Rating:  Summary: David Wilson needs a better reader Review: The photographs and engravings reproduced in Lawrence Weschler's book are poignant and riveting. They account for the 2 stars in my rating. And David Wilson is indeed a "national treasure," as is his unsettling museum. This book, however, seems to me a snide, yuppie's-eye-view of a truly original person and his meticulously wondrous contribution to the long history of the wonder-cabinet. I was depressed for quite a while after reading it to think that this condescending and anti-intellectual account would bear Wilson's mind and seditious achievements out into the world so much more frequently than would the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself, or its own publications. People fated to live out imaginatively impoverished lives in latter-day American society could use some capacity for self-loss in the face of what is other than ourselves or what we have mastered. And--perhaps less fundamentally, but in the interests of our being less boring to each other--we could use a less pervasive culture of knowingness. *Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder* brings that possibility forward only to smother it in a kind of smugly affectionate ridicule for the person who tried to give us a chance. I was particularly disappointed in that Weschler's 80s New Yorker piece about Boggs was both intriguing and respectful, and his original Harper's piece on Wilson at least showed honest curiosity. The book is a failure for a writer who had seemed to have an interesting mission. People interested in Wunderkammern of the past, as Wilson himself is and as Weschler's irrepressible condescension demonstrates he is finally not, should look at the catalogue of Dartmouth's Hood Museum exhibit and conference on them, edited by Joy Kenseth, *The Age of the Marvelous*; Paula Findlen's *Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park's *Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1100-1750*, and Rosamond Purcell and Stephen J. Gould's glorious *Finders, Keepers: Treasures and Oddities of Natural History*. All are profusely illustrated; Purcell's photographs in the last are works of art in themselves.
Rating:  Summary: David Wilson needs a better reader Review: The photographs and engravings reproduced in Lawrence Weschler's book are poignant and riveting. They account for the 2 stars in my rating. And David Wilson is indeed a "national treasure," as is his unsettling museum. This book, however, seems to me a snide, yuppie's-eye-view of a truly original person and his meticulously wondrous contribution to the long history of the wonder-cabinet. I was depressed for quite a while after reading it to think that this condescending and anti-intellectual account would bear Wilson's mind and seditious achievements out into the world so much more frequently than would the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself, or its own publications. People fated to live out imaginatively impoverished lives in latter-day American society could use some capacity for self-loss in the face of what is other than ourselves or what we have mastered. And--perhaps less fundamentally, but in the interests of our being less boring to each other--we could use a less pervasive culture of knowingness. *Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder* brings that possibility forward only to smother it in a kind of smugly affectionate ridicule for the person who tried to give us a chance. I was particularly disappointed in that Weschler's 80s New Yorker piece about Boggs was both intriguing and respectful, and his original Harper's piece on Wilson at least showed honest curiosity. The book is a failure for a writer who had seemed to have an interesting mission. People interested in Wunderkammern of the past, as Wilson himself is and as Weschler's irrepressible condescension demonstrates he is finally not, should look at the catalogue of Dartmouth's Hood Museum exhibit and conference on them, edited by Joy Kenseth, *The Age of the Marvelous*; Paula Findlen's *Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park's *Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1100-1750*, and Rosamond Purcell and Stephen J. Gould's glorious *Finders, Keepers: Treasures and Oddities of Natural History*. All are profusely illustrated; Purcell's photographs in the last are works of art in themselves.
Rating:  Summary: David Wilson needs a better reader Review: The photographs and engravings reproduced in Lawrence Weschler's book are poignant and riveting. They account for the 2 stars in my rating. And David Wilson is indeed a "national treasure," as is his unsettling museum. This book, however, seems to me a snide, yuppie's-eye-view of a truly original person and his meticulously wondrous contribution to the long history of the wonder-cabinet. I was depressed for quite a while after reading it to think that this condescending and anti-intellectual account would bear Wilson's mind and seditious achievements out into the world so much more frequently than would the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself, or its own publications. People fated to live out imaginatively impoverished lives in latter-day American society could use some capacity for self-loss in the face of what is other than ourselves or what we have mastered. And--perhaps less fundamentally, but in the interests of our being less boring to each other--we could use a less pervasive culture of knowingness. *Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder* brings that possibility forward only to smother it in a kind of smugly affectionate ridicule for the person who tried to give us a chance. I was particularly disappointed in that Weschler's 80s New Yorker piece about Boggs was both intriguing and respectful, and his original Harper's piece on Wilson at least showed honest curiosity. The book is a failure for a writer who had seemed to have an interesting mission. People interested in Wunderkammern of the past, as Wilson himself is and as Weschler's irrepressible condescension demonstrates he is finally not, should look at the catalogue of Dartmouth's Hood Museum exhibit and conference on them, edited by Joy Kenseth, *The Age of the Marvelous*; Paula Findlen's *Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy; Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park's *Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1100-1750*, and Rosamond Purcell and Stephen J. Gould's glorious *Finders, Keepers: Treasures and Oddities of Natural History*. All are profusely illustrated; Purcell's photographs in the last are works of art in themselves.
Rating:  Summary: Fascinating reading Review: This is a fascinating book about curios. Savor the choices the author made in sifting out the "truth". Can be read three times in a row.
Rating:  Summary: Five stars not enough Review: This is a truly unique, fascinating, and most amazingly, absolutely true book. Readers will never find anything else like this. I couldn't put it down after the first half page. But the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself tops even this great book. I'd never have found it if not for Lawrence Weschler. Both the Museum and the book attempting to explain it are priceless gems.
Rating:  Summary: A wonderful book, highly recommended. Review: This is a wonderful book. It's beautifully written and captures perfectly the spirit of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. By the way, the Museum is real -- I've been there. I wandered in not knowing what it was and was immediately hooked. Having read this book, I like the Museum even more. David Wilson is a national treasure.One recommendation to anyone lucky enough to read this book: don't flip through and look at the pictures first. Read it from beginning to end as it was intended, or you'll ruin the story.
Rating:  Summary: IT'S FASCINATING, FUNNY AND THOUGHT PROVOKING. Review: This is a wonderful, compelling book. The notion of wonder is approached in a way that gives one pause to wonder about what's become of wonder in our own lives. I was especially taken by Weschler's idea that the discovery of the New World was a key event in inspiring all those wacky, creative, nutty people to collect everything and anything. It makes me smile to think what it must have been like for those individuals to contemplate the news of discoveries made in the New World. What an exciting period in the history of ideas. Weschler conveys this excitement and sense of wonder beautifully; he's an elegant, graceful and funny writer. And Mr Wilson is a wonder himself in every way. This is a terrific book and it will change the way you look at your world, wherever that might be.
Rating:  Summary: Great title! Review: This really has a wonderful (wonnerfulla, wonnerfulla ....) title. The rest of the book goes downhill from there. The plot was a little thin and not particularly credible. Aaaccckkk, ech.
Rating:  Summary: Great title! Review: This really has a wonderful (wonnerfulla, wonnerfulla ....) title. The rest of the book goes downhill from there. The plot was a little thin and not particularly credible. Aaaccckkk, ech.
Rating:  Summary: A remarkable exposition of wonder Review: This remarkable book documents, in part, the extraordinary collection of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, a small storefront museum in Culver City, California. The MJT is something of an anomaly, existing in some strange territory between genuine (though odd) museum and performance art piece. As Weschler walks us through several of these exhibits, we are ultimately left in a wonderful state of suspension between credulity and skepticism, simultaneously unable to dismiss the museum as a joke and unable to accept its wonders without skepticism. At times, the experience is very much like reading BorgesÕ elaborately self-referential fictions; at other moments, it feels like youÕve wandered into a Pynchon novel in which a deeply strange and hidden world lies beneath the surface of the real. The second part of the book places the MJT in the historical context of the wunderkammern of the 17th and early 18th centuries, those vast collections of natural and artificial curiosities that served as the first museums. The articulation of a profound sense of wonder is at the heart of WeschlerÕs fascinating book, which is in fact astounding in its elaboration of a world stranger than many found in fiction. Enthusiastically recommended.
|