8 /10 1 Votes
Cover artist David Hughes Language English Pages 368 Page count 368 | 4/5 Goodreads Country United States Publication date 1989 Originally published 1989 Genre Novel Publisher Random House | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Characters Mary Lick, Aloysius "Al" Binewski, Miranda, Arty, Olympia Similar Katherine Dunn books, Novels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Geek love dom digs
Geek Love is a novel by Katherine Dunn, published completely by Alfred A. Knopf (a division of Random House) in 1989. Dunn published parts of the novel in Mississippi Mud Book of Days (1983) and Looking Glass Bookstore Review (1988). It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Contents
The novel is the story of a traveling carnival run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife "Crystal" Lil, and their children, seen through the eyes of their daughter Olympia ("Oly") who writes the family history for her daughter Miranda. When the business begins to fail, the couple devise an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. The results are Arturo ("Arty"), a boy with flippers for hands and feet; Electra ("Elly") and Iphigenia ("Iphy"), Siamese Twins; Olympia ("Oly"), a hunchbacked albino dwarf; and Fortunato ("Chick"), the normal-looking baby of the family who has telekinetic powers.
Plot summary
The novel takes place in two time periods: the first deals with the Binewski children's constant struggle against each other through life. They especially have to deal with the Machiavellian Arty as he develops his own cult: Arturism. In this cult, Arty persuades people to have their limbs amputated so that they can be like Arty, the cult leader, in their search for the principle he calls PIP ("Peace, Isolation, Purity"). Each member moves up in stages, losing increasingly significant chunks of their body, starting with their toes and fingers. As Arty battles his siblings to maintain control over his followers, competition between their respective freak shows slowly begins to take over their lives.
The second story is set in the present and is centered on Oly's daughter, Miranda. Nineteen-year-old Miranda does not know Oly is her mother. She lives on a trust fund created by Oly before she gave up her daughter to be raised by nuns. This had been urged by her brother Arty, who was also Miranda's father (not through sexual intercourse, but by the telekinetic powers of Chick, who carried Arty's sperm directly to Oly's ovum). Oly lives in the same rooming house as Miranda so she can "spy" on her. Miranda has a special defect of her own, a small tail, which she flaunts at a local fetish strip club. There she meets Mary Lick, who tries to convince her to have the tail cut off. Lick is a wealthy woman who pays attractive women to get disfiguring operations, ostensibly so they may live up to their potential instead of becoming sex objects; it is implied, however, that Lick's real motivation is to punish them for being more attractive than she is. Oly plans to stop Lick in order to protect her daughter.
Genesis
Dunn has said she remembers when she began writing the book in the late '70s, walking to Portland's Washington Park Rose Garden, contemplating nature versus nurture. She has described the genesis of the book, which took her nearly 10 years to write and more than that to publish it, in 1989. She said "All the time I was working on Geek Love, it was like my own private autism."
Publishing design
The book's original cover art by Chip Kidd caused a sensation at book conventions when it was introduced in 1989. Its plain, stark orange color and unusual fonts went against conventional design aesthetics. In keeping with the novel's theme of mutation, the lettering of the title employs mutated fonts, and the book's spine sports a five-legged dog, one of the rare instances when Knopf has allowed its dog logo to be altered.
Legacy
As of 2014 the book sold more than 400,000 copies, 10,000 of them ebooks. Jim Rose (of the Jim Rose Circus) has said that "Dunn set the table for this whole modern freak-show vibe."
In 1992, the British band Bang Bang Machine released the single "Geek Love", about the novel. The song topped the John Peel Festive 50 that year.
In January 2004, theatre company Sensurround Stagings in Atlanta, Georgia, produced a well-received stage adaptation of Geek Love. This adaptation was reprised in Atlanta for summer 2004 and then taken to the New York Fringe Festival later that year.