Here we go again with the carnival novels. We’re compelled to read them, even when they look terrible before we open the covers. In 1970’s Circus of Sex by Renaud Fuchs a nowheresville lad named Sam Sloan decides to join a traveling spectacular called Fuchsia Bath’s Astounding Circus (Fuchsia is male, amazingly). But the book isn’t about circus life at all, so much as the alleged sex practices of carny folk. In Fuchs’ fevered telling, they’re pansexual, which means Sam better get used to liking it all ways all the time—even, as things develop, against his will. We often criticize sleaze novels for being too chaste. Then there’s this kind. You’ll keep looking over your shoulder to make sure no one catches you reading it. What with the rape, bestiality, and general depravity, your reputation would be completely ruined. You can give Fuchs a pass. But we do like the cover. It’s credited to someone named M. Coxe.
