Clowning Around at the Mercer County Library

Although it is not over yet, summer has come and will soon be gone. Hopefully, by this point in the year, you have worked through your summertime checklist of things to do:

• Go to the beach
• Drink some lemonade
• Swim in a pool
• Catch fireflies in a jar (with proper ventilation, of course)
• Celebrate International Clown Week

You did celebrate International Clown Week, didn’t you?

You do know about International Clown Week, don’t you?

What started as a single day to celebrate and recognize our country’s clowns became a weeklong event in 1970, when a joint resolution was passed in Congress, authorizing and requesting the President of the United States to issue a proclamation making August 1-7, 1971, National Clown Week. On August 2, 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon issued Proclamation 4071, making August 1-7, 1971 National Clown Week. Twenty years later, the Clowns of America made a push to share the spotlight with their intercontinental colleagues, allowing us all to celebrate International Clown Week each August.

All around the world, both clowns and non-clowns alike can take part in International Clown Week. Clowns will do what one would expect – they will perform for their communities, offer outreach and education for the uninitiated, and just generally clown around. For everyone else looking to celebrate, they can go to a circus or other venue and watch clowns perform, dress up like a clown and give it a try, or learn about clowns by reading a book or watching a movie. There are no strict rules when it comes to celebrating International Clown Week, so do whatever you think would be best.

With that brief history lesson and overview out of the way, let’s look at some resources you can check out from the Mercer County Library System to get ready for 2024’s International Clown Week.

Clowns by John H. Towsen

“A pictorial and textual account of the evolution of clowning shows that clowns, usually identified with the circus, have played important roles in other forms of entertainment such as theatre, folk dances, and rituals and rodeos.”

The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under American Big Top by Janet M. Davis 

“A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power.”

Stages of the Clown: Perspectives on Modern Fiction from Dostoyevsky to Beckett by Richard Pearce

“In this illuminating study of the grotesque and black comedy, Mr. Pearce traces the classic clown tradition in the works of Beckett, Flannery O Connor, Kafka, Faulkner, William Burroughs, Nabokov, Gunter Grass, and other modern writers. The stages of the title refer to the historical development and concept of the clown from classical to modern literature. The author s radical perspective on the clown as the hero in a world of the absurd is especially important."

1000 Clowns More or Less: A Visual History of the American Clown by H. Thomas Steele

“Bulbous noses, orange hair, red mouths, sad eyes--Taschen captures it all in an hilarious and frightening collection of bad clown art.”

Clown Paintings by Diane Keaton

“With texts by premier comedians such as Steve Martin, Jay Leno, Woody Allen, Goldie Hawn, Lisa Kudro, Whoopi Goldberg, Gary Shandling, Martin Short and more. CLOWN PAINTINGS is a twisty illustrated book that showcases 65 full-color, outrageously compelling clown portraits, painted by amateurs and selected by actor and director Diane Keaton. By turns hilarious and heartfelt, joyful and mortifying, Keaton found herself as mesmerized by their mute eloquence as by their bad taste, and culled these wild images from her own private collection.”

Of course, there are other, darker, clown-related resources available through the library, like Stephen King’s It, City of Clowns by Daniel Alarcón, and John Wayne Gacy: Defending a Monster by Sam L. Amirante. And while these do not quite fit into the spirit of International Clown Week, that doesn’t mean you can’t check them out to enjoy!

So, stop by any branch of the Mercer County Library system and check out some of our clown-related resources. And don’t forget to mark your calendar for August 1-7, 2024, next year’s International Clown Week!

- by Chris Y., Ewing Branch