I’ve had a chance to go through most of Robert Barbour Johnson’s stories for Blue Book Magazine. This is the vast bulk of his known and credited work.
They are not very good.
For the most part, they are heavily dipped in nostalgia—the old circus man is always the right one, the new ways always lead to danger. There’s a sugar-coated patriotism to them—George Washington makes a cameo appearance in one, and is rendered monodimensionally.
Beyond that, the stories engage in an awful lot of telling. There are large lectures throughout. I get the sense that these were excerpted from—or inspired by—the novel Johnson was supposed to be writing on circus life, and expressed ideas that he held very dearly, and therefore not very clearly or critically.
They are not very good.
For the most part, they are heavily dipped in nostalgia—the old circus man is always the right one, the new ways always lead to danger. There’s a sugar-coated patriotism to them—George Washington makes a cameo appearance in one, and is rendered monodimensionally.
Beyond that, the stories engage in an awful lot of telling. There are large lectures throughout. I get the sense that these were excerpted from—or inspired by—the novel Johnson was supposed to be writing on circus life, and expressed ideas that he held very dearly, and therefore not very clearly or critically.
