Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1989)
Content warning:
Animal cruelty, body horror, child abuse, death, discrimination and bigotry, gun violence, incest, hospitalization, mental illness, murder, natural disaster, pregnancy loss, serious injury, sexual assault, sexual content, substance abuse, suicide, torture, violence
Synopsis
The novel Geek Love (1989) by Katherine Dunn is a National Book Award finalist and has been categorized as a cross between horror, fantasy, and literary fiction, although its content arguably transcends genre. The narrator, Oly, one of five surviving Binewski children, unfolds this twisted tale as she reveals the disturbing events of her childhood, participating in her family’s traveling circus. But this circus isn’t your usual night of entertainment. The Binewskis have taken it upon themselves to create their own line of genetically engineered oddities, the children whose acts sell the tickets that finance their family business. Geek Love provocatively asks readers to question their preexisting notions of normalcy and pushes the boundary of the obscene with its controversial themes.
Essay
I selected this text to be a part of this guide for two main reasons. The first is the author Katherine Dunn’s personal connection to Oregon. Dunn lived in Portland for the majority of her life. Her work neatly fits into the unconventional subcultures of Portland residents and readers. The second is that the present tense of the story takes place in Portland, where Oly, Crystal Lil, and Miranda reside. At the beginning of the novel, it is also revealed that the city of Portland was particularly inspiring to the Binewski legacy. While the family travels around the United States, making stops in various locations, the narrative is clearly grounded in the Keep Portland Weird ideology. While this slogan originated in 2003, it’s fair to assume that Portland’s nightlife and culture in the decades prior influenced its creation and popularization. Dunn captures this culture in a very “the freaks come out at night” sentiment that prompts readers to consider what it means to be a freak, geek, or “normie.”
Katherine Dunn’s writing was both influenced by the Portland subcultures of her time and also contributed to this movement in the literary community. Geek Love, with all of its strange characters, violent imagery, and graphic depictions of sexuality, isn’t just telling a provocative story. The book forces readers to confront their inner darkness and ponder what it means to acknowledge and accept that darkness. Rather than use Portland as a simple partial setting for her text, she encapsulates the independent West, Oregon identity into the miniature society of the traveling carnival. Inside this created society of mainstream social rejects, difference becomes something worshiped and even a goal to be obtained by the Binewskis’ extremist fans.
Geek Love mirrors the timely counterculture with its celebration of bodily difference, rejection of family norms, and push for authentic self-discovery. Dunn takes these ideals to the absolute extreme. The main characters of this novel are Lillian and Aloysius Binewski and their five children, Arturo, Electra, Iphigenia, Olympia, and Fortunato. Each of the children was purposefully created with the intent of having physical “specialties,” visual differences that the “normies” would see as shocking deformities. Throughout the entire novel, bodies are seen as a place for violation, experiment, and spectacle, which is, in my opinion, Dunn’s way of commenting on how the white, male, heteronormative, mainstream society views the individuals they ostracize. Their family dynamic is as far away from traditional as you can get, even though the title of chapter 1 is “The Nuclear Family: His Talk, Her Teeth,” a nod to one of the many societal norms Dunn wanted to deconstruct with this novel.
Author Bio
Katherine Dunn was born in Kansas and eventually found herself in Oregon, where she lived until her passing in 2016. Coming from an abusive household, Dunn was on her own at the age of 17. While still in the Midwest, she was jailed for participating in a magazine subscription scam. She lived in Northwest Portland, scraping by to make ends meet and find her place in a tough world. It is known that her inspiration for Geek Love came from a visit to the Portland Rose Garden. Dunn’s writing perfectly fit into the counterculture of the 1960’s, where social norms were constantly being pushed and in some cases, completely rejected. Her most notable work is Geek Love (1989), which was both a finalist for the Bram Stoker Prize and the National Book Award in 1989. Her novel Attic is extremely autobiographical and resembles her own raw experiences in jail. After getting out, she enrolled in Portland State College and continued her education at Reed College with a full scholarship. Before finishing her time there, she went off to travel the world, fully tapping into her adventurous spirit. Katherine Dunn passed away in 2016 at the age of 70 after leaving a fearlessly authentic imprint on the literary world.
Further Reading
Katherine Dunn, Attic (1970)
- This novel is based on Dunn’s own experience of going to jail and how that experience influenced her life.
Katherine Dunn, Toad (2022)
- This novel follows an unconventional main character and their experiences in Portland’s counterculture scene.
Peter Rock, My Abandonment (2009)
- Based on a true story, this book deals with themes of self-discovery through unconventional family structures living on the outskirts of society.