The Pickle Clowns

Reviews / Votes

"There are many books on the American circus that cover clowning-but not clowning like this! This is one of a very few studies of clowning not dedicated to the large three-ring format. The fact that the book is mostly first-person accounts of the show by the clowns themselves makes this study particularly valuable. When you add the fact that the interview questions are intelligent and interesting, this book becomes truly one of a kind, and a treasure."-Sarah J. Blackstone, author of Buckskins, Bullets, and Business: A History of Buffalo Bill's Wild West

"A serious study of the revolutionary Pickle clowns is certainly welcome and long overdue. By choosing to publish separate interviews with the Pickle family's clowns, Joel Schechter gives the reader the history of Pickle clowning from several different points of view, allowing an insight into the performers and their craft that no other book on the subject of clowning has ever come close to."-Patrick Cashin, New American Clown Theater

"This group of interviews with nine clowns from the Pickle Family Circus provides insight into late 20th-century American circus clowning and various approaches to comedy/humor as expressed by practitioner (as opposed to theorists). The content of the interviews is frequently enlightening and entertaining. Both subject and interviewer manage often to describe physical comedy and specific routines in a surprisingly clear manner, offering the reader a good sense of what a routine looked like and what it was trying to accomplish."-Don B. Wilmeth, Brown University