The Electric Woman
Page 37
I wrote most of this book sitting at home in my pajamas and mainlining coffee, but I had the opportunity to attend a few conferences and residencies through generous fellowships that gave me great energy, and to them I am grateful: Writing by Writers at Tomales Bay, the University of Utah’s Taft-Nicholson Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown’s summer session.
I’ve had some extraordinary teachers and mentors who have guided me along the way. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude to Melanie Rae Thon, a lantern through the night, and also to Kellie Wells and Michael Mejia, true guides, and to the splendid Lance Olsen, Wendy Rawlings, Michael Martone, Joel Brouwer, Lidia Yuknavitch, Paul Lisicky, Jerald Walker, and my fifth-grade teacher, Katie Rasmussen, who let me turn in poems for extra credit.
Thank you to all the great storytellers I met along the way, and to some books I found especially helpful for reference: Freaks by Leslie Fiedler, The Arts of Deception by James W. Cook, Struggles and Triumphs by P. T. Barnum, Circus and Carnival Ballyhoo by A. W. Stencell, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities by Jan Bondeson, Phantoms in the Brain by V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, and the great sideshow novel Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
Dear Family: this book is yours. Thank you for the love and support and ideas about who should play who in the movie. Dad, thanks for having my back and publishing a chapbook of my dramatic yet sincere poems when I was seventeen. Nico, the trick is there is no trick—pure magic. Davy and Sam, thanks for letting me share this joyful, hard, bad-joke-ridden road with you. I’m so much better for it.
And for Jeremy, my adventure partner, thanks for giving me my own great love story.
Dear World of Wonders Crew: I’ll never find the right way to say thanks for letting me be part of your wonderful, weird world for a season. The full story would take a thousand volumes to fill. Chris Christ, Ward Hall, Tommy, Red, Short E, Sunshine, Spif, Pipscy, Cassie, Ben, Hermie, Francine, Rachel, Rash, Snickers—you will forever hold my wonder.
* * *
Want to see a great show? Follow the World of Wonders on Facebook to learn where this carnival season will take them: facebook.com/world.of.wonders.show
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Portions of this book originally appeared, in earlier versions, in the following fine publications:
Hayden’s Ferry Review, 2016: “Dispatch from the Carnival: And the Low Sky Opens” (winner 2016 AWP Intro Journals Award, Nonfiction)
Autre magazine, May 26, 2016: “The Electric Woman”
The Rumpus, December 2015: “Dispatch from the Carnival #5: Instructions for Losing Your Head” (nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2015)
The Rumpus, June 2015: “Dispatch from the Carnival #4: Taking in the Sword” (nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2015)
The Rumpus, April 2014: “Dispatch from the Carnival #3: Bloodlust”
The Rumpus, November 2013: “Dispatch from the Carnival #2: The Snake Charmer”
The Rumpus, July 2013: “Dispatch from the Carnival #1: The Trick Is There Is No Trick”
A Note About the Author
Tessa Fontaine spent five months as a performer in the last American traveling sideshow, where she ate fire and charmed snakes. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, PANK, Seneca Review, and other journals. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Alabama and is a Ph.D. student in creative writing at the University of Utah. The Electric Woman is her first book. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue: The Trick Is There Is No Trick
The Architecture of a Wave
The Snake Charmer
Human History
Open the Gates
The Dragon
Snickers T. Clown
Cake
Hair Ingredients
Let’s Us Have Fun
The Moon Is Apple Pie
The Softest Skin of Anyone in the Entire World
Daughters
Mud
And the Low Sky Opens
The Departure
Emergency
Fresh Meat
The Titanic Was Child’s Play
Monsters
Premium Footlong Corn Dogs
Where Your Name Is Writ
Cash Money
Wildewoman
The Sword Swallower
The Animal Undone
Sounds Past the Noises
Behind the Night’s Dress
Christmas Fish
Dr. Frankenstein’s Hushed Blood Love Song
Normalaphobia
Invisibilia
Bloodlust
The Heroes
Electricity
By Ship into the Sea
Twinklers
The Great Reveal
Out of the Mist
Epilogue: Where You Will Float Electric
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
175 Varick Street, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Tessa Fontaine
All rights reserved
First edition, 2018
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71702-5
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