Body and Soul

Golly,May 27th!!! Am I personally turning into a Slacker?

And here I thought I was doing so well ... I am actually returning two books to the library before the due date.

My reading down, into the works of one author, as opposed to across, reading widely, continues.  But maybe these count as entries under both columns because I have finished two more Mary Roach books, Stiff and Spook, but, ta da, the are one word titles, my ancillary theme for 2013 selections.

Now I am not as tired of Mary Roach as I am of J D Robb's in Death series, but I don't think I'll track down Packing for Mars, her first best seller.  Stiff is the body from this entry's title, as Roach details all things scientific about cadavers.  Spook is her logical sequel, a compendium of experiments to measure or document the departure of a spirit at the time of death and to contact any out of living body remnant that might want to be on someone's speed dial or face book friend.

I was thinking today how much more interesting Roach is than good old what's his name who wrote about trying out every health tip over the course of a year.  (I'll add his name in later as I could not get a quick search hit on Wiki just now).  BLANK is funny like Roach but some much more self-promoting; Roach just drops pearls of wit, satire and absurdity as her own unique humorous take on experiments that in and of themselves are primitive, exploitative or downright medieval.

It is her footnotes and asides that I feel I have to preserve in my blog, notwithstanding her personal "soul searching" in Spook as to whether there is a soul, Catholic upbringing beside the point.  So here are some of her best:

From Stiff:
When she is investigating the impact of gun shot wounds on cadaver legs, she digresses into a simulated human tissue invented by the Knox gelatin company in a footnote:  ... "According to the Knox web site, other products made with cow bone and pigskin based gelatin include marshmallows, nougat-type candy bar filling, licorice, gummi bears, caramels, sports drinks, butter, ice cream, suppositories and that distasteful whitish peel on the outside of salami. ... if you are going to worry about mad cow disease, you probably have more to worry about than you thought ... we're all doomed, so relax and have another Snickers."

As she introduces the first man in France to investigate whether the Shroud of Turin was authentic, she quotes the good doctor's qualifications ... "I am well versed in anatomy, which I taught for a long time ...I lived for thirteen years in close contact with corpses, reads the next line.  One assumes that the teaching stint and the years spent living in close contact with corpses were one and the same, but who knows."

This book was published in 2003, long before he became a TV personality ...as Roach questions Dr Oz about harvesting hearts from brain dead humans: ..."When I asked Oz where he thought the soul resided he said "I'll confide in you that I don't think it's all in the brain.  I have to believe that in many ways the core of our existence is in our heart.'  Does that mean that the brain-dead patient isn't dead?  "There's no question that the heart without a brain is of no value.  But life and death is not a binary system.'  It's a continuum.  It makes sense for many reasons to draw the legal line at brain death but that doesn't mean it's really a line."

Pursing a rumor that in China people were eating the dead (no not the ever present cat rumor, but bodies sent to a crematorium) Roach writes about overcoming her not speaking the language: ... "The night before, in preparation for my journey, I had drawn a picture to give to the cab driver.  It showed a body hovering above flames, and to the right of this I drew an urn, though the latter had come out looking like  samovar, and there was a distinct possibility that the driver would think I was looking for a place to get Mongolian barbeque."

From Spook:
From the introduction: ..."My mother worked hard to instill faith in me.  She sent me to catechism classes.  She bought me nun paper dolls as though the meager fun of swapping a Carmelite whimple for a Benedictine chest bib might inspire a taste for devotion."

As she investigates the rumor or legend that the Pope's alarm clock went off the instant he died, she tracks down a source in the Vatican: ..."He agreed to tell my the story but he would not reveal his name.  "I'm better as your Deep Throat,' he said forever linking in my head the US Conference of Bishops with porn movies, a link they really and truly don't need."

As she travels to India to assess a report reincarnation, she comments on the culture: ..."In India, I'm finding, the answers do not fit the questions.  This morning at the hotel, I asked the waiter what kind of cheese is in the masala omelet.  'Sliced,' he said."

Detailing decades of experiments across many countries where "scientists" tried to trap the soul leaving the body, Roach mentions: ..."so the honors for the most elaborate soul-manifesting device go to a pair of Dutch physicians, J.L.W.P Matla and G.J. Zaalberg van Zelst.  Matla believed himself to be in contact with an entity who spelled out communications letter by letter on  Ouija board.   (Hopefully the question "What is my full name and that of my partner was never posed.)"

Several years ago, I read an acknowledge in a book where the author mentioned all the people he went to for information who were an uncooperative pain in the butt.  Because I quoted Roach's introduction where she reveals the paper nuns of her youth, I feel it is fitting to quote her acknowledgements as being again very self-deprecating:  ... "People assume that authors are experts in the field about which they have chosen to write.  Possibly most are.  Possibly I.m the only one who begins a project from a state of near absolute ignorance.  But I do, and it makes me an especially irksome presence in my sources lives.  I ask naive, misguided questions and giggle at the wrong moments.  I stay too long and grasp too little."