Book Review

Mannix, Dan. Memoirs Of a Sword Swallower. Ballantine Books, New York: 1964. Dan Mannix’s Memoirs Of a Sword Swallower has got to be one the greatest books chronicling carnival sideshow life. The narrator, named Slim in this account, starts as a young college student whose interest in the occult leads him to visit a traveling carnival. When watching a performance, a fire eater accidentally sets himself on fire. Slim volunteers to learn the trade and replace the injured man. What follows is the story of the carnival and the lives of its performers.

Slim is possessed of an insatiable curiosity for those he travels with. He recounts the details of their life stories and reasons for choosing to live as transients. The sideshow is run by Krinko, an Indian fakir also known as The Human Pincushion. He sticks pins through his flesh, eats glass, and climbs a ladder made of swords. There is also a fat lady, a tattooed man, a cowboy performer from New York City and his fourteen year old girlfriend, and the Ostrich, a Viennese man who can swallow just about anything and regurgitate it. This is lowbrow entertainment at its best.

Slim’s mentor is an old trickster with a long beard named the Impossible Possible who runs a gambling booth that is set up to suck as much money out of the marks as possible. The Impossible Possible has worked in all aspects of carny life and has lots of stories to tell. He is a bit of a psychologist too, explaining to Slim that being a conman means feeling a bit of sympathy for the people he rips off. He also complains about people who try to cheat on the carnival games, explaining with a straight face that he dislikes dishonest people while his whole livelihood revolves around tricking everybody to make money. But this is an insight into carny ethics. There is a definite line between the carnies and their marks and that line delineates loyalty to their own tribe. Everybody on the other side is fair game and the carnies take sides with each other whenever there is a conflict with the outsiders, no matter what the dispute is about.

Slim himself is an unusual character. He is taller than everybody and tries to learn all the stunts that they perform. He starts as a fire eater then moves on to sword swallowing and swallowing neon lightstoo. Other tricks that he attempts are less successful, especially the mentalist mind-reading performances which are too easy for the audience to see through. But his quest to master all aspects of carny life are what give this book is structure. By learning all the tricks of the trade we learn how each stunt is done. While some are fraudulent, others are actually not deceptive and incredibly dangerous as well.

What really give this book its charm is not just the way in which Slim’s education unfolds; as he encounters all the different transients he has each one tell their own story and philosophy on life. All of them love being traveling performers because it gives them a chance to live the way they want to. They are proud of their outsider status and share a supportive community for the misfits of American society. America has always been a country of mass conformity but along the way it has also produced some of the most fascinating counter-cultures in the history of humanity. This book is yet another testament to how liberating it can be to live outside the margins of the dull, gray mainstream full of lifeless people sluggishly shuffling along because they can’t think of anything better to do with themselves.

Memoirs Of a Sword Swallower is a first-rate account of a vanishing aspect of American culture. With its vivid portrayal of the traveling life, it is sometimes light and sometimes dark. It is sometimes sordid, sleazy and even violent but it is never sensational or sentimental. Dan Mannix simply wrote, with honesty, about what he encountered while working with the carnival. There probably is no other book about the carny lifestyle that is this complete.

Mannix, Dan. Memoirs Of a Sword Swallower. Ballantine Books, New York: 1964.