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Mud Show: A Circus Season
Non fiction account of a season spent travelling the American Southeast with the Hoxie Brothers Circus in the mid-1970's.
374 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
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November 27, 2022
I've never been especially sentimental about circuses -- they were already a vanishing species when I was a kid -- but I have a fascination for the disappearance of live entertainment from the experiences of most modern Americans. This book is a chronicle of one season in the history of a small traveling circus in the 1970s, already in the twilight of the shows and still operating almost like a medieval enterprise.
Well written and relying largely on interviews with the workers and performers with whom he traveled for three quarters of a year, Powledge's book is not entirely a rosy picture. People and animals suffer and die and one is reminded of at least one of the factors that lead to the end of the long era of Ringling and Barnum, so one can't exactly mourn the passing of the spectacles, but one also has to wonder what in our modern world offers the same kind of opportunities for people to experience a life of travel, glamor of a sort, and unmitigated daily intensity. Besides the performers, some of them from families with centuries long traditions of performance, many of the people the author interviews are transitional in their circus roles -- young ones looking for something (themselves and, because it was the 70s, America), the old who've blown too many chances but who have found a home here, broken people, artists whose art is in their trained bodies -- all presented without judgment, exhibited for the reader's edification and amusement and to tell a story that's mostly ended in the decades since the book was written.
It's colorful, gritty, sometimes sad, sometimes inspirational, much like a circus, and recommended for anyone who wants a picture of something special, likely gone forever.
Well written and relying largely on interviews with the workers and performers with whom he traveled for three quarters of a year, Powledge's book is not entirely a rosy picture. People and animals suffer and die and one is reminded of at least one of the factors that lead to the end of the long era of Ringling and Barnum, so one can't exactly mourn the passing of the spectacles, but one also has to wonder what in our modern world offers the same kind of opportunities for people to experience a life of travel, glamor of a sort, and unmitigated daily intensity. Besides the performers, some of them from families with centuries long traditions of performance, many of the people the author interviews are transitional in their circus roles -- young ones looking for something (themselves and, because it was the 70s, America), the old who've blown too many chances but who have found a home here, broken people, artists whose art is in their trained bodies -- all presented without judgment, exhibited for the reader's edification and amusement and to tell a story that's mostly ended in the decades since the book was written.
It's colorful, gritty, sometimes sad, sometimes inspirational, much like a circus, and recommended for anyone who wants a picture of something special, likely gone forever.
Displaying 1 of 1 review