Speaking of Warren, the small town came up in one of the most unlikely places. Namely, a novel that I was reading when back in the states entitled 'Geek Love' by Katherine Dunn. The novel is is the story of a traveling carnival run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife "Crystal" Lil. When the business begins to fail, the couple devise an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. The story takes place in two periods: the first deals with Binewski's children's constant struggle with each other through life. The majority of this struggles deals with the Machiavellian Arty as he develops his own cult: Arturism. In this cult, Arty persuades people to have their limbs amputated so that they can be like Arty, the cult leader, in their search for the principle he calls PIP ("Peace, Isolation, Purity"). This is strangely where the small town of Ohio comes into play as the first devotee, Alma Witherspoon, is described as having originated in the small Ohio town (the following description is taken from page 180 of the book and is in the voice of Olympia, Arty's sister):
I sat down next to her and watched the heat rash on the insides of her elbows and the backs of her knees and in the folds of her chins as she talked. She had got herself into a terrible jam, she said, and it had made her realize ... She was from Warren, Ohio, and her mother was a schoolteacher but had died last year. She took a photo album out of the shopping bag and showed me a picture of a fat old woman.
I have yet been able to find the importance of this Ohio town to the author but it's still a striking mention of detail that I feel is worth noting.
Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body
