ChicagoLarry 2008-06-02

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Minutes ago I was in a coffee shop fighting back a tear as I read the last words of this book that so effectively made me feel like I actually knew these guys, Colin and Joe. It was sad to observe their painful ends. I frankly--and rather surprisingly--don't know what to think of this book; it was powerful, to be sure, yet doesn't lend itself to a quick and tidy analysis....

As I mentally rescan the record of these two lives, the word "profundities" comes to mind. What does a life mean, in the end? What makes life profound? How are we to process its mysteries? To what extent were these two guys crazy? Or would it be the observer who is "crazy" for thinking them essentially unusual? As the last line of the book alludes, to what extent did their lives and deaths matter?

I must confess to identifying with Colin Turnbull perhaps more intimately than the average reader, given my own similar interracial attractions, interests in social betterment and travels to, and fascination with, tribal Africa. More than a few times, I could put myself directly into Colin's shoes as he navigated his relationship with Joe--and it was uncanny. I'm not so sure even his biographer could relate as deeply to certain instances which I think nearly defy understanding by outsiders. At any rate, for me, the bottom line is that this book and these lives have truly become a small part of what is me (how could anyone forget them!). It's like they lived their lives "wrong side out" and we got a rare look at how humans actually work, thus helping us to understand how we ourselves work. Normally we don't see such a depth in others by which to juxtaposition our own lives for dissection and comparison.

But enough of philosophizing. More specifically, this book is fascinating because Colin Turnbull was a complicated man of disparate interests--a world traveler, investigator of philosophies and searcher for love and the elusive understanding of it. At a young age he knew there was something he wanted and set off to find it; perhaps he even knew something of what it was. He made things happen. He savored immersion into whatever were his interests and his emotions. His "bizarre" placement of his own empty casket next to Joe's is an example of that. It doesn't seem so bizarre when you know Colin. He immersed. He wished to wring out the last drop of emotion and taste it fully.

In today's carefully nuanced judgments of what constitutes a proper motive for helping the indigent, or for a fascination with the exotic, or for traveling to tribal areas and deigning to "help" the natives--even for the act of photographing them--it is disarming to see Colin's (and the biographer's) direct confrontation with all this mental gauze.

Perhaps what furrows the brow in trying to assess this book after the last page is turned is that the typical biography frames and displays a life we might largely want to emulate--or not--and the lessons are usually easy to peg. But the picture of Colin and Joe is more abstract; it's not so much good or bad, it just is. And what we take from it depends on how we look at it, given our own life experience.

Edward Klingle 2004-09-19

3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

This is an informative biography, no question on that, but one wonders what the relationship was between the author, Roy Grinker, and his subject, Colin Turnbull. Both did doctorates in anthropology at Harvard, and both studied the same peoples in Africa (does getting a PhD in anthropology absolutely necessitate studying pygmies in Afriac? sure seems like it...). From what I've read in other sources, Grinker turned his back on Turnbull's "approach" to pygmie culture, only to regret this after Turnbull's death. One wonders whether or not this book is a too-late tribute to the author's academic father-figure.

Dawn Stoker 2002-05-09

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

I have been curious about Colin Turnbull ever since I read the "Mountain People" several years ago. As an anthropology student, I identified with Turnbull's willingness to "learn" the lifeways of the "other", and in doing so, reshape his own worldview. I am afraid that this book may have told me a little more than I wanted to know however...
Turnbull's relationship with Joseph Towles is a critical part of the story, and I appreciate and acknowledge that. I had to wonder exactly how the biographer knew the very intimate gastroenterological details that were included in the text. It is just a matter of personal taste, but that is the only reason that I did not give the book a complete five star rating. The book does give us a much needed, intimate portrait of an important anthropologist and human being.

2001-07-19

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

This is an interesting book, but I did not find it as compelling as other reviewers. The material is fascinating, but the presentation is a bit plodding and detracts from the narrative. As a fellow academic, I understand Grinker's desire to include the wealth of details his painstaking research uncovered; but as a reader I wished he'd had a more careful editor who would have excised some of the irrelevant, distracting details and polished the presentation of the rest of the book. (Apart from some clumsy writing, there are even spelling and typographical errors in several chapters!)

As for content, Grinker does a decent job explaining Turnbull's fascination with Africa and "the Other." The chapters on Turnbull's early (pre-anthropologist) life are too many and too long for me, but they do help provide a context for what came after. Grinker does offer some important insights on paradoxes in Turnbull's life and on anthropology's connection to colonial projects. If you are interested in the anthropology of Africa, Anglo-American social science, pre- (and post-) Stonewall experiences of gay men, or Turnbull himself, you will probably enjoy the book despite its flaws. But if you have no patience for slow and awkward writing, don't buy this without perusing it first!

2000-12-14

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

I was gratified that Dr. Grinker wrote this book because Colin Turnbull was my cousin, and I knew almost nothing about him. I echo the postive comments by the other reviewers, but what made the book special for me were the references to his family and his relations with them. Dr. Grinker does a wonderful job of not bringing his personal feelings about Colin's work, his homosexuality, or his relationship with Joe Towles into the book. Grinker does, however, give a wonderful sense of Colin and Colin's take on life. One doesn't have to be interested in either anthropology or homosexuality to like this book; it is, simply put, an excellent study of an all-too-human man.