Description
Book SynopsisThe puppet creates delight and fear. It may evoke the innocent play of childhood, or become a tool of ritual magic, able to negotiate with ghosts and gods. In this book, the author contemplates the fascination of these unsettling objects - objects that are also actors and images of life.
Trade Review"No one better illustrates the evolution of academic literary criticism into poetry than Kenneth Gross.... He dreams and muses, offering endless insights into the strange and archaic world of puppets, inanimate things breathed to life. This is a book of literary mysticism, rich with accrued culture yet never weighed down by it." (New York Times) "You have in your hands a uniquely beautiful book, a book of uncommon brilliance and lucidity. It is as wondrous as the theaters of marvels it describes; its leaps and mutabilities provide a thrilling adventure in imaginative thinking. 'How are we devoured by the things we make?' it asks. 'And when might that devouring save us?' My copy burns brightly on my favorite shelf, beside The Poetics of Space, Eccentric Spaces, and In Praise of Shadows.... A treasure!" (Rikki Ducornet, author of Netsuke and The Fan-Maker's Inquisition)"
