No Ordinary 'Acrobat': An Unconventional History Of The Circus
Though an important and tantalizing move in the right direction, Wall's book suffers a bit from a similar identity problem. He uses his own experiences at the National Circus School as a springboard into historical digression, but the result is occasionally a frustrating superficiality in both realms. Whether he's talking about his time with the mercurial "godfather of modern juggling" Jerome Thomas, or Roman-era saltimbanques and the medieval proto-circus, the feeling sometimes is that there are too many balls in the air. The Ordinary Acrobat contains two or three solid books squeezed into a single volume.
That's not to say that Wall doesn't do an admirable job of pursuing the circus's road-show mysteries and endlessly winding paths. His accounts of "ghost hunting" — looking for bygone locations and artifacts — capture the sense of neglect and loss of the histories of circuses past. It's truly disheartening to read of his search for (and failure to find) the missing gravesite of Philip Astley, today known as one of the founders of the modern circus. Wall's reverence for the forgotten pioneers contrasts nicely with his begrudging admiration but barely-concealed suspicion of the Cirque du Soleil corporate machine.
But maybe Wall's contorted approach to his subject is the right one. When he first talks to Andre Riot-Sarcey, leader of an important French clown troupe called Les Nouveaux Nez, Riot-Sarcey quotes Henry Miller (a clown is a "poet in space") and explains that a "clown is a searcher. He's lost. He's looking for something, but he doesn't know what. The audience becomes his radar — his guide for how to behave." In that regard, The Ordinary Acrobat is an ambler, too. It isn't a conventional memoir, but the circus isn't a conventional subject, either.
Read an excerpt of The Ordinary Acrobat