A Circus Diversion

When a PBS “American Experience” program on “the circus” showed up in the options Netflix presents me with, the recurring conviction I ought to use my subscription to that service for more than the anime series (or even “animated series”) on it cropped up again. I have watched a number of documentaries on it before (including some others sourced from PBS, “The Civil War” and a more recent piece about the Voyager missions), even if this might be a bit like how I read plenty of nonfiction but do grapple with the concern I’m not reading enough novels to escape the lazy thought “any fictional prose that doesn’t whoosh by over my head or at least depress me isn’t serious enough to really value.” As for why this particular case grabbed me, though, beyond “the draw of a reputable brand name” I might have been conscious “the idea of the circus” was picked up in my mind one second-hand bit at a time, and tied up with a sense of it being “antique.”
( Under the big top )