Overview
From the moment Bob Langmuir, a down-and-out rare book dealer, spies some intriguing photographs in the archive of a midcentury Times Square freak show, he knows he's on to something. It turns out he's made the find of a lifetime—never-before-seen prints by the legendary Diane Arbus. Furthermore, he begins to suspect that what he's found may add a pivotal chapter to what is now known about Arbus as well as about the "old weird America," in Greil Marcus's phrase, that Hubert's inhabited.
Bob's ensuing adventure—a roller-coaster ride filled with bizarre characters and coincidences—takes him from the fringes of the rare book business to Sotheby's, and from the exhibits of a run-down Times Square freak show to the curator's office of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Will the photos be authenticated? How will Arbus's notoriously protective daughter react? Most importantly, can Bob, who always manages to screw up his most promising deals, finally make just one big score?
Synopsis
From the moment Bob Langmuir, a down-and-out rare book dealer, spies some intriguing photographs in the archive of a midcentury Times Square freak show, he knows he's on to something. It turns out he's made the find of a lifetime—never-before-seen prints by the legendary Diane Arbus. Furthermore, he begins to suspect that what he's found may add a pivotal chapter to what is now known about Arbus as well as about the "old weird America," in Greil Marcus's phrase, that Hubert's inhabited.
Bob's ensuing adventure—a roller-coaster ride filled with bizarre characters and coincidences—takes him from the fringes of the rare book business to Sotheby's, and from the exhibits of a run-down Times Square freak show to the curator's office of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Will the photos be authenticated? How will Arbus's notoriously protective daughter react? Most importantly, can Bob, who always manages to screw up his most promising deals, finally make just one big score?
The Barnes & Noble Review
If collecting is an art form, then a collector - like many a troubled artist -- also may have his demons. Such is the conclusion of Gregory Gibson's account of collector Bob Langmuir's picaresque pursuit of a trove of lost photographs by Diane Arbus. Like Arbus, Langmuir was an aficionado of the "Old, Weird America" -- Greil Marcus's name for the semi-mythical demimonde of hucksters, tattooed vampires, and petty thieves who haunt the edges of American culture. As a collector, Langmuir graduated from old records to rare books to photographs and ephemera. He's primed for the score of a lifetime when he picks up the archive of Hubert's Dime Museum and Flea Circus, a Times Square sideshow, for a song. Entranced by the window it opens up on the world of its performers; only later does he realize that the archive include lost photographs by Diane Arbus, taken while she documented "American rites, manners, and customs" on a Guggenheim fellowship. But the very qualities that serve Langmuir so well as a collector -- his intensity, fervent imagination, and talent for jive-talking -- vex his relationships and confound his hopes; as Gibson's narrative unfolds, the question of whether Langmuir will survive the struggle within himself becomes every bit as compelling as the story of Arbus's rediscovered photographs. In the tradition of Joseph Mitchell and A. J. Liebling, this is a fine and riveting profile of troubled artists and the traces they leave behind. --Matthew Battles
Editorials
From the Publisher
"Hubert's Freaks is a page-turner, charged with anecdotes about junk-shop hustlers and eccentric collectors."—Time Out New York (four stars)"[A] tale of remarkable suspense."—Los Angeles Times
Publishers Weekly
From the late 1950s until her death in 1971, renowned photographer Diane Arbus took pictures of oddball performers at the now-forgotten Hubert's Museum, a typical freak show in New York City's seedy Times Square. One frequent subject was Charlie Lucas, first a "freak" himself, later an "inside talker." In 2003, Bob Langmuir, an anxiety-ridden, pill-popping, obsessive antiquarian book dealer from Philadelphia, unearthed a collection of photographs and memorabilia, including Lucas's journals and what he thought were Arbus's photos. This trove of genuine American kookiness came to dominate his life. Following Langmuir's quest-from the slums of Philadelphia to the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art-as he gathered, priced and ultimately came to understand this collection, author Gibson (Gone Boy: A Walkabout), himself an antiquarian book dealer, effortlessly twists these strands together with an emotional wallop. "His toil in Hubert's vineyard," Gibson writes of Langmuir, "amounted to no more or less than the continuing archaeology of the old, weird America." Gibson's laser focus on Langmuir's shifting state of mind as he struggles to master his personal demons and navigate the pitfalls of his own obsession gives this story its heart and opens a window onto a lost part of the American soul. 21 b&w photos. (Apr.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business InformationLibrary Journal
Gibson's (Gone Boy: A Walkabout; Demon of the Waters) latest work centers on the adventures of fellow antiquarian book dealer Bob Langmuir, detailing his obsession with collecting and tracing the path on which a particularly exciting discovery led him. In 2003, Langmuir purchased a trunk containing the archive of Hubert's Dime Museum and Flea Circus, a midcentury Times Square, NY, freak show, and finds inside what may be one-of-a-kind prints by legendary photographer Diane Arbus, who was known to have frequented the show. Over the next several months, he sets out to prove their authenticity, encountering bizarre coincidences and interesting people along the way and making stops at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sotheby's, and, eventually, the Arbus estate. Gibson thoroughly details how Hubert's museum was not the freak show many believed it to be, but a great year-round sideshow and an excellent means for Arbus to establish relationships with the performers who became the subjects of her renowned images. He describes Langmuir's life and career as well as those of Arbus in great detail. A consistently fascinating and intriguing read for public and academic libraries.
—Susan McClellan