SpoilersA fucked up, incestuous, surreal carnival story filled with horrible characters who have little to no redeeming qualities. I spent most of my time cringing and shuddering in revulsion whilst reading Geek Love, but in a can't-look-away-car-crash-what's-going-to-happen-next-these-characters-make-me-sick-but-every-disturbing-thing-they-do-is-oh-so-engrossing kind of way. It was utterly absorbing in its WTFery and uniqueness. Hmm, not really sure where to start with the story so I'll just talk about the characters first:Al and Lil Binewski (the parents):Both of them were absolutely despicable, the pair of them were so obsessed with running a successful carnival that they happily took drugs and all sorts of chemical concoctions whilst pregnant so their children would turn out deformed enough that people would buy tickets to see them. The fact some of their children died didn't stop them from poisoning future babies, it only made them more determined. They had no shame or guilt for what they did, so much so they still put their dead children to good use by displaying them in cases so their customers could gawk at them. It only gets worse, if they thought their child was 'normal' they were so devastated by it that they no longer wanted them and were cool with abandoning them. Not only that, they gave their living children all sorts of issues by favouring and loving best the child who was 'freakiest' and most popular. I hated them at the beginning for what they did to their kids, they grew up having fucked up views and relationships, they didn't have normal childhoods or a proper education, they had to work straight away and happily be gawked at from a very early age. Bizarrely, even though they pissed me off with all their selfishness and craziness by the end I kind of liked them, what they did to their kids was unforgivable but they almost seemed normal, kind, and loving in comparison to other characters.Olympia Binewski (Al/Lil's daughter/albino hunchback dwarf/protagonist):At first I though Olympia wasn't as bad as her family, I was rooting for her to have some happiness and break free from the oppressive life she lived. However, by the end of the book I hated her the most. The only thing I liked about her was her being content with her physical appearance and not wanting to be 'normal'. Other than that she was worse than terrible for so many different reasons. Firstly, she was beyond pathetic, her desperation to fit in and be accepted by Arty (her older brother/star of the carnival) and her family made her utterly unlikeable. She made doormat people everywhere look strong and stubborn. She had less than zero self-respect and dignity when it came to Arty. He walked all over her, treated her like rubbish, messed up her/their family yet she still chased after him, put him above everyone else and only really cared about him. Her pathetic loser personality made me want to punch things.Secondly, the way she conceived her daughter, Miranda, was sickening. She made her eleven year old brother (Chick) telekinetically steal their older brother's sperm and implant it in her. Arty didn't give his consent, he had no idea what was happening but that didn't matter to Oly, she wanted her brother's baby and that was that. She basically raped him of his sperm. I was glad Arty didn't end up wanting baby Miranda and forced Oly to get rid of her, it deserved her right not being able to raise Miranda, the psycho didn't deserve to have a daughter. Thirdly, Oly was a cruel, selfish bitch when it came to Miranda's childhood. Miranda was born with a tail and when she was given to some nuns to raise, they wanted to have her tail removed so she wouldn't feel different and she'd fit in with the rest of the kids and not be teased or bullied. But oh no, Oly refused. She wanted her daughter to grow up with a tail because Miranda being normal was shameful to Oly and her family (even though said family would never see Miranda again). She didn't give a fuck about Miranda and doing what was best for her, everything was about making Arty and her family proud or some bullshit. Ugh, then there was Olympia's reaction to finding out Miranda hated having to grow up with a tail, Oly thought Miranda was a selfish and ungrateful bitch for not being happy to grow up different and deformed. Maybe Miranda would have seen her tail as something good if she grew up in carnival full of 'freaks' but she grew up in the real world and had no idea where she came from, so why would she like having something that made others see her as weird and abnormal?! Oly was deluded to think Miranda would be pleased by it all.The last straw was when Oly blamed Miranda for being targeted by that psycho Miss Lick, it wasn't Miranda's fault that Miss Lick was so jealous and bitter that she paid for beautiful women to be mutilated! Ugh, Miranda was lucky not to have been raised by Oly.As much as I hated Oly for all her faults and WTFery she still managed to be an extremely entertaining character. Arty (Oly's older brother, half shark/half man):Arty was definitely the most immoral and evil character. Even though he was far worse than Oly in everything he did, I didn't detest him nearly as much, probably because he wasn't narrating the story. He did so many fucked up things, the ones that enraged me most was him basically pimping out his sisters, creating his Arturism cult which required people to cut of their limbs, and slowly taking control of the carnival away from his parents. Also, killing off his defenceless siblings out of pettiness and jealousy. He was a prick and a half but an utterly entertaining one. I did like that even though he was pure evil, he wasn't one dimensional, he had all kinds of weird and messed up emotions and layers when it came to his family. I do wish he'd been written as more charismatic and more of an enigma though, I just didn't get why everyone was drawn to him and worshipped him with such intensity. Iphy/Elly (Oly's sisters/Siamese twins):They were relatively normal compared to Oly/Arty. I preferred Elly from the two, unlike Iphy she wasn't enamoured of Arty. It was sad when Elly was basically lobotomised by Arty, I was happy he felt some guilt but it was disappointing that the guilt he felt was more down to him upsetting Iphy than him hurting Elly. Then there was Mumpho (Elly/Iphy's son), I didn't blame Elly for killing him, she was brain damaged and no doubt disgusted by her body being used in such an awful way. It really wasn't her fault.Iphy got on my nerves, she was timid and weak and almost as bad as Oly when it came to loving Arty. Chick (Oly's younger brother/telekinetic but otherwise normal):Loved this guy, he was the most likeable. I was cheering him on when he finally stood up to Arty's manipulations and killed him. Although, I would have preferred if Arty hadn't died instantly and had instead suffered greatly for years before his death, he needed a taste of his own medicine, he got off way too easy.Miranda (Oly/Arty's daughter, has a tail):Other than Miranda being a bit of a user, she was pretty nice. I think her growing up an orphan away from the Binweski's was good for her, she would have ended up fucked up and with lots of issues if she was raised with Oly and co.Miss Lick (mad rich woman/likes to deform beautiful women):What a cow targeting vulnerable girls, and manipulating and emotionally blackmailing them into destroying their bodies/faces. She was a spiteful, jealous, hard woman. She deserved a far more painful death than the one she got - I don't know why Oly felt so guilty about killing her when she was planning on hurting her daughter. Also, it was weird how Oly seemed to care more about Miss Lick's welfare than she did about Elly. She showed no emotion when Elly was more or less destroyed by Arty, it was like she was happy about what happened to Elly. Yet she had lots of compassion and sympathy for the horrible Miss Lick - another reason as to why I hated Oly.Other random thoughts:-Why did Oly love Arty so much? He treated her like crap 99.9% of the time, he bullied her, scared her and was cruel to her growing up. Her adoration of him made no sense, it wasn't like she only had him in her life, she had Chick, the twins and her parents and they didn't constantly treat her like crap. Oly's devotion to him was based on jack all. -Why did Iphy, Chick, Oly and thousands of others worship Arty so blindly? Sure, he was entertaining but that didn't account for the level of love he received. His personality wasn't that endearing and he didn't say anything all that profound, he wasn't inspiring in any way, he was just a hateful bastard. I didn't get it. -Arty managed to get thousands of people to slowly cut of all their limbs, thus making them pure and freeing them from pain and hardship. It was bonkers. I could see vulnerable and hopeless people being manipulated to join a cult and escape reality, but I couldn't buy thousands of them eagerly and permanently destroying their bodies. It was too far fetched for me. Also, why wasn't he stopped by the police/government? Surely, it wasn't legal.-All the incestuous vibes were creepy and nauseating. Iphy and Oly were so hot for Arty they wanted to marry him despite him being their brother, it was like it was normal for them to have sexual feelings for each other. I didn't get it, Arty was more fish/shark than man, he had fins and had to either roll around or be carried everywhere, there was nothing attractive (physical or otherwise) about him. Then there was Oly's obsession with her daughter, the way she described and followed and watched her daughter was messed up. It was like she fancied her or something.-I got sick of Olympia constantly comparing Melinda to some Binewski trait or other, it was extremely repetitive and heavy handed.-The slow falling apart of the Binewski family was done really well. In a weird sort of way they started off strong and loving, then they just crashed and burned, which was mostly down to Arty's ambitions and narcissism. -The writing was a bit hit and miss for me, some of the descriptions were way too vulgar and crass for my liking.Recommended for anyone interested in a not so typical carnival story featuring grotesque characters who do all kinds of vile things.
4 ½ starsAny book that was written in the early ‘80’s and is still worth reading today, is almost by definition, a semi-classic; though cult-horror classic might be closer to the mark for Geek Love. That’s right: this is not your run-of-the-mill beach novel. I will not be placing this book on my list of Best Ten Novels of the 20th Century; but I’m sure there are others who will, and I have no basic argument with them. Geek Love is bizarre, but only on the surface. Fundamentally, this is a solid, serious, brilliant, and beautifully written story. I didn’t “get” that when I first began reading. At first, I thought this book was weird, horrifying, shocking and sometimes sickening. But I recognized and appreciated Katherine Dunn’s excellent writing, and as an admirer of good literature, I kept reading. I found the first few chapters confusing, mainly because they weren’t arranged chronologically. Dunn did this to set the novel up to follow two storylines: the one that Olympia (Oly), our bald-albino-hunchbacked-dwarf (!) narrator tells during her childhood and adolescence with the carnival; and the present-day story of Oly as an adult, living in a the same boarding house as her mother and her daughter Miranda, neither of whom knows who Oly is. There’s also a star role here for Miss Lick, a wealthy older woman who pays beautiful women to have themselves disfigured. In the main narrative (where the best writing happens) when “Carnival Fabulon” is threatened with bankruptcy, Oly’s parents, Al Binewski and Chrystal Lil, decide to purposely breed defective children by feeding Lil drugs and radioisotopes in order to “give their children the gift of making money just by being themselves.” The babies that don’t survive are preserved in jars for public viewing. {No offence taken, those of you who choose to leave this review now.} Firstborn Arty is followed by Siamese twins Electra (Elly) and Iphigenia (Iphy); next is Oly, then Chick (Fortunato, because his parents thought he was a “norm” until they learned he is telekinetic).Oly is our narrator; not deformed enough to perform, she is reduced to the role of a servant to her family. It is her brother Arturo (Arty, Aqua Boy) born with flippers attached to his torso who is really at the centre of the story. Oly loves and hates Arty, while she waits on him “hands and feet”. At seventeen years of age, she has a child, Miranda, by Arty, via Chick, with his telekinetic powers. {Pause, while this sinks in.} This compensates for Oly’s feelings of isolation from the rest of the family – but not for long. It is for Miranda that Oly tells this tale. Eventually Arty not only controls the whole show and his family; he forms a cult around himself. The “norms” form the cult of self-mutilation and butchery, calling themselves Arturans, with the help of a mysterious Dr. Phyllis. {Note that Dunn is writing this at about the same time that Irving is salting Garp with Ellen Jamesians; something in the water?} And thus, while what Dunn has created in this multilayered story is admittedly absurd, those of us who chose not to throw this book into the garbage halfway through reading, realize that Dunn wrote to challenge her readers’ opinions about society. What is normal; what is bizarre? How do we perceive and “rate” ourselves compared to others? What do we view as perfection; what do we regard as deformity? What is beneath the surface of people; what is their real reality?And perhaps most important of all, what is that sickness in our society that allows us to connect – even tenuously – with the particular set of absurdities we find in Geek Love.
What do You think about Geek Love (2002)?
Okay, first you've GOT to be okay with ugliness. I qualify. Second, for better or worse you maybe have to crave sensation. This book is all newness and surprise. There's nothing expected about the story, and that happens too rarely for me not to be grateful. Finally, I'd argue that the book is good literature. I personally don't agree that Dunn's writing is haphazard or needs editing -- her prose whined through my nerves, her images moving constantly before my eyes. All in all, I think this book meets the fate of anything that's not one hundred percent inoffensive: Some will always love it, and some will hate it. I loooooooooved it.
—Donitello
I had Geek Love sitting on my shelf for three years. I got it on May 30th of 2010 when the library of the university I've been attending was having a clearance. This book was among the pile I took home with me. It still had its library card attached, and from it I discovered that it was donated to the library on 23/04/1996 and that the last time anyone checked it out was on 25/04/2001. I could understand the library casting it slept on the shelf for nine years, but it wouldn't stop me from giving it a chance - and getting a free book!Geek Love was received with applause, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel tells the story of the Biniewskis, a family of carnies who make their living by travelling across the backwoods of the U.S. and showing their many talents. The Biniewskis aren't your ordinary carnies: papa Al Biniewski was a practitioner of some crazy Hunter S. Thompson style eugenics and gave mama Biniewski a ton of different drugs and experimented on her with radioactive materials, so that their children would be born with as many physical deformities as possible. The result is a pair of Siamese twins, Electra and Iphigenia; Arty, a boy without arms and legs and with flippers for hands and feet; Fortunato, also known as Chick, a kid who looks normal but who has amazing telekinetic powers; and Olympia, a hunchbacked albino dwarf who is also the narrator of the story.The protagonists of Geek Love are all despicable, and none more than the Biniewski seniors, Al and Lily. They value their children only by their deformities, and how strange and exotic they would appear to the outsiders and how much profit they would generate. The Biniewskis treat "normal" people with contempt; Biniewski children who are miraculously born undeformed are abandoned after birth at stores, gas stations and other places where people would find them. Despite the old Biniewskis pretending that the business is a family run affair there's little family there besides business: business and making a profit is the entire rock the carnival is built upon.Olympia, the main character of the novel, is obsessed with her brother, Arty the Aquaman. Throughout the novel Arty is shown to grow into a self-obsessed megalomaniac: he develops a cult of himself which he calls Arturism, and encourages his followers to mutilate themselves by cutting of parts of their body - starting with fingers and toes, and progressing from there. Arty sees the human body as a burden and believes that only in deformity such as his one can achieve true peace and freedom.Olympia is just an hunchbacked albino dwarf; by the Biniewski standard she has no real exotic deformity, and because of this she was almost abandoned at birth. She is well aware that she is judged by her parents and feels inferior to her siblings, whom she feels they consider to be of much more worth. Olympia knows that she cannot change her genetics, and this makes her feel weak and worthless. She clings to Arty because he is the only person to give her any attention - even though most (if not all) of it consists of abuse and exploitation - she feels that she deserves the abuse, as it comes from Arty who is obviously much more valued by her parents than she is (they even make her attend to his needs and basically become his servant). Olympia is almost a sympathetic character, but her utter indifference to Arty's Machiavellianism and narcissism makes it hard for the reader to feel sympathy for her as well.I felt that Katherine Dunn has crafted these weird, twisted characters and aimed to explore their lives - The Biniewski children never feel secure with themselves and their family, feeling they have to compete with one another for affection/approval. Because of this, they do terrible things and end up being miserable. However, I felt that Katherine Dunn simply did not know what to do with her characters, and never created a compelling enough story to carry them through the novel. I was simply Bored as I went on, and felt that the novel did not fulfill its initial potential. As a child, I watched the film Freaks on TCM, and still remember it today. It's a great carnival story of human greed, made immortal by the director's brave choice of casting real people with deformities to play the eponymous "Freaks" instead of actors in make up and costume. The film shocked both the critics and the audience and his career derailed, making it next to impossible to get his next project accepted, but today is considered a cult classic and is preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry for its significance. I will never forget the culminating scene of Freaks, and the film has left a lasting impact on me. I'm afraid I can't say the same about Geek Love: it culminates when (view spoiler)[a female albino hunchbacked dwarf gets impregnated through telekinesis, and a fish boy becomes her babydaddy (hide spoiler)]
—Maciek
Wow.In some ways, I want to erase all trace of this book from my brain, but in other ways it is something I must carry with me forever.I'm a long way from being able to thoroughly review Geek Love. It's the kind of book that you have to process for days, weeks, months, before you know how you feel about it (and I know I will do just that).The Freaks are undoubtedly freak-like. Yet almost too painfully human. The things they do, the way they live, while initially appalling, soon make perfect sense (in context) as you get to know them and their motivations. The "Norms" are in many ways every bit as twisted as the Freaks. Is Oly any more twisted and damaged, for her Freak upbringing, than any of the Norms? Than any of us? Are her actions, or those of any of the Fabulon members, that hard to understand? Bizarre in the extreme, but somehow able to be distilled to basic motivations, and thus not as bizarre. Fascinating. Bleak. Sick. Complex. Inhuman/Human. Horrifying. Painful. Beautiful. Sorrowful. Hopeful. Does being a freak marginalize you, limit the scope of your life, isolate you... or does it free you to be your truest self? Both Arty and Miss Lick explored that concept. Were they wrong? Were their results identical or contradictory? Did they prove anything? Lots to think about.
—Lori Whitwam
