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Saturday, August 05, 2006

Aztecs: An Interpretation. Inga Clendinnen.

Aztecs: An Interpretation.
Inga Clendinnen.
Cambridge: 1995.

Along with Bernal Diaz and Todorov, this is among the best Aztec books I've read. This book takes a close look at the rituals of Tenochtitlan and who those meant to the common people, as well as what they indicate to the historian.

Heavily underlined is the Aztec dependence on maize and their belief that humans were made of corn -- because we eat, we owe the gods. This is why we must feed the gods our blood. Also of primary importance is the constant competition, skill, destiny which is always tempered by the capriciousness of the gods, and drastic luck.

She spends quite a bit of time maturely discussing the role of women, and includes an interesting discussion of breastfeeding and weaning. Another good chapter is on the sacred & art: the transient beauty attained by art can be a connection with the sacred, but the transient quality is as important as the beauty. The author's epilog is just a paragraph, but is a beautiful piece of writing on historians. Lots of good notes in back.

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K-PAX. Gene Brewer.

K-PAX.
Gene Brewer.

Classified as sci-fi, this was a disappointing novel of a mental patient who thinks he's from another planet. (Disappointing mainly because there's was nothing "sci-fi" about it.)

Turns out the guy has multiple personality disorder, and this alien, "prot" by name, is one of his personalities. This was discovered through - what else? - hypnosis. MPD is interesting in itself and I would think that real-life cases would have more interest than this sensational, though silly, fantasy.

I guess I wanted the narrator, who is the psychologist treating prot, to have convinced himself that his MPD diagnosis was correct, only to have prot return to his home world. As it is, prot (the personality) does leave. This departure leaves Robert (the patient) near catatonic. There's some question of how he got out of his room and his unusual eyesight, but overally, a catastrophic return to reality that left me only slightly less catagorically despressed than Robert.

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