Marvellously fertile. Imaginatively rich. Exactingly accurate. A dream.

Fantastic stuff from Taussig. Very accessible, without losing much of the depth. If anything, I wish it was tiny bit longer and with even stranger tales from Colombia.

Chaotic and at times quite difficult to follow, but has a lot of good points and valuable quotes.

"You pick up a stray book, open it up, start to read, and bang! There is a launching pad."

Heaven knows why the buyer for a small bookstore in rural Vermont had procured this book and shelved it with art books, but there it was and I couldn't resist, despite the hefty handwritten price tag. It seemed likely to speak to some emerging preoccupations about how to break out --in both thought and expression-- of the linearity and limitations imposed by words. Also I keep a notebook myself and am always curious about those of others.

I brought the book home and it waited until the impulse to read it hit, which it did yesterday morning outside: A sudden visual image of the cover of this particular book (among all others in the teetering piles of books to be read).

It's not for everyone, but it's not only for anthropologists or keepers of notebooks either. I'm guessing the only way you'll know if it's for you (if you haven't been gripped by the physical object) is by browsing it a bit.

For me, it turned out to go to my preoccupations in an entirely different way than I had imagined it might. Taussig is grappling here with how to think about the unthinkable and speak about (or maybe draw?) the unspeakable -- which we must figure out how to do, whether the atrocities in question are those of paramilitaries. pipelines, or factory farms.
funny informative inspiring reflective slow-paced
informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing medium-paced

An interesting and somewhat unorthodox study--maybe reflective essay is more apt--of the role of drawings in ethnographic fieldwork. Taussig starts from a basic premise before delving into the hermeneutics of drawing itself, drawing as a kind of writing, writing as a kind of experiencing, as a kind of knowing. Certainly an interesting and often an entertaining read, and a short one too. Recommendable.