- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Harcourt Books; 1 edition (14 April 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0151012334
- ISBN-13: 978-0151012336
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14.8 x 2.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 251,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
PRAISE FOR "HUBERT'S FREAKS"
"Gibson has written a panoramic story that takes in sideshow culture, Diane Arbus, African American social history, the image market as it ranges from foreclosure sales to Chelsea galleries, and much more. Its principal focus, however, is one man's life--his dreams and ambitions and delusions and dashed hopes--and that is what makes the book uncommonly moving, utterly engrossing."--Luc Sante
"Gibson has written a panoramic story that takes in sideshow culture, Diane Arbus, African American social history, the image market as it ranges from foreclosure sales to Chelsea galleries, and much more. Its principal focus, however, is one man's life--his dreams and ambitions and delusions and dashed hopes--and that is what makes the book uncommonly moving, utterly engrossing."--Luc Sante
""Hubert's Freaks" will fascinate those among us who are stimulated by the richness and variety of American subcultures. I devoured it." --Larry McMurtry
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
IN 1831 A YANKEE SEA CAPTAIN named Benjamin Morrell captured two cannibals in the South Pacific and brought them back to America. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
IN 1831 A YANKEE SEA CAPTAIN named Benjamin Morrell captured two cannibals in the South Pacific and brought them back to America. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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15 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Hubert is only one part of the drama
3 May 2008
Format:Hardcover
Like dust to a vacuum cleaner, and sucked in faster than I could think to this gripping story of Bob and other protagonists and characters of this marvelous book. Knowing some of them personally added another dimension for me, but the detail of Diane Arbus's intimate perception and insertion into the lives of her subjects brought a deeper dimension to portrait photography. And then of course is Bob, the art dealer in his trader world, with potential marks and hopes of patrons, where the real money is in the art world, to the gatekeepers of that realm posing or installed as museum curators. The book is a tantalizing thriller with insight.
Alen MacWeeney
Alen MacWeeney
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
An encounter with the shadow side...
21 Jun 2008
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I suspect that if Carl Jung were alive today he would have gladly contributed a blurb to Gibson's book. One of the things today's contemporary culture has an ambivalence toward is what Jung referred to as our shadow-side, the dark underbelly of consciousness that drives our obsessions, fascinations, perversions, and behaviors in ways we don't always want to own. Diane Arbus was a photographer who was keenly attuned to the shadow in all of us and especially in the culture of her era. In Hubert's Freaks, Gibson has tuned into that strange, dark, fascinating and alluring realm --- both through the subject matter and through the character of his hero/anti-hero Bob Langmuir, a man with more than a nodding acquaintance with his own shadow-side.
In addition to the main story of how Langmuir came to acquire the Arbus photos, his trials and tribulations in authenticating them, and the circuitous route to making a profit from them, there is the equally fascinating side stories of the people of Hubert's Museums. The "freaks", some with their own physical anomalies, others with an ability to tantalize the shadow-side of Americans willing to trade 25 cents for a few minutes in their presence.
This is the sort of book that you start wondering what you will find and finish wondering where you have been --- a world of freaks and the photos that immortalize them from a time that seems long ago but is as close as the world wide web. Fascinating.
In addition to the main story of how Langmuir came to acquire the Arbus photos, his trials and tribulations in authenticating them, and the circuitous route to making a profit from them, there is the equally fascinating side stories of the people of Hubert's Museums. The "freaks", some with their own physical anomalies, others with an ability to tantalize the shadow-side of Americans willing to trade 25 cents for a few minutes in their presence.
This is the sort of book that you start wondering what you will find and finish wondering where you have been --- a world of freaks and the photos that immortalize them from a time that seems long ago but is as close as the world wide web. Fascinating.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Brilliant Book
28 April 2008
Format:Hardcover
Greg Gibson is a superb writer and has succeeded in combining the multifarious strands of a twisted plot to give us a riveting account of a fascinating episode in the life of an American icon. A must-read -- I finished in one flight from NY to SF. Buy it now and give copies to any friends who can read. They will kiss your feet.
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