DEREK MCCORMACK READS AT THE WORD ON THE STREET PROUD VOICES TENT,
SUN 4:30PM, QUEEN'S PARK. THE SHOW THAT SMELLS
LAUNCHES OCT 2, 7PM. TRASH PALACE, 89-B NIAGARA.
Derek McCormack’s cruel and unusual novella The Show That Smells is the only ticket you need to buy this year. Framing the work as a lost Tod Browning film, McCormack deploys era personalities — fashion designer and perfumer Elsa Schiaparelli, country crooner Jimmie Rodgers, Lon Chaney and, what the hell, Coco Chanel — to tell a vampire story set in a hall of mirrors splattered with blood, perfume and sequins.
Written in a style of McCormack’s own invention, The Show That Smells reeks of genius and is the author’s most original work to date. Over three books McCormack has pared his language down to a carnie bark: his trim, vicious sentences make Gordan Lish look verbose and chubby in comparison. “Clavicles, scapulae, spine — Carrie caresses bone,” McCormack writes. “Soft bones. The dress has a skeleton. The dress has TB. Bones are embroideries. Raised ridges sewn onto the cloth. A technique called trapunto.” His obsessions may be high camp, but they are also underpinned with an acute evil. The Show That Smells’ villains tend to dress better than most, especially when delivering bold, unconscionable lines like, “At my vampire carnival, I’ll pinken popcorn with baby blood. Snow cones will come in a single flavor — baby blood.”
McCormack isn’t so beyond good and evil, however, as to forget about his innocent protagonists. Ringmaster that he is, McCormack knows just the right amount of suffering they should go through in order to make for a great performance.
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Extra! The Test that Smells
EYE WEEKLY decided to challenge McCormack’s discerning nose with a blind smell test between four gauche perfumes and one bag of dirt. We met up with him (and fellow ECW author Joey Comeau) on a rainy night at a Queen West Starbucks built on top of a Goth burial ground.
Paris Hilton’s Can Can
McCormack: That one smells like a perfume department. Generic. Like when all the scents at The Bay mix together. Next one.
Sarah Jessica Parker’s Covet
McCormack: Citrusy. Ghastly. It smells like what they hope a gym smells like after they clean the locker room.
Comeau: It kind of smells like when you go into a gay bar during the day.
McCormack: Hmmm, hand soap. This is for people who want to smell like they took a whore’s bath in a public bathroom.
Kylie Minogue’s Darling
McCormack: This one actually has deep notes. It inches closer to cologne but there’s no real quality, animalic scent in there. Very ’70s-ish, like my parents’ dresser drawer where they kept whatever perfume they got for Christmas.
Comeau: It should come in a leather case.
McCormack: It smells like something Maude would wear.
Christina Aguilera’s Inspire
McCormack: OK, that’s just fucking disgusting. That’s not even a scent. It must be all crap alcohol. It smells like what you would give an eight-year-old girl as her first perfume. We’re talking a severe lack of anything. It’s shampoo.
A bag of dirt
McCormack (after much silent nose struggle): I’m really stuffed up now. Hmmm, something burnt. Dried mushrooms. Is it grave dirt?
EYE WEEKLY: It’s dirt from Halston’s grave!
McCormack: Really?
EYE WEEKLY: No, it’s not.