Three-Ring Tale

BIG SHOW--Charles Cooke--Harper ($2.50).

Since the death last year of Dexter Fellows, circus pressagent extraordinary and perennial, the literature of the circus has seemed as subdued as mourning. With Big Show, the first novel of a circus-loving staff member of The New Yorker, the circus goes to town in bigger & better literary spangles than ever. A three-ring romance presenting a tender love story, an engaging dog story and authentic circus life, Big Show shares with Dexter Fellows' ballyhoo the distinction of being frequently livelier than the circus itself.

The story contains many a hero, but its main hero is Bob Boulton, a lazy, circus-struck, upState New York kid who teaches his collie, Skipper, a repertory of backyard tricks, rises from a frowsy dog-&-pony show to headline billing in Madison Square Garden in The Greatest Show on Earth. With him goes pretty Ann, a blonde snake charmer whom he won when she was abandoned by an athletic, womanizing clown.

When Bob and his Canine Prodigy are the stars of a successful traveling circus, he makes a bad mistake, accepts a contract for the Big Show which includes his doubling in a high-wire leap and Ann joining a snake act. Thereafter the story centres on the Big Show at Madison Square Garden, spotlights the thinly disguised big-time circus stars: the Flying Codonas, Hugo Zacchini, Clyde Beatty, and, most brilliantly of all, the "animal-audience." Sure enough, Bob's dog act is a flop. Ann is bitten by a huge python and has a miscarriage. And every high-wire leap plunges Bob closer to a nervous breakdown. When he is only a few days away from a psychopathic ward, Ann hatches a scheme to get him fired. In the big, happy finale, superpressagent Wright Boyes (a ringer for Dexter Fellows) sends them off with good wishes for a long life of headlining with fine medium-sized circuses.

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