The Show That Smells: A Mirror Maze of a Novel

As short as it is twisted and hilarious, Canadian writer Derek McCormack’s The Show That Smells (a carnie phrase for shows featuring animal acts) seamlessly intertwines high fashion, vampires, hillbillies, horror, country music, and queer seduction in a lightning-paced work that seems to be equal parts novel, movie, and poetry. There’s even some history. Or rather, historical characters reflected and refracted though McCormack’s vision, which is not for the faint hearted, easily offended, or pun-resistant.

While a novel in form, The Show That Smells is also presented as a film, complete with stage directions, notes on creating light, sound, and smoke cues, and even a director and cast of characters. The cast includes historical figures that play themselves, and actors – such as Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford - who appear playing other figures and roles. The director is listed as Tod Browning, best known for directing Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932); characters from both show up in McCormack’s book. Placed, or rather “shot,” entirely in a carnival mirror maze, each scene begins by reflecting to the reader the reflections in the mirrors, then listing who is actually in the room, like a camera pulling back to widen the angle:

“Freaks.
Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.
Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers.
Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.
Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks. Carrie Rodgers. Freaks.
        Carrie Rodgers and Elsa Schiaparelli and freaks and me in a Mirror Maze.”

Vampires don’t reflect in mirrors, of course, which is why fashion icon Elsa Schiaparelli and first-person narrator The Reporter, played by Derek McCormack himself, are never found in the reflections. In this house of mirrors, Schiaparelli is the Vogue Vampire and Derek her wise-cracking and fashion-obsessed sidekick who writes for Vampire Vogue. As the “Dracula of Dressmaking” whose “fashion is her feint,” Schiaparelli uses her blood-based perfume Shocking! to help other vampires stalk innocent fashion victims.

Coco Chanel stars as a vampire hunter, aided by her holy water based Chanel No. 5 and by the rather less effective country and gospel singing group, the Carter Family (Maybelle, Sara, and A.P., playing themselves). Caught in the middle are legendary country singer Jimmie Rodgers, who is dying of tuberculosis, and his wife Carrie, who sells herself to Schiaparelli in an attempt to save her husband’s life. Also featured are Lon Chaney as Renfield and various uncredited “Circus Freaks” as themselves. Inside McCormack’s maze, a witty and grisly-minded Schiaparelli is determined to dress the world in Freak chic, create a dead baby carnival, and marry Carrie, promising to heal her husband if Carrie submits. Meanwhile, reporter Derek has his own plans for Jimmie. With Chanel and the Carter Family determined to stop the vampires, the perfume and fashion wars ensue.

This conglomeration of fact, fiction, and ghoulish fantasy shouldn’t work, and yet in McCormack’s deft hands, it somehow turns into a perfectly timed phantasmagorical adventure. This is not his first foray into combining country singers, fashion, and vampires; his earlier book The Haunted Hillbilly features Hank Williams manipulated by a fashion-forward vampire who destroys his career. Like any good director, McCormack knows how to project less to show more, and maintain his own style at the same time. At once gruesome and gleeful, his staccato, unembellished sentences and fragments paint vivid pictures that may disgust some and fascinate others: “Jimmie burbles. Blood puddles. A red clown shoe on the floor.” While often grotesque in theme, the form is downright poetic: “Fur flourishes on his forehead, his eyelids, his lips. I shake his hand. Paw. Dead fleas fall into my palm. A circus’s worth.” The mirror is reflected in the constant alliteration and wordplay:

“Worse than wolfsbane. Gruesomer than garlic. Chaney clutches his throat like he’s strangling himself. All vampires act like silent stars.

Cowering, cringing, crying—Chaney acts like an actress….She drips a drop on him. It burns like battery acid. Blended with bleach. Skin smokes. Seared hair. Sear skin. Seared seersucker. Stinks. Chaney No. 5.”

In almost Grand Guignol fashion, the macabre collides with comedy. In a funhouse world where good guys are boring, the villains particularly crack wise. “‘Your hair!’ Schiaparelli says. ‘Your clothes! You look like a family of scarecrows! Where do scarecrows shop? Marshall Field’s?’” Humor ranges from tongue-in-cheek to vaudeville to the downright punny. “‘This isn’t science,’ Chanel says. ‘It’s specious.’ ‘Propagation of the specious!’ Schiaparelli says.” Haute couture becomes haute horreur, the Carter Family carterwauls, Chanel No. 5 is Charnel No. 5.

The maze with all its infinite reflections is the most prominent image in the book, an ironic one, perhaps, given that it only reflects other images and has nothing in and of itself. The repetition of reflections is echoed not just in the poetry and wordplays, but also in the fluidity between fact and reflecting fiction. Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel were indeed arch-rivals, although history has yet to weigh in on the vampire angle. Schiaparelli did have a perfume called Shocking! and a well-known Circus Collection. More playful and artistically inclined than Chanel, she was renowned for innovative designs like the Lobster dress, the shoe hat, and the first wraparound dress; she collaborated with artists like Dali and Giacometti, incorporating their artwork into hers. If Chanel was tweed, Schiaparelli was trompe l’oeil, and it is easy to see where McCormack’s sympathies lie.

Jimmie Rodgers, often called the father of country music, did perform in the 1920s and died of TB in 1933 after having met and performed with the Carter Family. Like the Jimmie of the novel, he reportedly travelled with a large perfume collection. The Carter Family members (Mother Maybelle was the mother of June Carter Cash) were also among the first real country music stars, collaborating to become one of the most influential groups in the genre. Tod Browning, listed as the director, was indeed a director who worked extensively in the 1920s with Lon Cheney, the Man of a Thousand Faces, who himself worked extensively as an actor portraying outcast or monstrous characters. And the cinematic “freaks” from Freaks appear, their infamous chant of “One of us” here turned into “Dress like us!” Facts become objects for McCormack to reflect in his literary funhouse; they take on a life of their own, like vampires after death.

Another particular facet of McCormack’s maze is the reflections between form and theme. Not only are the mirrored versions of people in each scene listed repeatedly, but whole passages of prose repeat themselves like a disco ball turning and reflecting light out at different angles. Schiaparelli says, “Mirrors are trompe l’oeil to me.” French for “trick of the eye,” trompe l’oeil turns two dimensions into three, as in murals using depth perception or matte paintings in film production used to add depth where there is none. Schiaparelli used the trompe l’oeil illusion in some of her designs, adding the illusion of extra dimension in the way that McCormack does here by projecting literature as film, complete with notes on blood makeup and Foley effects:

“‘I’ll devour you.’ Schiaparelli brushes back Carrie’s hair. ‘Tonight, a taste.’ Fangs flash. She bites her neck. Carrie can’t speak. She drops the doll. Sound effect. Schiaparelli steps back so the camera can capture: nail polish leaking from her lips. On Carrie’s neck: scarlet sequins.”

Verbal and visual forms become as elastic as meaning and history inside McCormack’s maze. In a visual feat combining punctuation and fashion, ((((( are sequins, ((((( are sequins with blood, *** are crystals, and bullet points are beads. VVVVs are bats, and vampires bleed sequins. Form and theme continue to echo each other in the shifting rhythms of the prose and the implied music. The Carter Family would have been raised in the tradition of shape-note singing in which musical tones, shapes, and syllables all represent each other. Sound and shape add illusion of dimension to written notation, just as trompe l’oeil adds depth to visual patterns, just as punctuation represents three dimensional fashion accessories, just as film directions imply a visual dimension for the flat page, just as… and so on. Visual, musical, and written forms blur like melting gutta percha makeup on Lon Cheney’s face, dimension reflecting dimension infinitely in McCormack’s twisting mirror maze of images and distortions.

And everything intersects in figure of the narrator/reporter/author Derek McCormack, who, keeping his promise to marry haute couture to hillbilly music, positively wallows in both the horror and the fashion. In fact, those who want further stimulation might check out his article on the history of sequins, or Hollywood monster movie costumer Vera West. We can’t help but be seduced by his unapologetically gleeful pleasure in the ghoulish comedy. The one point of stability in this funhouse ride, McCormack delivers a bizarre and strangely hypnotic grab bag. It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Abbott and Costello as directed by Tarantino on a roller coaster screeching over a lake of fire while wearing an evening gown paired with gingham gloves. The Show That Smells may shock, amuse, irritate, or entertain, but it’s guaranteed that getting lost in its layers will never bore.