Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters [Hardcover]

Rosamond Purcell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0811815684 | ISBN-13: 978-0811815680 | Publication Date: December 1, 1997 | Edition: First Edition

What is a monster? Is it a thing with a hairy face, webbed fingers, and green skin? Or is it simply anything we don't understand? An art book for and about the curious, Special Cases explores humanity's age-old obsession with mythical and literal monstrosity in a way that is not for the faint-hearted. Using photographs she has taken at natural history and anatomical museums, models of her own creation, and artwork from numerous private and public collections, celebrated photographer Rosamond W. Purcell delightedly delves into squeamish subjects such as dwarves, giants, conjoined twins, hairy people, albinos, and humans with animal heads. Sure to capture the imagination of artists, historians, and anyone with a taste for the perverse, Special Cases is a clever visual history whose pages and pictures reveal the fiipside of what we call normal.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Under the guise of cultural studies, humankind's ceaseless fascination with human anomalies has gained a newfound legitimacy, and publishers are producing ever more works to satisfy both the prurient and intellectual ends of the scale. This handsomely produced book, unfortunately, seems unsure about where to place its focus and, ultimately, will disappoint most readers. Purcell, a photographer, writer, and curator of a show at the Getty Research Institute, from which this book was derived, has written a rambling, unconstructed text that not infrequently touches on fascinating ideas and historical examples. But just as often she abandons a theme just as she gets beneath the surface or moves on to another sample before fully examining the specimen before us. Her thesis?that the collectors and classifiers play as much a role in creating a freak as do the abnormalities?is interesting, if not entirely new, but never truly develops. Recommended only for academic cultural studies collections; popular collections would do better with Lawrence Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder (LJ 10/1/95) and Jan Bondeson's A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities (LJ 10/15/97).?Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Purcell must have felt challenged in selecting a fitting title for her unusual book, which, though based on an exhibition she curated, is much more than a catalog. Readers may feel challenged, too, by the striking illustrations, the detailed text, and the many direct and indirect questions that artist and historian Purcell raises, especially why and how people react to the sight of anomalies and monsters. A few of her particular subjects are well-known, but most aren't, for they were selected "from the dustiest corners of the furthest reaches of the oddest places." Their range runs from a seventeenth-century depiction of the bodies floating in Noah's flood to the graphic illustration from the fifteenth-century traveler Bernard de Mandeville's Voyages of a dog-headed man devouring a Crusader to the colorful Mary Sabina, the "Piebald Black Child," as eighteenth-century Europe called her. In all, a volume with diverse and peculiar appeal. William Beatty

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; First Edition edition (December 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811815684
• ISBN-13: 978-0811815680
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 8.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #429,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre, at times slightly interesting but very flawed, October 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters (Hardcover)

This book could have been so much more. It is flawed by a very odd writing style---deadpan and stilted. The format is so odd as to make it almost unreadable at times---two blocks of print on each page, at very different levels, as if one is meant to be a caption, yet it isn't! The author doesn't seem to know whether she wants to be a book for the curious, or a book condemning you for being curious. A fascinating subject, which is why this book can be interesting at all, but really not handled well here---don't bother with this one.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a mediocre overview of a fascinating subject, April 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters (Hardcover)

The illustrations are spectacular in Special Cases, and many of the anecdotes are vividly written. But the author also omits much of the subject matter's historical and scientific context, leaving the "special cases" looking more like simple freaks. As well, this book is poorly organized and poorly edited, so that by the end I was completely frustrated with Ms. Purcell.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Disappointment, June 22, 2000

By 

"pvarlet" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical Monsters (Hardcover)

Visually, the book is rewarding. The author has photographed her specimens imaginatively, compelling the reader to look twice to identify the subject matter. The text, however, is a great disappointment. Not only is the format confusing (as some reviewers have already pointed out), but with a writing style so disjointed and without an appreciable sense of structure, the book leaves us readers floundering in a fishpond, desperately seeking the shore.