SCHOLAR ISLAND
CLOWNS
The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet its inhabitants are strikingly unhappy. Accordingly, we present to the rest of mankind, on a planet rife with suffering and tragedy, the spectacle of a clown civilization. Sustained on a clown diet rich in sugar and fat, we have developed a clown physiognomy. We dress like clowns. We move about a landscape filled with cartoon buildings in clownmobiles, absorbed in clownish activities. We fill our idle hours enjoying the canned antics of professional clowns. We perceive God to be n elderly comedian. Death, when we acknowledge it, is just another pratfall on the boob tube. Bang! You’re dead!
James Howard Kunstler
Home from Nowhere
"Life in the U.S.A. gizzard had changed. Only a clown could fail to notice. So then, failing to notice would be a possibility."
Thomas McGuane
"What is it about clowns? They seem to be a happy enough bunch, delighted to suffer a pie-in-the-face or a seltzer-down-the-pants just to make us laugh. But what dark compulsion drives these men to hide behind their painted-on smiles and big rubber noses? What madness turns a man into a clown?"
Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman
A Cotton Candy Autopsy
"(The clowns) sounded happy and they acted happy, but it was a happiness that danced on the edge of hysteria, a manic joy that threatened, in a second, to slip over into murderous rage."
Jim Knipfel
Twilight of the Clowns
"I am happy. But every clown is. If one didn't laugh, one would cry wouldn't one?"
David Bowie
"The only thing I hate worse than clowns are clown paintings."
Woody Allen
"There’s nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight."
Lon Chaney
Book: "Clowns & Tricksters" by Kimberly A. Christen
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