Monsters
DC
"ON MONSTERS - An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears" By
Stephen T. Asma (Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/Monsters1 )
Cleverly conceived and slyly written, Stephen Asma's survey
of monsters is not content merely to parade the usual
suspects -- the fretful dead or the giant recluses of the
deep sea. Instead, this "Unnatural History of Our Worst
Fears" leads us on a safari through the many manifestations
of our idea of the monstrous. I have seldom read a book
that so satisfyingly achieves such an ambitious goal.
"To be a monster," writes Asma, "is to be an omen." He
points out that the word "monster" derives from a Latin
root meaning "to warn." He nce his subtitle's emphasis on
fear, our troublesome primate combination of herd-think and
anxiety that quickly metamorphoses the other -- the unknown
-- into something ghastly and threatening...
Continued: http://xrl.us/Monsters2
papajohn
Actually, I can relate to this very strongly. While
staying in Coventry, RI over Christmas, I heard
a story about a woman who cut the living child
from its mother before birth. The mother, of
course, was killed and the woman who actually
did the deed was quite quickly found and put
in jail. Oddly enough, there was an episode of
ABC's "Private Practice" showed just such an
insult to nature, only the mother, being on
staff at the title practice, was saved, though
psychologically trashed. As long as there are
(supposedly) normal humans who somehow
break and become killers, e.g. Ted Bundy.
I see no need at all to have cryptozoological
entities to take the blame for human mon-
strosities.
Poet-laureate Robert Graves, in "The White
Goddess" (the most boring book I ever read,
but informative) intimates that all myths are,
essentially, true, at least in some sense. An
example of this is his explanation of the
centaur, which would have been a tribe of
horsemen (as opposed to horse/men) in
the wilds of northern Greece who practised
exogamy (a very fancy word for those who
go to outside tribes for mates), and who
worshipped the wryneck (it's a bird). There
is no way of knowing whether they kidnapped
women and perhaps enslaved them (born
out, somewhat, by the actual legend of their
race, which portrays them as sex maniacs
and rapists), or if they cemented treaties
by their marriages, or even just bartered
for wives from other tribes.
It is easy enough to equate centaurs with
serial rapists of which there are many in
our modern times. Think Jim Jones...why
invent a creature so monstrous when we
have (or *had* in this case) such an
individual in our midst.
Love,
Papa John
jmay...@cfl.rr.com
"If it don't hurt a little bit, it ain't Rock & Roll!"