Katherine Dunn published her novel, Geek Love, in 1989. That was a time just before the word geek took on a whole new connotation which over time has all but made its former definition obsolete. Geek used to be a word that referred almost exclusively to the lowest exploitative level of working in the carny sideshow part of show business. To be a geek specifically meant to pretty much be willing to consume just about anything but especially to bite the heads off chickens. Geeks were the ultimate displays of unique individualists who stood on the shores farthest from normality.
With this background in mind, therefore, readers should not be surprised that Dunn’s novel is set among the milieu of sideshow attractions with physical deformities rather than computer nerds with oversized glasses and undersized love lives. The whole point of the story is dependent upon those deformities and what they mean relative to the rest of the world of so-called normalcy.
The narrative is somewhat complicated, split between two time periods while still telling the story of one family. The Binewski are famous for almost all members of the family plying their trade in the sideshow business due to the most extreme of physical deformations. Even within the world of the sideshow attractions, however, the Binewskis are not exactly paragons of normality. The offspring of the Binewski parents demonstrate a variety of genetic mutation not as a result merely of nature taking an abnormal left turn but as a result conscious intent and intrusion. Mother and father have conspired to produce exactly the sort of deformities which for so long were the mainstays of carny sideshows often referred to as freakshows. It is through a sinister combination of drugs injected into the mother during pregnancy and experimentations with radioactivity that the Binewski clan grows larger and ever more bizarre. One of the children, Arturo, eventually grows up to develop a cultish religion known as Arturism based around his genetic abnormality of sporting flippers instead of hands and feet. The other narrative strain is set in the near-future and revolves around Arturo’s sister Oly’s daughter Miranda who, given up for adoption, is not aware of her genealogical past, despite sporting a small tail which makes her a prime attraction at the strip club where she works. Along the way, the storyline connecting the narratives introduces elements such as telekinesis, reproduction without physical intercourse, and a wealthy older woman who enacts a version of feminist rebellion against sexist exploitation by convincing young women to surgically disfigure themselves as a means of subverting objectification. Or so the women are convinced to believe is her intent, anyway.
The title’s connection to the original meaning of the word geek is thus proven extremely appropriate. This story is like walking into an old-fashioned carny sideshow of the thirties and watching the attractions put on a play instead of remaining stationary as entertainment in the form of the subjective gaze of those who paid to see the freaks.
The question becomes, ultimately, what exactly is the line separating freakdom from individualism. Oly is directly asked whether she would transform the deformities of her siblings to make them normal if she had the chance. Her reply is “That's ridiculous! Each of us is unique. We are masterpieces. Why would I want us to change into assembly—line items? The only way you people can tell each other apart is by your clothes.” This perspective alters the dynamic of the relationship between so-called normal customers paying to see so-called freaks. The implicit question is who is really the more abnormal, those born with deformities over which they have no control or those so desperate to see something that is not merely a mirror reflection of their own mundane selves that they pay for the privilege of turning genetic mutation into entertainment.
The point Oly is making is that while the occupants of normality claim to value individualism and assertions of each person’s unique identity, the expression of that individualism and identity is more often than not constructed through external means. Individualism in mainstream society is expressed through the act of buying T-shirts with slogans devised by others emblazoned across them or choosing fashion trends primarily as a rejection of alternative fashion trends. When something truly unique appears in the world, exemplified by children like conjoined twins, a son with flippers instead of hands and feet, and a child who is an albino hunchbacked dwarf, they are ostracized from the rest of society and pushed to the fringes.
In the more mainstream version of sideshow freaks this uniqueness more often appears as genuinely independent expression of self-identity which are so far outside the mainstream that they may as well be mutations. Examples include women wearing pants, men wearing dresses, housewives sporting tattoos, rings worn through the nose rather than around the finger and other obvious illustrations of choices which once were viewed as freakish but are now firmly lodged within the confines of conformity.
Geek Love does not hold back in presenting its characters as bizarre instances of abnormality but at all times its presents them as complicated human beings no different from the so-called normal people around them. It is less a celebration of abnormality than it is a critique of the systemic hypocrisy of a society which celebrates individualism with words while all too often treating genuine expressions of individualism as dangers to be distrusted and punished.
