The Show That Smells" was the first McCormack I read and it opened a doorway to a landscape of total fucked up charisma.
September 9, 2011
It’s fitting that filmmaker Guy Maddin’s review is so prominently featured on the cover of Derek McCormack’s latest. These two have much more in common than their shared Canadian roots.
Like Maddin’s films, McCormack’s wicked little novels are a style unto themselves; unlike anything else on the literary landscape. The Show That Smells manages to evoke the atmosphere of a grainy, sepia-tinted early talkie, while at the same time being nearly impossible to place in any particular time period. Written like a film treatment, replete with a cast of characters that includes country singer Jimmie Rodgers, fashion doyenne Coco Chanel, horror film star Lon Chaney as well as the author himself, it centers around some of McCormack’s favorite themes - a troubled marriage, old school country music, vampirism and haute couture. All the action takes place in the fun house hall of mirrors, where the hypnotically repetitive prose manages to conjure the grotesque, yet campy, outlaw world of carnie life.
Oh, and it’s funny too. Pitch dark humor, to be sure, but funny as hell.
After reading The Haunted Hillbilly I was eager to give the rest of Derek McCormack’s work a try and this one did not disappoint. Wry, dry and pretty darned creepy.
That’s entertainment.
Like Maddin’s films, McCormack’s wicked little novels are a style unto themselves; unlike anything else on the literary landscape. The Show That Smells manages to evoke the atmosphere of a grainy, sepia-tinted early talkie, while at the same time being nearly impossible to place in any particular time period. Written like a film treatment, replete with a cast of characters that includes country singer Jimmie Rodgers, fashion doyenne Coco Chanel, horror film star Lon Chaney as well as the author himself, it centers around some of McCormack’s favorite themes - a troubled marriage, old school country music, vampirism and haute couture. All the action takes place in the fun house hall of mirrors, where the hypnotically repetitive prose manages to conjure the grotesque, yet campy, outlaw world of carnie life.
Oh, and it’s funny too. Pitch dark humor, to be sure, but funny as hell.
After reading The Haunted Hillbilly I was eager to give the rest of Derek McCormack’s work a try and this one did not disappoint. Wry, dry and pretty darned creepy.
That’s entertainment.
March 15, 2013
I don't know how to feel about this book.
Freaks. Fashion. Vampires. Country music.
All in a whirlwind of a Mirror Maze at a carnival.
I half loved this book, and half almost didn't make it through.
Chanel N°5. The Carter Family. Jimmie Rodgers. Sequins.
The blood of little girls, the blood of little boys.
Insanity in book form. It got a little wearisome at points...but it was still enjoyable.
Freaks. Fashion. Vampires. Country music.
All in a whirlwind of a Mirror Maze at a carnival.
I half loved this book, and half almost didn't make it through.
Chanel N°5. The Carter Family. Jimmie Rodgers. Sequins.
The blood of little girls, the blood of little boys.
Insanity in book form. It got a little wearisome at points...but it was still enjoyable.
May 8, 2022
The Show That Smells is like a spiritual predecessor to Castle Faggot. It’s campy, magically whimsical, and silly with something sinister lurking beneath the surface. I loved it, but it doesn’t the same personal elements Castle Faggot does, which are what make it so crushing and wonderful.
February 25, 2009
McCormack is the love child of Dracula and Houdini.
February 26, 2020
This was wild (in a mostly good way). I enjoyed the numerous references to old stars (although I admit that I did have to Google some names), the fashion, the vampires, the hillbillies, and the outrageous plot line. Oh, and literally all of the queerness. If you want to have some fun, pick this one up!
September 22, 2017
I got this at the Strand for a dollar, read it in one sitting and it rocked my world.
December 7, 2024
i think i liked castle faggot better but this was also just such a fun read. i don’t know that i’ve ever encountered a style like this but it feels so innovative and fun to read
January 26, 2022
I love gross disgust me please
May 22, 2011
This year I've come to depend on chance for brilliant books. I walk the aisles of the library and pluck what appeals to my fancy, based on the title, the cover, the first few pages, whatever criteria appeals to me at the moment.
This slender volume of The Show That Smells had a severed monkey head in a state of decomposition on a white background. The text on the back was something from the roaring 20's. I was hooked.
What a treat! McCormack is a genius. Punny, insane, and hilarious, the story takes place entirely within a mirror maze of a funhouse. Though it starts off as a country singer suffering from tuberculosis escaping the difficulties of carnival life, it takes a turn for the worse. Schiaparelli, vogue designer of undead fashion, wants to sink her fangs into him and his skills.
Come to his defense is his wife, the unlikely vampire hunter singing troupe, the Carters, and Coco Chanel who moonlights as a Van Helsing. The plot confuses itself with a story and a movie set. IT is a battle of fashion designers, amid squirts of perfume. It gets crazier, plunging into a dark turn at the end. It is also unbelievably funny, for those who appreciate puns, and a virtuoso act in prose.
Just a glimpse:
"When all the world's well-dressed women are dressed and perfumed like freaks," Schiaparelli says, "I will make them freaks—in a carnival, a vampire carnival, a carnival of fashion and death!" She changes. Fangs flower. Pupils pink paillettes. "And freaks are only part of the fun!
"Men will be rides.
"Women will be games.
"Children will be snacks."
Schiaparelli's face is a special effect.
And:
"Aaarrrgghhhhh!" Chaney says. "Chanel No5!" Worse than wolfsbane. Gruesomer than garlic. Chaney clutches his throat like he's strangling himself. All vampires act like silent stars.
And:
Crystal balls—rhinestones waiting to happen.
And this is the tip of the tip of the iceberg! Each page is a delirious platter of wordy goodies. This is a book I plan to add to my personal collection.
This slender volume of The Show That Smells had a severed monkey head in a state of decomposition on a white background. The text on the back was something from the roaring 20's. I was hooked.
What a treat! McCormack is a genius. Punny, insane, and hilarious, the story takes place entirely within a mirror maze of a funhouse. Though it starts off as a country singer suffering from tuberculosis escaping the difficulties of carnival life, it takes a turn for the worse. Schiaparelli, vogue designer of undead fashion, wants to sink her fangs into him and his skills.
Come to his defense is his wife, the unlikely vampire hunter singing troupe, the Carters, and Coco Chanel who moonlights as a Van Helsing. The plot confuses itself with a story and a movie set. IT is a battle of fashion designers, amid squirts of perfume. It gets crazier, plunging into a dark turn at the end. It is also unbelievably funny, for those who appreciate puns, and a virtuoso act in prose.
Just a glimpse:
"When all the world's well-dressed women are dressed and perfumed like freaks," Schiaparelli says, "I will make them freaks—in a carnival, a vampire carnival, a carnival of fashion and death!" She changes. Fangs flower. Pupils pink paillettes. "And freaks are only part of the fun!
"Men will be rides.
"Women will be games.
"Children will be snacks."
Schiaparelli's face is a special effect.
And:
"Aaarrrgghhhhh!" Chaney says. "Chanel No5!" Worse than wolfsbane. Gruesomer than garlic. Chaney clutches his throat like he's strangling himself. All vampires act like silent stars.
And:
Crystal balls—rhinestones waiting to happen.
And this is the tip of the tip of the iceberg! Each page is a delirious platter of wordy goodies. This is a book I plan to add to my personal collection.
May 12, 2012
In carney talk, a "show that smells" is an animal act. In McCormack's nifty stinker of a novella, the only animals are the hordes of bats summoned by the vampiric Elsa Schiaparelli -- and maybe a werewolf. Brief as this book is, things take place at so dizzying a pace that even having just now set it down, I can't say for sure if there was a werewolf in it or not. But there might as well have been.
McCormack loves carnivals, and he sets this story in a house of mirrors. Proposed as a film directed by Tod Browning, each scene is introduced by a kaleidoscopic character list with names repeated a dozen times or more to account for all their reflected images. A tubercular Jimmie Rodgers becomes the focus of a battle between Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, each of whose signature perfume can act as either a tonic or a poison depending upon at whom it's directed. Jimmie's loving, naive and pregnant wife Carrie is on hand, along with all the freaks from Browning's classic film, Lon Chaney, McCormack himself, and the famous respirologist Dr. Acula. (The dreadful puns that flash through the prose often appear to have been written down at the moment of their inspiration by McCormack.)
Talking plot here is silly. The Show that Smells is a mad swirl of language and camp. Schiaparelli's celebration of uses for dead babies may put off some readers, but everything is played in the same spirit of outrageous fun.
McCormack loves carnivals, and he sets this story in a house of mirrors. Proposed as a film directed by Tod Browning, each scene is introduced by a kaleidoscopic character list with names repeated a dozen times or more to account for all their reflected images. A tubercular Jimmie Rodgers becomes the focus of a battle between Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel, each of whose signature perfume can act as either a tonic or a poison depending upon at whom it's directed. Jimmie's loving, naive and pregnant wife Carrie is on hand, along with all the freaks from Browning's classic film, Lon Chaney, McCormack himself, and the famous respirologist Dr. Acula. (The dreadful puns that flash through the prose often appear to have been written down at the moment of their inspiration by McCormack.)
Talking plot here is silly. The Show that Smells is a mad swirl of language and camp. Schiaparelli's celebration of uses for dead babies may put off some readers, but everything is played in the same spirit of outrageous fun.
July 29, 2009
Woah. Reading this book was an absolute delight; I highly recommend it. It's unlike anything you've ever read before -- surreal, hypnotic, lyrical, and VERY funny, just like the carnival funhouse that is its setting. Totally blew me away, and blew away all conceptions I had of what writers, gay fiction, horror fiction, and Canadians are capable of.
PS. I love Akashic Books and all they stand for, but they're really pushing it to call this a novel (or even novella) and charge $16 for it. This is definitely more a short story. Took about 45min. to read the whole thing. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers.
PS. I love Akashic Books and all they stand for, but they're really pushing it to call this a novel (or even novella) and charge $16 for it. This is definitely more a short story. Took about 45min. to read the whole thing. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers. Carrie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers.
January 19, 2012
I was given this as a completely unexpected Christmas present from my sister, who knows well my affinity for strange books. Though it took me a bit to get into the rhythm of the writing, I got hooked on the outrageous cast of characters, typographical visuals, and the overall ridiculousness of the premise. The splashes of humor come unexpectedly, and are juxtaposed with the overall darkness of the story so that the reader is left with a perpetual sense of bewilderment. This is not a bad thing--I would much rather have a story leave me bewildered than leave me with no feeling at all. It is a book that is highly creative and extremely weird, and I don't know if I'll ever find something quite like it again.
March 11, 2015
Not for everyone (thankfully), but a great, nasty, bloody fusion of classic horror and twisted creativity. It is unlikely you will read anything like it. It flows poetically and visually like a great, forgotten Tod Browning movie from 1930. But it's more twisted than that. Highly original and highly entertaining. A great companion to The Haunted Hillbilly, which I also recommend (if you like this one).
June 12, 2009
As always, I loved McCormack's incredibly minimalist style, and his frequent word play and repetition was fun -- but, I thought the plot was a bit lacking.
But, at the same time, I also got the impression that I was missing out on a few things by not knowing more than broad, passing tidbits about his various references.
But, at the same time, I also got the impression that I was missing out on a few things by not knowing more than broad, passing tidbits about his various references.
October 23, 2024
A magnificent little book. It’s very plain in its weirdness, which makes it all the more weird when you compare it to what you’re expecting. I loaned it to a knife throwing fire eater friend of mine who was going out on a tour and never got it back before he went off the grid, which seems like a fitting end for this book.
January 3, 2010
This may be an unfair review as I only read half the mini-novel and could not continue. Perhaps its just not a style for everyone. I was not invested with the characters and really could not make sense of the purposeful non-sensical plot.
May 26, 2010
Combining McCormak's usual minimalist muscle with a slapsticky homo-erotic Scooby Doo ghost story featuring country legends Jimmie Rogers and the Carter family into one of the funniest books I've read all year.
September 2, 2014
Struggling with this one being SO similar to HAUNTED HILLBILLY, although McCormack seems much more playful and experimental with word geography here, ie the way words can evoke tangible spaces AND the way words are placed on a page. Beyond that, though, this verges on inane.
May 9, 2009
This one is a bitter disappointment after the superb double whammy of Grab Bag and The Haunted Hillbilly. I just couldn't get that interested in this weird vampire drama.
Read
May 12, 2009Review forthcoming...
Want to read
December 4, 2014i guess this was too experimental for me. only 108 pages but i couldnt finish it.
Read
June 14, 2011Another weird delight from McCormack that spans the hilarious and horrible, fabulous and freakish, sublime and sick. Is this prose? Poetry? A nightmare? Who cares, it's brilliant.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews