An outstanding novel packed with unusual twists and turns

books:


	• Hubert's Freaks: The Rare-Book Dealer, the Times Square Talker, and the Lost Photos of Diane Arbus Gregory Gibson Harcourt, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Amazing book

I loved this book. I read it straight through like it was a detective novel. I could not wait to see what would happen next. I loved the story and the strange characters, especially Bob. But most of all, I loved Gibson's wry humor and beautiful writing. This is a compelling and wonderful book.

An outstanding novel packed with unusual twists and turns

An outstanding novel packed with unusual twists and turns, HUBERT'S FREAKS revolves around obsessive antiques dealer and treasure hunter Bob Langmuir, who uncovers unique prints by the legendary Diane Arbus, in the process discovering a new side of not only artist Arbus but the 'weird America' she captured in film. His survey of antiques, freak show exhibits, and more evolves into a catchy road show of discovery in a novel packed with adventure, and highly recommended as a fine leisure read.

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Hubert is only one part of the drama

Like dust to a vacuum cleaner, and sucked in faster than I could think to this gripping story of Bob and other protagonists and characters of this marvelous book. Knowing some of them personally added another dimension for me, but the detail of Diane Arbus's intimate perception and insertion into the lives of her subjects brought a deeper dimension to portrait photography. And then of course is Bob, the art dealer in his trader world, with potential marks and hopes of patrons, where the real money is in the art world, to the gatekeepers of that realm posing or installed as museum curators. The book is a tantalizing thriller with insight.

Alen MacWeeney

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An encounter with the shadow side...

I suspect that if Carl Jung were alive today he would have gladly contributed a blurb to Gibson's book. One of the things today's contemporary culture has an ambivalence toward is what Jung referred to as our shadow-side, the dark underbelly of consciousness that drives our obsessions, fascinations, perversions, and behaviors in ways we don't always want to own. Diane Arbus was a photographer who was keenly attuned to the shadow in all of us and especially in the culture of her era. In Hubert's Freaks, Gibson has tuned into that strange, dark, fascinating and alluring realm --- both through the subject matter and through the character of his hero/anti-hero Bob Langmuir, a man with more than a nodding acquaintance with his own shadow-side.

In addition to the main story of how Langmuir came to acquire the Arbus photos, his trials and tribulations in authenticating them, and the circuitous route to making a profit from them, there is the equally fascinating side stories of the people of Hubert's Museums. The "freaks", some with their own physical anomalies, others with an ability to tantalize the shadow-side of Americans willing to trade 25 cents for a few minutes in their presence.

This is the sort of book that you start wondering what you will find and finish wondering where you have been --- a world of freaks and the photos that immortalize them from a time that seems long ago but is as close as the world wide web. Fascinating.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Bob Langmuir is an obsessive dealer with a remarkable eye for treasure who makes the discovery of a lifetime when he chances upon a trove of never-before-seen prints by the legendary Diane Arbus. From the moment he purchases a trunk containing the archive of Hubert?s Dime Museum and Flea Circus?a midcentury Times Square freak show frequented by Arbus?and discovers some intriguing photographs, he knows he?s on to something. Furthermore, he begins to suspect that what he?s found may add a pivotal chapter to what is now known about Arbus and the ?old weird America,? in Greil Marcus?s phrase, that Hubert?s inhabited.

Langmuir?s ensuing adventure, filled with bizarre coincidences, turns into a roller-coaster ride that takes him from memorabilia shows to the curator?s office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Will the photos be authenticated? How will the Arbus estate react? most important, can Bob, who has seen more than a few promising deals head south, finally make his one big score?

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