content warning for frank discussion of rape in this.
Freak Show by Jacquin Sanders is a pulp noir novel I picked up at the library on a whim. It's a weird book. Published 1954, reprinted Jan 2024. Lots of gore, rape, murder, deception. None of the characters are likable people and the book is about the "normal", above it all protagonist realizing that he'll never fit into society because of his social issues and isolating himself. It's honestly not that good of a book either, by the end it's half action half Death Note-style monologues in the characters' heads that just spells out everything you're supposed to think. The action grinds to a halt.
So why am I writing about it? I think it's a giant, overwrought allegory for homosexuality. Or "queerness". I hate that word. "Non-heteronormative sexual attraction" doesn't work as well. For a very, very misogynistic book from the 1950s, that might be a weird interpretation to go for. But let me roll with it.
So the protagonist, Bat Fidler, has never fit into society very well. He's a drifter, only staying in one place so long, taking odd jobs here and there.
At the beginning of the book, he signs up to work at a travelling circus. There he meets 2 women: Emmy Claus, a very promiscuous 17 year old (much is said about this in book and how she is a promiscuous, dumb girl with no standards- multiple characters use this as a justification to rape and sexually abuse her. This book isn't exactly kind towards women) and Fish Girl, a woman named for her underdeveloped deformed arms. (Like the fins of a fish, says the marketing for the Freakshow).
Bat and Emmy hit it off pretty fast (because Emmy is a promiscuous little flirt, the book constantly says, because it's the 1950s and female characters aren't people). But Bat is completely uninterested in her: he has no desire to have sex with or date her, seeing her as a mere friend.
Fish Girl, on the other hand, becomes his next obsession: In spite of, or because of? her deformity, he becomes infatuated with her. This is seen as "abnormal" sexual attraction: the other residents of the carnival express shock that Bat would fall for a "freak". They begin to see him as a sexual deviant because what grown 32-year-old man wouldn't pick a perfectly healthy, fertile underage girl over a grown woman with a deformity?
So you see where I'm going with this? Bat's sexual obsession with Fish Girl (that eventually culminates in him forcing her to have sex with him, with her insisting she secretly wanted to do it the entire time, in another example of "Post-WW2 authors understanding how sexual consent works") is seen as "abnormal". Disgusting is the prospect that he could want a woman despite her deformity, much less because. So he tries to follow society's sayings and repress his feelings. Push himself to feel acceptable sexual desire, for a 17 year old girl. (A very slutty 17 year old girl, the narrative constantly reminds us, because of course). But he can't do it. He fails to repress his urges or move on.
And it is because of this 17 year old girl that Bat's next twist of fate happens: when she leaves him for another man that he doesn't like very much, he feels no urgency to reclaim what is his or whatever. (There's a bunch of stuff here about mob justice and simple-minded southerners in lawless Texas being scummy, but that's really overwrought in this book to the point of feeling stereotypical) But as society tells him to, he must get "his girl" that he barely even cared about back, so he goes and clobbers the shit out of her new boyfriend, killing him instantly. So he spends a whole year in jail (thanks to a rigged trial via the Texans) and reluctantly gets engaged. Again, he is completely unenthusiastic about this. He merely goes through the motions of courtship and marriage because he is told that is how normal men act.
But of course, Fish Girl returns and Bat can't keep up the act anymore. He accepts his perverse sexual desires for her, not in spite of but because of her deformity, and accepts himself as "one of the freaks" that he tried to avoid association with at the start of the book. He vows to devote himself entirely to the Fish Girl and start a life anew.
I can't relate to most of this book or any of the characters in it (they're so alien, so detached from any norm or moral you'd expect) but that part really stuck out to me. The protagonist chases social acceptance through an attempt to exhibit acceptable sexual desire towards acceptable targets, and then gives up the act in favor of loving who he really wants. He feels like he has to hide his true feelings in favor of blending in among his peers. what would be acceptable sexual attraction to an adult woman is viewed as perverted, disgusting, and shameful.
man. what a weird fucking book.