Anyone who has ever been owned by a cat will find these speculations engaging, finely tuned, and always with plenty of fond...
An exploration into the emotional complexity of cats, with lots of literary references but mostly personal observations, from Masson (Why Elephants Weep, 1995, etc.).
What Masson did for dogs in Dogs Never Lie About Love (1997), he does here for cats. As always when considering animal behavior, he admits from the get-go that he’s on sketchy ground, making speculations that are intended as food for thought: “We will probably never know what goes through their minds.” There are times when readers may wonder why he chose these “primary” emotions to investigate—narcissism, love, contentment, attachment, jealousy, fear, anger, curiosity, playfulness, and a dozen subsidiary states—when he is confounded by a few of them: “Are cats narcissistic? No.” Or “Is this jealousy, or is it perhaps some feline rule of etiquette?” But then, much of the time cats are nothing if not inscrutable, as Masson is happy to admit. Their mystery is much of their charm. Yet it’s Masson’s purpose to offer up considerations of cat behavior. Is their attachment a transference—a nostalgia—for the time when they were kittens? And when it comes to attachment, is it more to the world around them than to their human companions? (Masson believes cats are more fully happy when allowed freedom to roam, a point he presents persuasively, unlike many cat enthusiasts.) Much of what the author has to say is common sense: that cats show fear out of threat (but don’t worry; they live in the moment); show contentment from a sense of security (but not happiness: that takes freedom); and can communicate acceptance (purring has been known to lower human blood pressure, perhaps because we have been chosen by one so self-possessed).
Anyone who has ever been owned by a cat will find these speculations engaging, finely tuned, and always with plenty of fond anecdotal evidence as they charge across the species barrier.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-44882-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
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
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
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