Winter Reading 2004-2005
accounts of Indian classical dance, Japanese
butoh and other indigenous forms. The
book’s few weaknesses are dance in film and
the history of musical theater. But basically
the authors have synthesized a huge amount
of material in a captivating, thought-provok-
ing account of this ephemeral art.
— Martha Ullman West
years, with no guarantee of a job at the end.”
Tell it, sister!
— Josephine Bridges
Anarchy in the Desert
Place
O
Comma Passion
T
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance
Approach to Punctuation, nonfiction by
Lynne Truss. Gotham Books, 2004.
Hardcover, $17.50.
exhaustive history of dance in the last
century, is indeed such a book, It should be
fascinating to anyone interested in cultural
history in general and dance in particular,
with deft, informed accounts of both.
Both authors started their professional lives
as dancers. Nancy Reynolds, director of
research for the Balanchine Foundation, danced
with New York City Ballet. She wrote
Repertory in Review: 40 Years of New York City
Ballet and was an editor of the International
Encyclopedia of the Dance. Malcolm
McCormick also contributed to the
International Encyclopedia and was a contrib-
utor to The Golden Age of Costume and Set
Design for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Both writers are skilled at making the
reader see what they have seen, and each has
an uncanny ability to select quotations from
other eyewitnesses to performances, such as
critics, historians and audience members,
that do likewise.
The 900-page tome includes footnotes,
bibliography and index, all of which are
equally invaluable to researchers or someone
seeking a quick reference to a dancer, chore-
ographer, composer, designer or specific
work. Want to know about the Judson
Church Movement? You’ll find references
to the participants — Twyla Tharp, Trisha
Brown and many others — as well as to its
chroniclers, such as critic and historian Sally
Banes. Look up The Rite of Spring and dis-
cover there are many choreographic takes on
the revolutionary work as well as different
uses of Stravinsky’s score. Like good dic-
tionaries or library stacks, one subject in the
book leads to another in extremely logical
ways.
The principal focus is on European and
North American dance, but there are also
I
n his foreword to Eats, Shoots & Leaves,
Franck McCourt writes, “Parents and chil-
dren will gather by the fire many an evening
to read passages on the history of the semi-
colon and the terrible things being done to
the apostrophe.” (The book’s title comes
from a joke involving a panda, a weapon and
a dramatic exit.)
And author Lynne Truss writes, “If there is
one lesson to be learned from this book, it is
that there is never a dull moment in the world
of punctuation.” Can commas and dashes real-
ly thrill and inspire us? Can hyphens make us
laugh out loud? In a word: Yes.
A bestseller in Great Britain where it was
originally published last year, the book is for
“any true stickler,” Truss explains. She
writes a concise job description for the apos-
trophe, then treats readers to some aberrant
uses of this most beleaguered of punctuation
marks. “Member’s May Ball (but with whom
will the member dance?),” “Please replace
the trolley’s (replace the trolley’s what?),”
and “Dicks in tray (try not to think about it).”
As for the dash, people use it mainly
because “they know you can’t use it wrongly”
hey, I didn’t know that – “which, for a punctu-
ation mark, is an uncommon virtue.” Here
you’ll find the story of “Victor Hugo, who –
when he wanted to know how Les Misérables
was selling – reportedly telegraphed his pub-
lisher with the simple inquiry ‘?’ and received
the expressive reply ‘!’”
And when the author “heard of someone
studying the ellipsis (or three dots) for a
PhD,” she wrote my favorite sentence among
a lorry load of splendid contenders. “The
ellipsis is the black hole of the punctuation
universe, surely, into which no right-mined
person would willingly be sucked, for three
Foxfire 12, folklore edited by Kaye Carver
Collins, Angie Cheek and former Foxfire stu-
dents. Anchor Books, 2004. Paperback,
$16.95.
he Foxfire books have been loved and
cherished by millions since the first vol-
ume appeared in 1968. Eliot Wigginton, edi-
tor of the first book, took a teaching job in
Rabun Gap, Georgia, heart of rural
Appalachia. Facing bitter, bored students,
Wigginton suggested they throw away the
textbooks and start a magazine.
Students proposed topics that reflected
the time and place in which they lived —
interviewing their parents and grandparents
to gain knowledge of mountain lore, faith
healing, home remedies, log cabin building,
planting by the signs of the zodiac, hunting
and dressing game and “other affairs of plain
living.”
With the intention of involving the entire
class in the process, Wigginton hoped that
even one issue would rejuvenate his tired
pupils and reawaken their love of learning.
That hope was repaid as the first issue of
“The Foxfire Magazine” blossomed into a
regularly published journal, with subscribers
all over the world and a book series now in
12 volumes.
Foxfire 12 shares topics such as the art of
making beads from rose petals, the biogra-
phy of a local potter, how to make a wooden
coffin and the history and how-to of square
dancing. “Personality Portraits” includes
interviews with and biographies of commu-
nity elders, such as Fred Huff, a teacher and
country music buff, and “the Goat Man,” a
wanderer known for his deep connection
with barn-yard animals. There are interviews
with veterans of World Wars I and II and sto-
ries from Rabun Gap’s elder Cherokee resi-
dents.
With black and white photographs
throughout, the Foxfire books provide satis-
fying information about rural living and
explain how people accomplished things
before technology. Number 12 is a welcome
addition to a folklorist’s bookshelf.
— Vanessa Salvia
This Is Burning Man, nonfiction by Brian
Doherty. Little, Brown and Company, 2004.
Hardcover, $24.95
ver-zealous recruitment can turn off the
uninitiated. For people who have never
been to the annual week-long party in the
desert known as Burning Man, Brian
Doherty’s new book may have that effect.
Such readers may roll their eyes at sentences
such as: “A flood of glorious superfluity
washes over you, and each day and night
seem an eternal reoccurrence of everything
both wonderful and terrible about life in a
human community.” But for die-hard
Burners, Doherty’s work might do the event
as much justice as a mere book can.
From its first paragraph, Doherty adopts a
wide-eyed, you-had-to-be-there tone, maybe
because Burning Man is so hard to pin down.
In some ways, the author does a good job of
summing up the indescribable. He calls par-
ticipants “a gang of ‘twixt-hippie-and-punk
intellectuals and edge-seekers — not the cool
kids but the weird ones.” And he paints a
lively picture of Black Rock City as a place
of “functional anarchy,” where living in the
moment is the cardinal rule. In these aspects,
Doherty hits a nebulous nail on the head.
For dedicated Burners, the book provides
context for an event they know and love as
well as an insightful biography of founder
Larry Harvey and the history that led to
Burning Man’s conception. It details the
excruciating nuts and bolts, which hold
together an event that feels effortless. And its
images illustrate the sheer weirdness of
MODERN
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DECEMBER 9, 2004 21