Customer Reviews

Paper Tangos (Public Planet Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Judging on somebody's personal experience is not reviewing the work of that person.
To review a book, one must have a working understanding of the subject matter, the time and the circumstances.

Anybody familiar with the multiple layers of the tango world in Buenos Aires might understand that many dimensions coexist in the same temporal space without ever intersecting or even come close to share the same circumstances. Thus, the author's confessional style of writing describes her experience among a particular group of left wing militants who happen to make a living teaching tango far away from the mainstream. Add to that the fact that the author carries the deep scar of a sexual abuse perpetrated upon her at an earlier age, and her take on what she experiences in her tango journey is definitely tinted by feelings that most people can't relate to.

The book reveals the experience of a group of people connected with each other at a certain moment in time by their acquaintance with the author. Her purpose is fulfilled as she expresses her experiences in an entertaining narrative. To see more than that, to try to patch a history of tango in any way, shape or form, to extrapolate one person's life tribulations into inspirational mantra for anybody embarking on his or her own journey or to consider this book as anything else as the personal experience of the author, would be mistaking substance with symbolism because tango is a very personal matter which should not be used as a prop but as one's own way of life.

Did the reviewer and I read the same book, see the same flipbook inside? Thanks to him (and I'm sure he's a him), this book isn't out of print, which I think it soon will be, as the Argentine tango becomes more and more popular, for many of the reasons Taylor describes. It's a dance for the times, and the times require presence and balance, if there are to be any more times. I thought it was a lovely book, that I will reread, as complicated and as poetic as the tango I am only just beginning to learn. I'll bet he hasn't been trout-fishing either, a close relative -- two disciplines of mind and body that require deep attention and grace.

Paper Tango is such a lovely book. It speaks to the soul of Tango and of the Argentinean people. I love it.

An odd little book about a former ballet dancer dancing tango in Buenos Aires. The author describes herself as blonde and beautiful. She marries and divorces an Argentine man, but it's all in the background of her consuming tango obsession. With disjoint time and amost hallucinatory digressions into the emotions brought to the surface by tango, this reads a bit like "Trout Fishing in America" if it were tango instead of trout. There is a flip book built into the pages where a tango turns first into a violent attack and then into sheets of falling paper. This low-tech animation wordlessly caputures the themes in the text.

This is like a diary of a teenage girl. Very personal and very shallow. In this book you will find a lot of nothing about tango. Waste of time.