Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Monday July 26, 2010
|
MY QUEER WAR
James Lord
Farrar Straus Giroux
ISBN 978-0374217488
344 pages
$27
Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle
Before there was "don't-ask-don't-tell," there was "don't you dare." That was what James Lord, who grew up to write books about Picasso and Giacometti, told himself in college when he felt longings for his male classmates: "I vowed that I'd never, ever succumb."
Like so many other men who have served their country in wartime, however, Lord found out that he was not one of a kind, and one night, as he wittily puts it, "The sexual ABCs (ran) through to XYZ." His war was queer in other ways, too. On the one hand, it took the life of his beloved younger brother, killed in action in the Philippines; but it also allowed Lord to meet Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris, where Stein read some of his writing and gave him some advice: "A real writer must be very sure of his emotions before putting a pen to paper, so that is what I advise you to do, to consider your emotions more carefully."
Lord, who died last year, seems to have taken that advice: This is a book of complex and mixed emotions, as when the author marvels at how "while my homeland was at war to destroy the Third Reich, (to) do away with its criminal rulers ... at the same time I was deeply in love with things profoundly German, the music of Beethoven, the imagination of Thomas Mann."
Dennis Drabelle can be reached at drabelled(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Send Story to a Friend | Top |
3 BOOKS ABOUT YOGA
NA
NA
ISBN NA
NA pages
$NA
Reviewed by Stephen Lowman
These new yoga books won't help you sharpen your one-legged king pigeon pose, but if you're curious about how this ancient Indian tradition conquered the Western world's gyms, find a resting pose that works for you and prepare to be enlightened.
1. "The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America," by Stefanie Syman (Farrar Straus Giroux, $28)
Stefanie Syman begins by noting that the 2009 Easter Egg Roll was likely the first time yoga had been practiced on the White House lawn. A century earlier Americans widely believed that yoga "perverted one's moral sense" and "was about as useful as malaria or consumption but far easier to avoid." Syman traces the evolution of yoga through the stories of its notable practitioners, such as Thoreau, Margaret Woodrow Wilson and, yes, Madonna.
2. "The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America," by Robert Love (Viking, $27.95)
Robert Love writes in his introduction that he had assumed the Beatles were responsible for popularizing yoga. In fact, he reports, it was the Iowa-born businessman and mystic Pierre Bernard (nicknamed "The Great Oom") who helped bring it to the masses. Love details Bernard's strange exploits -- such as the secretive Tantric ceremonies held at his clinic -- as he successfully packaged and sold yoga to skeptical consumers.
3. "Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice," by Mark Singleton (Oxford Univ.; paperback, $17.95)
The most academic of the three books, "Yoga Body" is for those with a serious interest in yogi philosophy. Mark Singleton argues that yoga as practiced in the Indian tradition had to do more with purification and meditation than with the health and fitness aspects that have made it all the rage today.
Stephen Lowman can be reached at lowmans(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Send Story to a Friend | Top |
|
|
 |
|
| Recent Stories |
 WORK SONG
THE EYES OF WILLIE MCGEE: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets In the Jim Crow South
THE SHALLOWS: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
3 BOOKS ABOUT THE BRONTES
INTELLIGENCE |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
