Circus Parade by Jim Tully
 A Cruel Novel Set in the Devil’s Sandbox by Jim Tully 168 pgs. 5″x8″ $12.95 ISBN: 0-000-0-0 |
About the Book
Though the title is evocative of rose-cheeked children lined up to watch the cavorting of white-faced clowns and the merry tooting of the calliope, Circus Parade is a work that uncovers the sordid workings behind the multi-colored banners and tents. Originally printed in 1927, this is a cruel novel about those already outcast and stigmatized. A novel based on the author’s own experiences as a bum traveling and working with a third-rate carnival around the turn of the century. Downtrodden beggars, thieving carnies, grafters and brutes populate this story. The social stratification is clear and distinct, and from the top down they’re all selfish and scheming. It’s not all grit, there’s plenty of laughs and some damn good tales that you’d expect to hear from such a motley group.
Almost every chapter is a fantastic story in itself. Learn about the mysterious Moss-Haired Girl, the 300 pound German Strong Woman (and the man that has his eyes on her money), the inebriated Lion Tamer and the “trailers”, men down on their luck or running from the law or life who drive tent stakes and beg, borrow and steal.
Featuring an introduction by James Taylor, one of the leading experts on the history of midway and side-show amusements. Mr. Taylor is a fan of Tully’s work and will place the story in a historical context. The first issue of his own periodical, Shocked and Amazed: On and Off the Midway, featured an extract from Circus Parade.
If you are coming to Circus Parade in search of a glitter and sawdust romp through big tops, cotton candy, popcorn, dancing bears, aerial ballet, or any other sequined notion of beautiful circus imagery, close the cover, put the book down and walk away. The stories contained here are not childhood dreams of running away with the circus. Contained here are reasons to run away from the circus.
Every mud show, sideshow and carnival worker knows that once the lights are out and the big top is empty a whole new world erupts. Circus life is not for the meek or weak. Blood and pain are ordinary parts of the job whether on the trapeze bar or the sledgehammer. An endless array of multiple shows a day, deathdefying moments, and human passions are intertwined in this unique community of individuals driven by only one fact, the show must go on. In the span of twenty four hours a show completes, hundreds of stakes, tons of canvas, seating for hundreds, light and sound equipment, and dozens of people need are packed up, moved and unpacked for the next show.
In this book Jim Tully takes you on a grand tour of the seamy underbelly of the circus featuring the parade of vagabonds, vermins, and vagrants who are the back bone of the traveling show. The characters you will meet in these pages are the ones who disappear during the show. As an audience member you witness two hours of spangled spectacle, what about the other 22 hours a day of circus life?
Tully lifts the veil on this world of suspended disbelief giving you a glimpse of the gambling, prostitution, murder, and sex running rampant as underpins of a migrant working class society.
Next time you go to the Circus, you may feel just a bit dirty.
-Keith Nelson
Bindlestiff Family Cirkus
bindlestiff.org
About the Author
Jim Tully (1886-1947) has been credited with originating the hard-boiled writing style practiced later by such authors as Dashiell Hammett. His own story is on par with such figures as Jim Thompson and Jack London, writing not from fantasies, but from his own hard won experiences.
This red-headed Irish bruiser became one of the most respected writers during the roaring twenties, a time filled with more historical greats than probably ever before or since.
A literary bum, Jim also spent time doing an assortment of jobs to get him from one day to the next. By the time his first book was published in 1922, he’d been a dishwasher, chainmaker, boxer, newspaper reporter, tree surgeon, circus handyman, and Hollywood press agent. Through these jobs he compiled a few lifetimes of experiences and characters to write about.
Just like the most of the great figures of history, Tully has been all but forgotten. His works slowly went out of print and his name brought up less and less. Just like the legacy of Al Jolson, who was in his time considered to be the greatest entertainer the world had known, is resigned to the intrepid hands of those who search the dustbins of our uniquely American past.
We can let him describe himself by quoting from the introduction to his novel “Blood On The Moon”:
“I was a road-kid, and not in the strict sense of the word, a hobo. The latter is a migratory worker.
The road-kid is more cunning and daring. With the yegg, of whom he is often an understudy, he is the most relentless and ruthless species of the roving vagabonds of America.
If not whipped too completely by early environment, a road-kid may later succeed in some calling, which, if not higher, at least has greater financial rewards.
Among pugilists, Jack Dempsey, Kid McCoy, and Stanley Ketchell were road-kids. Others develop as yeggs, and some as ministers of the Gospel. A few be¬come writers — Jack London, Josiah Flynt, and myself.
The names of many road-kids may be found in the records of men who dangled through the traps of gal¬lows.
In “Circus Parade” was described a series of none too happy and often ironical incidents with a circus. Chosen by the Literary Guild and banned in Boston, it aroused the ire of circus owners and their sycophants who stand with the ghost of their smug and benign dead leader, P. T. Barnum, in the front rank of American quacks and hypocrites.
After writing “Circus Parade,” I was attacked by paid press agents and others interested in morals for money. One press agent succeeded in having an article accepted by an unsuspecting editor of a literary journal. About such matters I am as impersonal as doom. It is mentioned brie as social phenomena.” - Jim Tully, from “To Those Who Read”
Ordering
Contents
Introduction by James Taylor
I: The Lion Tamer
II: Circus Parade
III: Hey Rube!
IV: The Moss-Haired Girl
V: Murder for Pity
VI: Tales are Told
VII: Without What?
VIII: The Strong Woman
IX: “With Folded Hands Forever”
X: Tiger and Lion Fight
XI: A Day’s Vacation
XII: Whiteface
XIII: An Elephant Gets Even
XIV: A Negro Girl
XV: Red-Lighted
XVI: Surprise
XVII: A Railroad Order
XVIII: The Last Day
XIX : Later
The Vagabond
Cant, Stage and Nom de Guerre
Excerpts
Rosebud Bates was always in the clutches of the one-eyed Shylock. His mania for musical contraptions kept him penniless. He had joined the show in a small Colorado town in the early spring. He was a trap drummer. Decidedly effeminate, with a pink and white complexion, the strict moral gentlemen with the show at once became suspicious of Rosebud. With no evidence upon which to base the charge, they immediately called him a “fairy.” The accusation stuck. Our world was brutal, immoral, smug and conventional. We had unbounded contempt for all those who did not sin as we sinned.
- from Circus Parade, Chapter 3: Hey Rube!
The priest’s voice brought Alice from revery. The priest, a powerful man, held his arm high. Silver and green embroidery glistened under his white surplice. That hour was burned forever in the memory of Alice. The priest remained a symbol of all manhood to her. She confused him with God—and held ever afterward the blending of the two as her great unknown lover.
At twenty-seven, in spite of vicious environments, save for rough repartee now and then, she was still clean of heart and mind—as virginal as Sister Marie. The old nun had often talked of being “married to God.” Years later the Moss-Haired Girl said, “He’s really the Great Lover—no worry of children or sickness—and never any desertion—and always understanding—and if you lose in the end —and He’s only an illusion—you’ve had the fun of kidding yourself a whole lifetime—that in itself is God!”
- from Circus Parade, Chapter 4: The Moss-Haired Girl
Reviews
“Crudely violent writer of crudely violent melodramatics.”
-TIME Magazine, 1932
“This man is gifted with sincerity, with earnestness, with elemental power. He is afire with a passion for expression which, every now and then, purifies itself into poetry.”
- Clayton Hamilton
“Tully’s a cult writer among us fans of bum literature. I believe no less a figure than Charles Willeford expressed interest in writing his bio. So you know he’s cool.
He’s no brilliant writer, but because he lived what he wrote we can forgive him his literary trespasses. Here, he writes of his tramping days with a circus (complete with sideshow!) around the turn of the century. As always, his prose is awkward and somewhat overwritten. But it’s also unstining and unrelenting in delivering that vital component of bum books: sleaze.
Tully make you forget your Toby Tyler fantasies, as this circus is heavy on vermin and body odor. As he describes it, the joint is lousy with crooked gamblers, short change artists, pick-pockets, and virtually every other category of small-time thief. This is not heart-felt nostalgia. The chief barker (”spieler”): “An ex-bruiser of the old school, he had served 5 years in a southern penitentiary for a crime unspeakable. The boy was injured internally.” Ouch!” - Murder Can Be Fun
Design Notes
The cover photography by Christopher R. Mealie, and the book and cover designed by Kevin I. Slaughter.
