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"Crying": story number 13 from Anthropology "My girlfriend left me, and I started crying in my sleep. My nightly lament became so loud that my neighbors called the police. The press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. Television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. They tracked her to her new boyfriend's house. I watched the coverage. People were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that I should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl." In 101 words each, the 101 witty, haunting stories of Anthropology chronicle the search for love in an age preoccupied with sex. Each story is a pure distillation of heartbreak, longing, delusion, and bliss. Each spins speedily, shockingly, to its unpredictable climax. And each is unlike anything you have read before. Anthropology's macabre humor builds imperceptibly, story by story and girlfriend by girlfriend, until it reflects with surreal accuracy how we try to complete ourselves through--or at the expense of--another. Read it to laugh and forget your sorrows; read it to recognize and remember your delights; read it to discover a vivid, provocative new talent.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
An ingenious project in prose construction, Rhodes's book of short stories is composed of 101 tales, each containing exactly 101 words. The short-shorts boast an economy of language common to prose poems, or even sonnets, and the subject matter is love. The speaker appears to have a new girlfriend in each story. The women have names like Mazzy, Xanthe, Treasure, Foxglove or more commonly, "My girlfriend," and the adventures of the various lovers are alternately funny, goofy, clever and surreal, with an occasional drop of pathos for the speaker's oft-thwarted heart. Angelique drives the speaker to stick pins in his face, Paris is literally catatonic after her bike is stolen, Tortoiseshell is in jail, Celestia may just be a bunch of chemicals, Amber goes to the grocery store naked. The best pieces, the ones that feature comic, misunderstood dialogue between lovers, resemble poet Hal Sirowitz's humorous Mother Said, while other pieces are overly Brautigan inspired. Many of these feature a story line of the girlfriend who is so beautiful that the speaker feels sorry for her ex-boyfriends, but is also petrified at the possibility of becoming one of them. In spite of some less than sparkling entries, most of these little nuggets are fun, quirky and occasionally poetically lovely. They gather steam, increasing in violence, heartbreak and intensity as the book progresses. Like the French poetry movement OulipoÄan experimental group whose projects included the writing of an entire novel without using the letter "e"ÄRhodes seems to have created a new, ostensibly senseless form that yields some true delights. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Rhodes' Anthropology is an interesting and enjoyable prose experiment. This volume includes 101 short stories each only 101 words long. Each is given an evocative one-word title, and the stories are presented in alphabetical order, from "Anthropology" to "Words." Within these minimalist constraints, Rhodes has created a funny, quirky, often absurd, and occasionally profound collection of stories about partners, love, and relationships. There's not a lot of space for in-depth development of character and plot, so Rhodes' stories revolve around a single telling incident or characteristic that either makes or breaks up the relationship between the narrator and his litany of girlfriends, fiancees, and wives. These women are either anonymous or tagged with flamboyant or obscurely ethnic names. Relationships either revolve around or are destroyed by surreal and highly imaginative events: one girlfriend is so beautiful a trip to the store for cigarettes causes daily traffic accidents; nightly wailing over a lost girlfriend interests the neighbors, who scold the narrator after finding the woman to be not as pretty as they; a Spanish girlfriend, taken to Madrid for a surprise birthday present, admits she's not Spanish but made up the identity upon meeting the narrator after a trip to the tanning salon. You get the idea. Rhodes' stories are as delightfully sublime as good haiku. Unusual, unexpected, and very enjoyable. Ted Leventhal
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Anthropology 101 is a beginning course on the study of Man. Anthropology consists of 101 extremely short short stories (101 words) that explore the interactions between men and women. The nameless, often-hapless male narrators describe with sometimes poignant, sometimes bizarre detail their relationships with such girlfriends as Tortoiseshell, Treasure, Paris, or Azure. These brief summaries are frequently the written equivalent of slapstick or pratfalls, but just as often, the surprising twists provoke new thinking about age-old quandaries. Personalities are quickly and surely drawn. Readers meet the "bland" girlfriend who surrounds herself with used yogurt cups, and an unemployed girl who could think of no hobbies other than smoking to put on her job application. Some situations are funny, some sad, and some even a little perverse, but taken as a whole, they give a sense of the endless variety possible in the basically universal story of boy meets girl, boy loves girl, and either wins or, more often, loses her. This collection is a literary curiosity developed with wit and skill, and is a wonderful basis for an assignment as well as a literate study of the human condition.-Susan H. Woodcock, Chantilly Regional Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Britisher Rhodes appears to enter the contest for smallest book of the year, offering 101 pieces said each to be 101 words long. But he doesnt take the prize from the reigning Marty Asher, whose Boomer (p. 400) also had 101 tiny sections. The subject is love as Rhodess I tells non-tales of ex or current lovers with names (sometimes) like Celestia, Xanthe, Zazie, Azure, Iolanthe, Running Water, Nightjar, January, Skylark, Orchid, andwell, thats ten, and, besides, you get the idea. What actually to think of these many little pieces, though, may be better left to individual readers. Some are quite ugly, like Kissing, which begins, Since the moment we met, my wife and I have not stopped kissing, and ends, Our lips are four broken scabs, and our chins always covered in blood, but we will never stop. We are far too much in love. Satire, yes, but of what, exactly? Movie kissing? The answer may be evident here and there. Sometimes, as in Indifferent, theres humor not yet so dry as to disappear altogether: When, besotted, I casually suggested we get married, she shrugged her shoulder and, yawning, said, Whatever. The spirit of Donald Barthelme hovers over some of the pages, as in Normal: After a blazing row, Harmony joined the nuns. Thats it, she said. Im joining the nuns. But Harmony didnt like it with the nuns and came back, allowing Rhodes one of his humors higher flights: We had to get up really early, says Harmony, and they made us wear horrible long black dress things and no make-up, and sing all these boring songs. Thankfully, the tale concludes, things quickly returned to normal, and now shes back to spending her free time joining in with the commercials on TV, and making me get up from the sofa so she can look for her lighter. Blips (sometimes) of modern drollery, glimpsed on quickly turned pages, then gone forever.
Library Journal Review
Anthropology is a debut collection of 101 love stories, each 101 words long. Rhodes's method is to sketch a ready-made romantic drama and then push one of its elements past the point of absurdity. The form does not allow for in-depth character development, and at times we seem to be skimming through a dream journal or the transcript of a surreal therapy session. This is not really a weakness, since the sudden deaths, betrayals, and other atrocities are described with a warped, deadpan humor that ties the stories together surprisingly well. Although readers will laugh out loud at points, there is a sinister quality to this book, perhaps a guilty reaction from taking pleasure in the nameless narrator's suffering. Anthropology might make an interesting anniversary present for an ex-lover, but be sure to leave the room before he or she begins reading. Recommended for libraries with a younger, hip readership or for the collection of a writing program. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/00.]DPhilip Santo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.