Anthropology [Paperback]

Dan Rhodes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2001

"Crying":
story number 13 from Anthropology

"My girlfriend left me, and I started crying in my sleep. My nightly lament became so loud that my neighbors called the police. The press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. Television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. They tracked her to her new boyfriend's house. I watched the coverage. People were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that I should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl."

In 101 words each, the 101 witty, haunting stories of Anthropology chronicle the search for love in an age preoccupied with sex. Each story is a pure distillation of heartbreak, longing, delusion, and bliss. Each spins speedily, shockingly, to its unpredictable climax. And each is unlike anything you have read before.
        Anthropology's macabre humor builds imperceptibly, story by story and girlfriend by girlfriend, until it reflects with surreal accuracy how we try to complete ourselves through--or at the expense of--another. Read it to laugh and forget your sorrows; read it to recognize and remember your delights; read it to discover a vivid, provocative new talent.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An ingenious project in prose construction, Rhodes's book of short stories is composed of 101 tales, each containing exactly 101 words. The short-shorts boast an economy of language common to prose poems, or even sonnets, and the subject matter is love. The speaker appears to have a new girlfriend in each story. The women have names like Mazzy, Xanthe, Treasure, Foxglove or more commonly, "My girlfriend," and the adventures of the various lovers are alternately funny, goofy, clever and surreal, with an occasional drop of pathos for the speaker's oft-thwarted heart. Angelique drives the speaker to stick pins in his face, Paris is literally catatonic after her bike is stolen, Tortoiseshell is in jail, Celestia may just be a bunch of chemicals, Amber goes to the grocery store naked. The best pieces, the ones that feature comic, misunderstood dialogue between lovers, resemble poet Hal Sirowitz's humorous Mother Said, while other pieces are overly Brautigan inspired. Many of these feature a story line of the girlfriend who is so beautiful that the speaker feels sorry for her ex-boyfriends, but is also petrified at the possibility of becoming one of them. In spite of some less than sparkling entries, most of these little nuggets are fun, quirky and occasionally poetically lovely. They gather steam, increasing in violence, heartbreak and intensity as the book progresses. Like the French poetry movement OulipoAan experimental group whose projects included the writing of an entire novel without using the letter "e"ARhodes seems to have created a new, ostensibly senseless form that yields some true delights. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Anthropology 101 is a beginning course on the study of Man. Anthropology consists of 101 extremely short short stories (101 words) that explore the interactions between men and women. The nameless, often-hapless male narrators describe with sometimes poignant, sometimes bizarre detail their relationships with such girlfriends as Tortoiseshell, Treasure, Paris, or Azure. These brief summaries are frequently the written equivalent of slapstick or pratfalls, but just as often, the surprising twists provoke new thinking about age-old quandaries. Personalities are quickly and surely drawn. Readers meet the "bland" girlfriend who surrounds herself with used yogurt cups, and an unemployed girl who could think of no hobbies other than smoking to put on her job application. Some situations are funny, some sad, and some even a little perverse, but taken as a whole, they give a sense of the endless variety possible in the basically universal story of boy meets girl, boy loves girl, and either wins or, more often, loses her. This collection is a literary curiosity developed with wit and skill, and is a wonderful basis for an assignment as well as a literate study of the human condition.-Susan H. Woodcock, Chantilly Regional Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Fourth Estate Paperbacks (February 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841151947
• ISBN-13: 978-1841151946
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,060,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Short story collection of the year - 2000, December 15, 2000

By 

"scottish_lawyer" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anthropology (Hardcover)

Anthropology is the first book by Dan Rhodes. It was published in the UK in early 2000 to little publicity. Seeing a copy in a bookshop I picked it up, read a few of the 101 word stories, purchased; and during the year have been thrusting the book onto friends, and relatives telling them they must read it.

This collection of stories cannot be simply categorised. Their common threads are that each is 101 words long, each deals with an aspect of a relationship (with an increasingly bizarrely named collection of female partners). The stories are very short, dark, cynical, bitter, moving. But, most importantly they are peppered with humour, sometimes gentle, sometimes surreal, sometimes absurd, sometimes harsh. In brief vignettes Rhodes says more about love and masculinity, than is said in far longer works.

It took me one train journey to first read the book through, but this is too indulgent. The stories are as distilled as poetry, should be savoured. Since the first reading I have returned to the book regularly, and will often recall scenarios, brief expressions.

Part Borges, part Calvino, part Brautigan, this short story collection was for me book of the year in 2000.

If you enjoy Calvino's Invisible Cities, Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn, anything by Borges, or James Meek's Last Orders you will enjoy this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars weird but interesting, September 7, 2000

By 

Chiang Hai Tat (Jupiter) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anthropology (Hardcover)

this book contains 101 stories written in 101 words each about weird girlfriends, relationships, romance and love. if you like the classic 'exercises in style' by the french writer raymond queneau who wrote a simple short story in over a hundred different ways, you'll like this book.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Writing, January 14, 2003

By 

Mr R Cooper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anthropology (Paperback)

I tried for years to write novels. I had plenty of good ideas, but my writing collapsed after just a few chapters. Thinking I was finished, I stumbled on Anthropology by Dan Rhodes, a brilliant collection of 101 stories, each of 101 words. These transcendental mini-dramas inspired me: why spend months on a novel when I could write several stories in a day? I worked joyously on my Rhodesian gems, and before I knew it I had a book. However, although literary agents loved it, they said it was unpublishable, because it had already been done by Dan Rhodes....