"Geek Love": Normally Weird

Book Review # 102233

English > Analysis
Literature > American

A review of Katherine Dunn's novel "Geek Love", which re-examines the question of what is "normal".

1,285 words () | 0 sources | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes Katherine Dunn's novel "Geek Love", whose main theme is inverting that which is expected with that which is unusual. By examining the "unusual" events in the novel, the paper attempts to show that, perhaps, they are not so unusual. It maintains that Dunn places this recurring theme in the novel to show the readers that the word "normal" does not have a defined meaning; it varies for each community, and possibly each person, around the world. The paper concludes that the novel illustrates the point that normality is all in the eye of the beholder.

From the Paper:

"Another scenario that is extremely atypical is that Arty, the child who has flippers and fins as arms and legs, starts a cult "Arturism". Arty's cult has people admiring him and idolizing him and wanting to be like him even though he has a deformed body. Today, people want to be like celebrities who are beautiful, something very far from what is presented as Arty's character. Arty has many fans who even have surgery to be like him as Olympia describes on page 185, "From a half-dozen simple characters wandering the midway with white bandages where fingers or toes had been, there grew a ragtag horde camped next to the show everyplace we stopped. Within three years the caravan would string out for a hundred miles behind us when we moved." Arty's followers worshiped him so much that they even began to have surgery so they could turn their "normal" bodies into deformed ones that looked like Arty's. What is peculiar about this is that once again there is an inversion between what is expected and that which is not: people have cosmetic surgery to make features on their body look symmetrical so they can be considered normal. A follower of Arty changing his normal legs to flippers is parallel to a person with a perfect symmetric nose going under the knife to add an unattractive bump to his or her ideal nose."