Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body

Over the summer, I was staying with some friends at their flat in London -- a lovely couple I have known for years. He also works on medieval monsters, and has just finished his Ph.D. working on the subject. His bookshelf was therefore of great interest to me. They had to go to work the morning I left, so I was to let myself out. I did so, "borrowing" their copy of Armand Marie Leroi's Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body (as well as their Oystercard for the London tube... Both will be returned, I swear...).

And I am so glad I did! First off, the Oystercard saved me several pounds on the ride to Heathrow. More importantly, though, the book is fascinating! It moves back and forth between the history of medicine -- how various genetic issues were viewed in the past -- and contemporary genetic science. Some of the denizens of the text are familiar to folks (like me) interested in these matters, Pygmies and "thyroid giants," for example. But many were completely new and some quite shocking. Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, for example, causes bone to grow in response to injuries, rather than muscle and skin, so that the body slowly is overtaken by a second, ossified skeleton.

The volume is well-illustrated, and written in a very accessible manner. Even this humble art historian was able to follow most of the scientific explanations. Really, I learned a great deal about human genetics and physiology from the book.

Leroi is rarely sensationalistic, and generally quite sympathetic to the issues he covers, rightly attempting, when possible, to see these genetic "abnormalities" not as diseases (What, exactly, is "diseased" with being a certain height? Having an uncommon shape? Being between the two poles of gender?) but as part of the great, sweeping variety that composes the human species throughout the globe. This one is highly recommended, though do be forewarned: Some of the content is rather haunting, and will stay with you for days.

Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler

I adore Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, a wistful meditation on the meaning of place and identity that I have now read several times. This inspired me to read a few of his other works. If on a winter's night a traveler is a similarly cerebral novel, if I can fairly call it a novel, at all. It is a series of nested narratives, with each chapter breaking off mid-stride and leaving the reader frustrated, just at the point of interest. As the work progresses, though, the larger narrative emerges. The Reader (you, holding the book) becomes the protagonist, and his (my, your) frustration becomes central to the flow of the plot.

Just as Invisible Cities was about a larger concept than its literal subject (place, itself, and memory), so too, If on a winter's night comes to be about the very process of reading and writing, about what it means to construct a narrative out of an infinite number of possible narratives, and about authorship. The notion of "the author" is one that has been much discussed in critical literary theory (and famously killed off by Roland Barthes in his The Death of the Author), but Calvino approaches the subject obliquely. He constructs his image of The Author slowly, over the course of the fragmentary chapters (signaled by the fragmentary title), so that the reader considers the subject before even realizing that he has.

I do find one irony, here, which is that every sentence bears the clear authorial presence of Calvino, a writer with a very distinct voice. If fakes and forgeries and "real" works of fiction cannot (and need not) be distinguished, why can I never loose sight of Calvino, himself? He is the only real thread tying the work together.

I almost gave up on this book twice, but in the end, have come to think it something brilliant. Give it a shot, and persevere through to "the end."