JUMBO is available through the author at 

johnpassfieldnovels@gmail.com

The Story 

It is September 15, 1885, in the town of St. Thomas, a day on which a little boy gets to meet Jumbo, the world’s largest elephant, whose fame is being trumpeted by P. T. Barnum to the four corners of the world.

The arrival of the circus in the boy’s home town sets off a celebration in which the small-town world which the boy inhabits is interfused by the wonders of a cornucopia of the most exotic of God’s creatures, which Barnum has collected from the farthest reaches of the known world, and exhibited for all to enjoy and admire. His dad’s job on the railway gives the boy an access to the wonders of this exotic world that any boy would envy, including a personal tour of the circus by one of Barnum’s clowns that culminates in a visit to the inner sanctum for a personal visit with Jumbo and his trainer, Scotty.

However, the day of the celebration turns dark as the evening approaches. Unfortunately, his closeness to the inner-workings of the circus and the railway bring the boy into contact with some very painful knowledge. The celebration of the visit of the Barnum and Bailey circus to his home town, and the secret of Jumbo’s unfortunate demise, remain with the boy for the next fifty years.

The Setting

I grew up in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada and enjoyed living there as much as anybody could. It was the perfect small town to grow up in, and I participated in all of the sports, school, religious and entertainment rituals that living in a small town offers. Once a year, everyone would trek to a vacant lot on the edge of town, and enter a world that was as exotic as any small-town boy could imagine. I had the privilege of enjoying what turned out to be the last of the railway-borne, big-top and multi-tented circuses that cris-crossed North America and brought the exotic riches of the world of the imagination to the empty fields on the outskirts of the small towns.

A Novel About Jumbo

After completing my first novel, Grave Song, I realized that the Jumbo story would be an excellent vehicle for exploring the phenomenon of the story of a small community becoming one of the stories of the world community, for a short length of time, until the spotlight of media-attention moves on. The pattern of two worlds existing apart (small town and traveling circus), the two worlds inter-acting (the circus visits the small town) and then the two worlds separating again (the circus leaves the town) suggested possibilities about the ways in which we perceive the various elements of the world that we live in, and the interaction between our own direct experience and the media presentations of experience that we have come to accept as a major part of our daily living.

The Imagery

The story offered a fascinating array of imagery from which to fashion the patterns that I wanted to explore; the worlds of the small town, the big city (New York), the railway, the circus, the exotic locations – such as 19th Century Africa, with its mixture of the unknown and the astonishing – and that of P. T. Barnum, perhaps the world’s first great mass-media savvy entrepreneur. The imagery – of small town and larger world, of past experience and new experience – offered plenty of contrast and comparison as these worlds of imagery meet, interfuse and then separate as the Jumbo story progresses.

The Centre of Consciousness

The challenge became the question of how to arrange these images into a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. After a long time of reading sources and brooding, I decided that the entire story could be made available to the reader through the consciousness of a ten year-old boy who was lucky enough to live in St. Thomas at the time of the visit of Jumbo, and whose dad’s job on the railway would allow him to work with and befriend the circus people. This arrangement would provide the boy with a close-up view of the wonders of the exotic world that the visiting circus represents, even to the point of a personal audience with the most famous entertainer in the world – the world’s largest elephant, Jumbo.

The Structure

Further consideration led to a decision that the three-part structure – of the anticipation of the visit of the circus, the experience of the visit and the aftermath of the visit – would be enhanced by presenting the story in two interacting time-frames. The outer frame is the 1935 Homecoming Reunion – the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Jumbo – and the inner story is the visit of Jumbo, to St. Thomas, in 1885. The tension that the death of Jumbo creates in the boy’s family, and the need to attempt to heal the wounds that the family suffers over the fifty years that follow that catastrophe, cause the adult Jamie to review the events of the visit of the circus and the death of Jumbo – in effect, to review the time when he became aware that along with providing plenty of cause for celebration, life challenges us to deal with its darker side.

Image Frames

Each chapter is a memory envelope, with an outer frame of a particular event – such as the time when Jamie and his dad and Mr. Brierly, the newspaper editor, put the circus posters up – and an inner repository of memories. It is these memories which become the imagery by which Jamie attempts to understand the world into which he has been born and the experiences that he has lived through. The images of his experience were all literal at the time that they happened to him, but are all available to him later as memories, to be arranged in a way in which they can best yield their meaning for him. Jamie‘s review of the record of his experiences – of 1935 and 1885, and the years in between – is an attempt to heal the wound that is at the heart of the dysfunction of Jamie’s family. It is only by harmonizing the images of his experience that he can do so.

The Non-Fiction

For the media imagery, I have used material from the original circus poster of the 1885 visit to St. Thomas and from circus advertisements, local advertisements and the local and New York newspapers of the day. It is the imagery of these public sources – all seeking to have an influence – that Jamie must balance against the imagery which is provided by his own personal observations. The public imagery contributes to the melange of personal and public sources of thought that Jamie must negotiate in his quest for an understanding of his experiences.

The Theme

The theme of the novel is the coming to consciousness of a sensitive boy, who attempts to find harmony in all things: his family, his community, his knowledge and his experience. The attempt to harmonize all of the elements of the various aspects of the world that he is exploring receives a tremendous shock when a major event – one that is treated as of world-wide importance by the media – turns out to have caused a crisis in his own family. The need for a resolution of that crisis lingers on fifty years after the shocking event. In addition, Jamie’s reliance on his own personal experience as a means of evaluating his world receives a challenge from the emerging world of mass-media, as his sensibilities are bombarded by an onslaught of imagery directed at his home town by that master of media – the man who is more a 21st Century figure than a 19th Century figure – the prince of showmen, the benefactor of mankind, the educator of millions, the inventor of the full-media barrage – P. T. Barnum! Ultimately, the story of Jamie Patterson, and the visit of Jumbo to St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada, in September of 1885, is the story of everyone and of our exploration and interpretation of the world in which we live.

JUMBO is available through the author

at johnpassfieldnovels@gmail.com