Table of Contents

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction. Unbecoming Subjects: Freak Shows and the American Avant-garde1. A Curious Education: Mark Twain’s Corporate Persons2. Between Silence and Sound: The Lon Chaney Sensation3. Decadence in the Age of Fascism: Djuna Barnes’s Freak Dandies4. Dada in Hollywood: Nathanael West’s Human Machines5. The Biology of Revolution: Mapping Mutation with Diane ArbusCoda. Barnum & Bailey & Barney: Freak Show at the Guggenheim

NotesBibliographyIndex

About the Author

Robin Blyn is associate professor of English at the University of West Florida.

Reviews

"Linking the freak show to the avant-garde, Robin Blyn offers a fresh look at authors and artist like Mark Twain, Lon Chaney, Djuna Barnes, Nathanael West, Diane Arbus, and Matthew Barney.  This book is a welcome contribution to scholarship on the freak show." —Rachel Adams, Columbia University