The hunger artist traveled around performing for curious spectators. He would sit in a cage empty of anything except for a clock and some straw, always attended by rotating teams of watchers selected by the public (usually three butchers) to ensure he was not secretly eating. Despite such precautions, many, including some of the watchers themselves, were convinced the hunger artist cheated. Such suspicions annoyed the hunger artist, as did the forty-day limit imposed on his fasting by his promoter, or “impresario”. The impresario insisted that, after forty days, public interest in the hunger artist inevitably declined, but the hunger artist found the time limit irksome and arbitrary, as it prevented him from bettering his own record and fasting indefinitely. At the end of a fast, the hunger artist, amid highly theatrical fanfare, would be carried from his cage and made to eat, both of which he always resented. These performances, followed by intervals of recuperation, were repeated for many years.
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