As the embodiment of all that’s grand and fraudulent in American mass culture, Phineas T. Barnum, the 19th century showman and circus impresario, certainly has few equals. This much is clear in his audacious and immensely entertaining autobiography,
The Life of P. T. Barnum, which was originally published in 1855 and—after being unavailable for more than a century—has been reissued in its first modern edition.
In “Hatching Monsters,” a review of the book in
Lapham’s Quarterly, Charles Baxter says that
The Life of P. T. Barnum (University of Illinois Press, 448 pages) “is not so much a memoir as a conduct manual by someone who believed in the material world more than the transcendental one...Some of his nuggets of advice are platitudinous truisms, as you would expect—‘Whatever you do, do with all your might,’ or ‘Select the kind of business that suits your natural inclinations and temperament’—but several items in his code are startlingly modern… Trust your fellow man? Never. ‘Do not depend on others,’ Barnum instructs. Follow your vision? No. ‘Be not too visionary.’ How then does one make one’s way in the world? Here he waxes eloquent: ‘Advertise your business. Do not hide your light under a bushel.’”
Baxter analyzes the cunning and brazen strategy that brought Barnum so much success and material wealth during his lifetime: “One of Barnum’s brilliant, almost genius-level aperçus, was that you could create news through advertising, and the advertising itself becomes newsworthy. If you advertise forcefully, the advertised object, even if perfectly vacant and without qualities (think: Paris Hilton), becomes a topic of conversation. Truth value is always trumped by hype, and hype in turn is fueled by controversy. Any news is good news. Barnum discovered that if your show generates angry letters to the editor, so much the better: people will be compelled to see the spectacle for themselves ‘to determine whether or not they had been deceived.’”
Read Charles Baxter’s “Hatching Monsters” in Lapham’s Quarterly now!RECENT RELATED READING (2020):“Why The Greatest Showman’s ‘Never Enough’ Singer Was Shocked They Wanted To Use Her Version”Sometimes show business is all about timing. When the 2018 film based on Phineas T. Barnum's life was in production, Loren Allred's demo vocals for “The Greatest Showman” song “Never Enough” was heard by the right person. For this reason she was able to go into the studio and record the iconic version that soon become very popular. And, just like that of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind's talents, made their way to the musical blockbuster.
