Carnival Goodness: Delights and Nightmares on the Midway
The popularity of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and its Midway Plaisance (a parkway featuring mechanized rides, games of chance, sideshow attractions, and food vendors) inspired traveling carnivals that followed in its wake. Beginning in the early 1900s, traveling carnivals fanned out across the American landscape each year from late spring through early autumn. They would set up on the outskirts of town and play a location for anywhere from one night to a week before moving on to their next venue. A brightly lit Ferris wheel and merry-go-round were usually the heart of the operation. Surrounded by a midway featuring smaller rides, freaks, mentalists, strippers, performers of every stripe, and the all-important food and gaming concessions, carnivals specialized in efficiently separating visitors from their money. By the 1930s carnivals, and the “carnies” who operated them, were an iconic part of the American landscape. They peaked from 1935–1955 with over 300 units crisscrossing the country each year in trucks, automobiles, and – in the case of the largest operations – railcars. While traveling carnivals went extinct in the latter half of the twentieth century, they did not do so before inspiring an important popular literature.
The 1890s saw the first appearance of carnival-themed short stories in nationally distributed pulp magazines. Following steady growth, short-form carnival content spiked in the 1920s and 1930s after which it tailed off. The first carnival novels saw magazine publication in the early 1930s. From 1932 – 1989, publishers issued 260 carnival novels of which 40% were first editions of all types (magazine appearance, hardcover, and paperback original) and 60% were reprints. The 1950s and 1960s alone accounted for 60% of all carnival first editions. An additional 16% were published during a brief 1980s resurgence before fictional usage of carnival settings tailed off to its current-day low level. With respect to thematic content, the 1930s saw the carnival as a place for risky and exciting sexual exploration. In the 1940s–1950s, the carnival lot was ground zero for murder mysteries and all sorts of squalid organized crime activities. The 1960s–1970s saw the carnival as an increasingly nightmarish and threatening place of metaphysical conflict. The 1980s advanced this idea to its logical conclusion: the carnival as a place of actual horror and physical death at the hands of monstrous creatures.
This guide documents all known carnival-themed adult novels published from the 1930s through the 1980s. Full author information, publisher information, and a comprehensive synopsis is provided for each novel. The book covers are illustrated in full color since many possess striking art of interest to the general public. These covers, which often promise much more than they can deliver, are unique images from a bygone era. They are variously naïve, charming, brazen, and provocative in a way rarely seen in contemporary publishing. While there is no substitute for reading the novels themselves, this guide will provide readers with an in-depth and informative look at a fascinating genre that continues to inspire writers born long after the last of the iconic traveling carnivals had faded away into the sultry summer night.
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