A Congress of Wonders - Hardcover

McClanahan, Ed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1887178120 ISBN 13: 9781887178129

Publisher: Counterpoint, 1996

Synopsis

Set around World War II, the three hilarious stories in the collection are linked by the presence of one Philander Cosmo Rexroat, B.S., M.S., "Pee Aitch Dee," resurrected here from McClanahan's bestselling book The Natural Man, where he appeared as "the Cecil B. De Mille of Sex Hygiene Entertainment." In these stories, Rexroat turns up in several new guises: preacher, sideshow spieler, and bogus physician.
"Juanita and the Frog Prince" tells of a pregnant jailhouse laundress whose ill fate is transformed by a magical encounter with Luther "Two-Nose" Jukes, an inmate awaiting trial for murder. The title story walks us down the carnival midway and a step beyond, as the ubiquitous Rexroat, his consort Wanda Pearl, and a clairvoyant hermaphrodite - "It's that old morphadyke again!" - provide the way station for a boy's journey into the grown-up world of love, loss, and hocus-pocus. "Finch's Song," the tale of Needmore's most beleaguered denizen, a school bus driver endlessly tormented by his ruthless half brother, is both a love story and a story of retribution.

About this title

Review:

In McClanahan's second novel, the antics of Professor Philander Cosmo Rextroat, B.S., M.A. and "Pee Aitch Dee," an amusing, Kentucky-bred flimflam artist tie together three novella length, modern-day fairy tales. Set during World War II, the opening story, "Juanita and the Frog Prince," recounts a maid's deliverance from an unlucky pregnancy through a magical encounter with a dwarf awaiting trial for murder in the jail where she cleans. In the title story, Rextroat is the proprietor of a phony freak show who tries to quell a young boy's concern for his brother who is going to war. Each neo-gothic tale contains a bittersweet message laced with alchemy and love.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A first collection of three long pieces, all set in the 1940s- -``dark and ignorant times'' for the small-town folk that McClanahan (The Natural Man, 1983, etc.) continues to bring to life in his inimitable country-lyrical style. ``Juanita and the Frog Prince,'' the unlikely tale of a ``hoosegow scullery maid'' and a jail inmate with two noses, boldly veers into the fabulistic, with the slutty girl and the freak thug uniting in a weird transmigration of souls. Juanita Pence, knocked up by the ``devious, dissolute, thieving, and mean'' Warren Skidmore Harding, unburdens herself to the toad-ugly Luther ``Two Noses'' Jukes, who's sitting in jail for blowing up Lugnuts Bludgins, another no-count who made fun of Luther's face. As a child, Luther had been sold into sideshow infamy by his crazy mother. On the road, he appeared with the smooth-talking Rev. Philander Cosmo Rexroat, who changed his act from itinerant preacher to freak-show barker. Rexroat's presence links all three stories. ``The Congress of Wonders'' records a day in the life of his sad and seedy sideshow, circa 1944. Mostly ``a pickled-punk show'' of manufactured oddities, its one true attraction is JoJo, a true ``morphadyke,'' who triples as the Bodiless Head and the Bearded Lady. Everyone pays to see the strange hermaphrodite ``pokerate itself,'' but the real wonder is its genuine insight into the future. Finally, in ``Finch's Song: A School Bus Tragedy,'' Rexroat offers his ``Electro-Magno-Static-Diagnosis Machine'' (formerly an electric chair in his sideshow) to diagnose the ailments of Clarence ``Finch'' Fronk, a pitiful and sickly school-bus driver who's tormented by his older half-brother, a bitter and mean pool-hall owner who drives Clarence to a transcendent suicide. McClanahan's old-timey slang and down-home wit endow his trash, drifters, cons, and rubes with poetry and magic. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1887178120
• ISBN 13: 9781887178129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 191