Frantic Panoramas

Spectacular Distractions: P.T. Barnum and American Modernism

“…"In their very excess such sites [as the circus] open out to multiple zones of experience and feeling, zones to which the high cultural novel has no access," Bentley notes. 29 Further to this, however, is the way in which these sketches inhabit a remarkably similar position to the one that James would take in The American Scene six years later. Urban life is again the scene of such overwhelmingly busyness that it seems "gross and foolish," engendering a spectator who is compelled to turn "greedy eyes at the most important instant" and unable to absorb the full details (or even the important details) of what is going on in front of them.…”