Next book

BODYWATCHING

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE HUMAN SPECIES

Morris is a blatant body-watcher, entranced by the human form in all its naked-apeness. He profits from his studies by producing pop works that combine some fact, some crack-fact, and a lot of what used to be called "pious pornography." Because he is a clever writer, because he writes about human behavior, and because he is not at all unhappy being found out on a limb, he commands and gets attention. Thus, Bodywatching, a brow-to-toe study of human parts and appendages, their uses and abuses in cultures now and then. A lot of this is tim, a lot borrowed from his previous, less opinionated study of human gestures (Manwatching). We learn about the head roils, the brow knits, the earlobe touches which come with universal or particular meanings. Touch an earlobe as you face a man in Italy, we are told, and it will be interpreted as an accusation of effeminacy—the guy should be wearing an earring. In Portugal, the same gesture means something delicious, from girls to food. Then there are the historical bits. Morris describes exactly how the feet of well-born Chinese girls were bound and how the resulting size and shape, called the Golden Venus, took on erotic meaning. His discussion of spittle is interesting, too. The association of saliva with the soul meant that spittle could be a reverential offering to the gods. Later, spitting was used to ward off the Evil Eye and generalized as an opprobrious gesture toward anyone undesirable. But beware. Some origins and explanations smack of Morris Just-So stories: that breasts are substitute buttocks, for example, or that man may have gone through an aquatic phase (one explanation for our protuberant noses). Even the anatomical/medical facts aren't always right. Not all head or chin hair would grow to record lengths if never cut. And the principal cause of tooth decay is not the bacteria named, but a certain streptococcal species. If the examples chosen suggest interesting topics but caveat emptor, fine. In addition, most of the body parts described here have sexual connotations (e.g., breasts, buttocks, legs, mouths), and here Morris the Macho reigns supreme: he is much more focused on female anatomy and interpretations, playing hard on the theme of women as submissive, helpless, virginal and nurturing than on his heap-big male hunter and protector. So expect many women to react with arms akimbo, if not chin stuck out. For the rest, keep your eyes wide open and be prepared to smile, frown, and hardly ever yawn.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1985

ISBN: 0586202749

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 21, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1985

Categories:
Next book

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.

Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955

ISBN: 0670717797

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955

Categories:
Next book

IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Close Quickview