The Happy Clown by Alice Eleanor Jones
"The Happy Clown" by Alice Eleanor Jones is a science fiction novella written in the mid-20th century. The narrative unfolds in a future society characterized by enforced conformity and societal perfection, exploring themes of individuality and nonconformity through the life of a young boy named Steven Russell, who struggles against the pressures of a homogenized world. Throughout the story, Steven, born a nonconformist in a society that prioritizes uniformity, faces numerous challenges
stemming from his discontent with the artificial perfection surrounding him. As he grows up, his peculiarities lead his parents to seek help from a clinic, where his brilliance is recognized but ultimately pressured into conformity through a procedure known as "Steyner." This leads Steven into a successful career as the Happy Clown, a television persona that epitomizes the very ideals he despises. Despite achieving societal approval, he grapples with feelings of loneliness and a loss of identity, especially after a traumatic experience surrounding the woman he loves, Denise. The story culminates in his resignation from the acting world and a return to a more ordinary life, revealing both the price of conformity and the lingering desire for authentic connections. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.html.images | 56 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.epub3.images | 238 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.epub.images | 236 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.epub.noimages | 87 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.kf8.images | 274 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.kindle.images | 267 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59418.txt.utf-8 | 50 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/59418/pg59418-h.zip | 519 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Jones, Alice Eleanor, 1916-1981 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Freas, Kelly, 1922-2005 |
| Title | The Happy Clown |
| Series Title | Produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1955 |
| Credits |
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 72.6 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Psychological fiction |
| Subject | Conformity -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 59418 |
| Release Date | May 3, 2019 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 315 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |