A drum-beater for masculinity and an icon of feminist psychoanalysis here deconstruct a Russian fairy tale, reducing an enchanting story to psycho-mush. Bly, the poet, anthologist, and translator, is also (of course) the author of best-selling Iron John, the book that helped send men back to the woods in search of metaphorical manliness. Woodman is a Jungian analyst whose Leaving My Father’s House serves as a reference for would-be architects of feminine consciousness. Apparently, these two have developed a dog-and-pony show centered on the story of the Maiden King (or Maiden Tsar, as they call it). This unusually complex fairy tale features Ivan, son of a merchant, and his lengthy journeys, challenging tasks, and encounters with many aspects of the female, including a stepmother, three witchlike “Baba Yagas,” a more amenable —Crone,— plus, of course, the beautiful and powerful Maiden Tsar—and her 30 “foster sisters.” The authors set out to probe the metaphorical and mythological meaning of the story, first in individual commentaries, then in dialogue. Bly goes first, taking the story section by section and relating each section to other mythologies—Native American, Hindu—as well as to current cultural, psychological, and spiritual themes, frequently via poetry. In her section, Woodman dives deeper, calling up archetypes, the divisions of the psyche, and the necessity of making them whole again. Particularly interesting is a reflection on the grief caused by the death of Princess Diana (was she a Maiden Tsar?), interpreted as a “yearning for the feminine.” Both authors celebrate what they seem to agree is a trend favoring the rebalancing of male and female “energies”; they deplore a numbing of the connection between conscious and subconscious, since that connection permits spiritual fulfillment. Only groupies will think this is anything but intellectual and psychic quicksand. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8050-5777-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
In the latest leg of an idiosyncratic intellectual journey, Pellegrino looks at the stories of the Old Testament through the lenses of genetics, paleontology, and archaeology. Pellegrino (Unearthing Atlantis, 1990, etc.) has an autodidact's omnivorous curiosity to match his high-flying imagination. In this new hodgepodge, he expands on the speculations he put forward in his previous expedition into antiquity, in which he hypothesized that the volcano-buried Minoan city of Thera was the inspiration for the legendary Atlantis. Here he conjectures that when an eruption in the second millennium b.c. obliterated the Minoan civilization, its long-distance effects may have been responsible for the plagues of Egypt and the Aegean diaspora that brought the Philistines to Canaan. He also annexes other theories having to do with the contentious ``Mitochondrial Eve'' hypothesis (based on mitochondrial DNA research, it theorizes that genetic the mother of us all lived between 250,000 and 140,000 b.c.) and the Ark of the Covenant's wanderings. Using diverse scientific sources and historical perspectives—Sumerian clay tablets, Egyptian steles, the writings of Herodotus, and, naturally, the Bible—he ``telescopes'' anthropological and archaeological theories to fit Biblical myths like those of Noah and Nimrod, compressing patterns of history into oral tradition's legends. With a natural sense of storytelling, he blends theories of antiquity with the adventures of field work: He is best describing the modern difficulties of conducting digs in Gaza, Jericho, and Iraq (where he radically situates the Biblical Cities of the Plain destroyed by God's wrath). There is, however, a good deal of padding by this accidental archaeologist: reconstructed dialogue, digression, repetition, and flights of fancy that leave solid ground far below. For all its interdisciplinary breadth and originality, this reads like a beery breeze-shooting session with a college prof. (16 pages of b&w drawings, maps, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40006-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A blistering jeremiad that gives new vibrancy to the political clichÇ that Washington is out of touch with the average American. At first glance, it would seem that any book rehashing this idea, even calling for a Jeffersonian-style electoral revolution, is hardly onto anything new. But Phillips (The Politics of Rich and Poor, 1990) is a brilliant reader of the political tea leaves; this seasoned Washington observer more than compensates for boiler-plate populism with a steady accretion of detail and provocative historical comparisons. For instance, he not only notes how parasitic the Beltway has become, but catalogues it with alarming data: the capital is overrun, he states, by 40,00050,000 lawyers, 90,000 lobbyists, a Congressional staff of 20,000, and 12,000 journalists. Phillips also finds novel examples of ``the capital's intermingling of public service, loose money, vocational incest, overinflated salaries, and ethical flexibility.'' One instance is what he calls ``loophole nepotism,'' the congressional practice of putting relatives on a colleague's payroll. Former assets of the American tradition have become liabilities, he thinks, including a separation of powers that discourages cooperation and responsibility, and a labyrinthine framework with 83,000 state, county, and city government subdivisions. Moreover, the government's inability to regulate electronic financial speculation has exposed the middle class to the decline of the manufacturing sector and even white-collar downsizing. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to reform the mess since they feed at the special-interest trough. Phillips draws useful parallels with three capitals once afflicted with unproductive hangers-on: Madrid in the 1590s, the Hague in the 1690s, and London in the 1890s. He calls for reform measures ranging from the quixotic (periodically moving Congress out of the capital) to the sensible (the elimination of incentives for lawyers and lobbyists). Unusually wise to the dodges of Washington's rich and powerful. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-316-70618-3
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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