ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All but two of these essays (the Introduction and the Conclusion) first appeared, in far shorter form, in magazines and webzines, where they profited from the sharp wits and savage pencils of various editors. Jeff Salamon at The Village Voice; Ana Marie Cox and Joey Anuff at Suck; Lenora Todaro at The Village Voice Literary Supplement; Kyle Crichton at The New York Times Magazine; Steven Johnson at Feed; Sarah Bayliss at World Art; and Ray Edgar at the late, lamented 21. C guarded against stylistic excess and grammatical offense. But to Ashley Crawford, publisher of World Art and 21.C, goes the editorial Croix de Guerre for grace under fire, barstool bonhomie, and the courage- increasingly rare in the magazine world-to encourage my Imp of the Perverse. My essays on evil clowns ("Cotton Candy Autopsy") and formaldehyde photography ("Nature Morte") would have remained evil gleams in my eye without his impassioned advocacy, not to mention financial support.
I'm grateful, as well, to the participants in the WELL discussion topic "Clowns Suck"; "Cotton Candy Autopsy" was much improved by their posts and private e-mail. And Phil Snyder's obsessive screeds in his 'zine, Eyewash, shed a darkly funny light on clownaphobia.
The inimitable Gretchen Worden, the Mutter Museum's greatest treasure, provided information and inspiration in equal measure for "Nature Morte." To me, she will always be the keeper of the keys to the Pathological Sublime. And I count myself fortunate for having met Allan Ludwig, whose incomparable photos of Mutter exhibits (created in collaboration with Gwen Akin) lend a ghastly beauty to "Nature Morte." I was buoyed by his antic wit, and spurred on by his gleeful exhortations to shine a light into the darkest corners of our cultural cabinet of curiosities.
I'm indebted to David J. Skal for his inexhaustible study, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. His thoughts on Frankenstein as a story about "scientific man's desire to abandon womankind and find a new method of procreation that does not involve the female principle" planted the seed that grew into "Empathy Bellies."
Andrew Ross's The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society proved an invaluable intellectual lockpick, essential in cracking the deeper meanings of the Unabomber in "Wild Nature, Wired Nature." More generally, I'm deeply appreciative of Andrew's continued support of my perilous tap dance in the minefield between pop intellectualism and academic criticism.
McKenzie Wark's pithy, peppery broadsides, in person and on-line, challenged me to broader, deeper thinking about the country that he views with that characteristically antipodean mix of humor, horror, and what his fellow Australians call "cultural cringe."
In Orlando, Michael Hoover and Lisa Stokes were hilariously disaffected tour guides through the overdetermined landscape of "Dislando" and Celebration. Their wry critique of Disney's dream of "a place that takes you back to that time of innocence" informs "Past Perfect."
In the time-honored tradition of Grub Street hacks, I've depended heavily on the kindness of strangers in procuring illustrations for this book. I'm beholden to the photographers, artists, galleries, collectors, and companies who provided the unforgettable images, at little or no cost, that saved my readers from drowning in a sea of unrelieved type.
Although we never made it to the altar, I'm thankful to Verso editors Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker for their courtship and early words of encouragement.
Anton Mueller, my long-suffering editor at Grove Press, maintained an admirable aplomb in the face of the protracted agony of this book's delivery, from CMOS snafus to malfunctioning motherboards.
Naturally, The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium would never have seen the light of day without the tireless efforts of my agent, Laurie Fox, and everyone else at the Linda Chester Literary Agency, where hopes of an Oprah Winfrey benediction for one of my books spring eternal.
But I owe my greatest debt of gratitude, as always, to my wife, Margot Mifflin: intellectual foil, fellow scribbler, inseparable other-the only one who truly understands all the unspoken, unspeakable things.
