Lawrence WeschlerRezensionen

I was working at the membership desk in the Museum of Natural History in NYC around 2008 when Dr. Sacks came in to renew his membership. This book has made me regret ever more not saying something, not shaking the man's hand, not telling him what an impact he had already made on me at that young age. I know now that the simple gesture would have meant more to him and to me than I ever imagined at the time. This memoir/biography is beautiful, heartfelt, and truly shines a light on the kind of person Dr. Sacks was, beyond the doctor and the writer.

I bought this book by mistake. Great title and cover art. I was prepared to read anything about Vermeer. But this turned out to be more veneer than Vermeer. Rather than a novel this book is a collection of articles previously published by the author as journalist, foreign correspondent and cultural correspondent. The association with Vermeer comes from the first few articles. The basic premise is Vermeer is the go to time out for those associated with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. They sit through hours of description of horror and inhumanity and need the relief of the Vermeer's to take their minds to a more peaceful place. The author asserts that the little known fact is that Vermeer was concentrating of scenes of normal life as a way to avoid the horrors of inhumane acts that occupied life around where he was painting. Seems tenuous but makes some sense.

The metaphor begins to get stretched the further we get in to the book. The next section begins to see the association between art and war with lengthy insights into the life of people caught in the Holocaust of WWII such as Roman Polanski and the author's grandfather, Ernest Toch, a composer who fled the horrors of Germany to have a major career in films. Beyond that, Poland seems to be what ties this together. We gets side trips learning about the author's daughter, Sara, Ira Glass of This American Life, David Hockney, and Ed Kienholz. The major glue that holds these together is the author, Lawrence Weschler, staff writer for the New Yorker. Fortunately he's a talented writer and has some keen insights.

I don't think this will ever be turned in to a movie, possibly a few documentaries.

Beautifully written (sometimes language is even difficult for a non-native reader), this book is really a deep journey into the work of one greatly important - and inspiring - artist. Deep, witty and engaging, this is really a revealing learning experience about perception and the role of art for everyday's life.

Oliver Sacks to the author Lawrence Weschler "At my symbolic best, I aspire to Donne, at my conceptual best, to Wittgenstein, but I grant, I get over-Donne" Oliver Sacks was the real neurologist portrayed by Robin Williams in the film Awakenings. Author Lawrence Weschler has written a very worthwhile about Dr. Sacks, his life and his work. I have started to listen to two of Oliver Sacks books on audio but never finished either, not because I wasn't intrigued but because they were long and it takes me a while to listen to a long audio book. A library loan time just wasn't enough time. I will get actual paper copies next try. Sacks was a physician who gave his patients all the time they needed. He was careful and thorough and that doesn't fit with current insurance company driven practices. Oliver Sacks didn't care. In addition to his medical work Sacks led an interesting life. He loved fast motorcycles, often going well over 100 miles an hour on city streets in his younger years. While working in Southern California he took up weight lifting at Muscle Beach and once set the California record for squats lifting 600 pounds. But most importantly he was a dedicated physician and researcher.
There are long books that I can't wait to finish and be done. This was the other kind. I am a bit sad that it is finished. I will miss Oliver, Lawrence and their friends. Now to read On the Move by Oliver Sacks MD himself.

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence Weschler
Vintage Books (1995)

“[A] small nondescript storefront operation located along the main commercial drag of downtown Culver City in the middle of West Los Angeles’s endless pseudo-urban sprawl: the Museum of Jurassic Technology, according to the fading blue banner facing the street.” Lawrence Weschler, a staff writer for The New Yorker, describes the otherwise anonymous location for one of the oddest museums on the American landscape. He details the exhibits of the Museum and the life of its creator, David Wilson, in Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology.

After reading this book, I had to ask, “Where has this book been all my life?” Despite majoring in Public History, the intellectual adjunct to academic history focusing on museums, historical societies, and the like, I had never encountered this book. Even with my Museum Studies classes taken at the Milwaukee Public Museum this was never on the mandatory reading list. It should be.

For an otherwise short book – the paperback text is only 108 pages, albeit with a lengthy section of endnotes – there is a lot to unpack. Weschler divides the book into two sections. The first, “Inhaling the Spore,” is a lengthy narrative tour through the Museum of Jurassic Technology. The second, “Cerebral Growth,” is a combination biography of David Wilson and the history of modern museums. The second sections explores the digressive route Wilson took to eventually become head of his own idiosyncratic museum. This digression is combined with a digressive exploration of the kunst- and wunderkammern (German for “art- and wonder cabinets”).

Wonder cabinets became popular around the sixteenth and seventeenth century. During this time (early modern Europe in academic parlance) Europe experienced an extended period of culture shock due to the discoveries made through contact and exploration with North America. The culture shock was coupled with a revival of classical learning and a fascinating with esoteric and occult knowledge. Curiosity cabinets reflected this simultaneous combination of global exploration and interior contemplation. Prior to the time, Europe was dominated by a medieval mindset. The curiosity cabinet fell out of favor when the Enlightenment popularized a more scientific and rational mentality.

Granted, the statement above is a broad-brush generalization. Weschler also concedes that despite the new people, places, and things discovered during early modern times, it was also a period of cruelty and barbarism.

All this is a roundabout introduction to what David Wilson is attempting with his Museum of Jurassic Technology. In his own way, he has created a modern curiosity cabinet. A tiny jewel box museum mixing fantasy and fact. Wilson’s brilliance comes from the Museum’s admixing of parody, homage, and critique of modern museum practice. A visitor can’t readily distinguish between a factual exhibit or one created by Wilson’s imagination. He has mimicked to the voice of Institutional Authority with incredible precision. In his interactions with visitors and at museum conferences, he never “breaks character.” Everything is done with a straight face and with the utmost serious. (Contrast this with The Church of the SubGenius, which is a parody religion, except when it isn’t.)

After reading the book, I realized it was one of my top favorite non-fiction works. Unlike fiction, non-fiction is so broad and varied, it is hard to label something an all-time favorite. Like the House on the Rock and the Salt Lake City Temple, the Museum of Jurassic Technology will go on my list for an American Odd Pilgrimage.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology is yet another example of California as American laboratory of weirdness and idiosyncrasy.

https://driftlessareareview.com/2021/04/09/american-odd-mr-wilsons-cabinet-of-wo...

Loved it. I tried (and failed) for years to describe the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and Weschler's done it.½

A book about a man who had an epiphany who wanted to do something beautiful and if you don't like it f- you!

The first half of this book describes the author's explorations and investigations of Los Angeles's Museum of Jurassic technology and encounters with its proprietor, David Wilson. And a weird, weird place this is. Weird enough that I felt compelled to look it up and make sure it was actually a real establishment, and not some sort of elaborate prank or fantasy. Turns out, it is real, and despite the fact that this book was published in 1995, it's still there, and still doing... whatever the heck it is that it's doing.

Because, the way Weschler describes it, it's hard to tell to what extent this place qualifies as a museum and to what extent it's some kind of bizarre art project. It contains exhibits and information that are strange, and strangely presented, but perfectly real, and others that are completely made up. Or partly made up. Or completely crackpotty. Or something. It can be very hard to tell the difference, and very hard to tell when Wilson is being serious and when he's being ironic.

Weschler clearly falls down quite a rabbit hole here, and the main effect is to leave one blinking and going, "What the heck did I just read?" Which seems entirely appropriate to the subject matter.

The second half mostly consists of a little historical exploration of the wunderkammer, or cabinet of wonder, a tradition in whose footsteps the Wilson's odd collection certainly follows. The subject matter here is interesting, but the disjointed writing style which did such a good job capturing the feel of the Museum works less well here, and the rambling footnotes are more than a little distracting.½

A collection of Weschler's short essays on "convergences" he's noticed. Some interesting connections, to be sure.

A fascinating subject: a museum which blurs the lines between factual exhibits and less verifiably truthful ones, but seeks to inspire wonder at all times. Much like the Museum of Jurassic Technology itself seems to be, based on the descriptions here, the book is a bit of a strange journey, with fits and stops and digressions.

Hmmmm. It's hard to say what I thought about this book. It was well researched with far too many citations and references within the text, which made the book harder to read. I have great admiration for both the author and Mr. Wilson who runs the museum at the center of this book. At a basic level, the book encompasses an interesting topic, or many really. I loved the tidbits of artifacts and oddities, wonders of the natural world, and also the relationship that developed between Wilson and Weschler, the author. I enjoyed how Weschler captured the spirit of all of it within this book, and how so many unbelievable items were proved, more or less. Silliness and crazy ideas from past centuries are woven among all this, illustrating the blurring of lines, given the times in which beliefs existed.

At every starred spot, leading to more reading near the back of the book, I dutifully went there and read the further information. Did the rest of you do that? I think I'd enjoy visiting the museum, especially after reading all this intriguing "history".

This book isn't for everyone. Literary readers may like it. Scientifically-minded people may like it. Curious people with wide interests might enjoy it. History buffs could find it interesting. It's not a book for light readers of fast easy books. It's a small book but isn't light reading, though it has some moments of fun, humor, warmth, and yes, wonder. There are many illustrations, drawings, and old photos within.

The title of the book is funny -- Jurassic has nothing to do with the book as far as I can see, and Jurassic Technology? Clever!

A wide-ranging collection of essays and other writings, which varied in personal interest level but which were all nicely written. The first section, "A Balkan Tryptich," and "A Season with the Borrowers" were my favorite among the included pieces.½

Rather an odd little volume, and not quite at all what I was expecting. Weschler begins with a long piece on the intensely strange Museum of Jurassic Technology, and then broadens the scope to discuss the history of museums and cabinets of curiosities. Certainly a good read if you've any interest in such things.½

After the first couple of essays I was forced to conclude that Weschler has an over-active imagination. It's an interesting imagination and he sees lots of interesting connections, but I'm more inclined to credit other reasons to the convergences than he does, such a fundamentals of human aesthetics that we don't understand, not to mention pure coincidence.

Ebook, read via Open Library here.

From the book jacket:

"A nondescript storefront operation in Los Angeles, California, the Museum of Jurassic Technology actually exists - that may be the only thing about it that is for certain. The creation of David Wilson, a man of prodigiously unusual imagination, the museum is crammed full of some of the most astonishingly unbelievable marvels known to man. Visitors to the museum continually find themselves caught between wondering at the marvels of craft and nature that are on display and wondering whether any of this could possibly be true. Indeed, Wilson's true subject seems to be wonder itself, the delicious human capacity for astonishment and absorption out of which all true creativity arises."

After reading that I immediately remembered why this was on my To Read list - my husband and I visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology (wikipedia) (yes, it was my idea) back in 2004 - and we should really make another visit. If you look at the outside of the place (via that wikipedia link above) it's hard to tell if it's actually open - and once inside you then have a fun time deciding what is real and what is...otherwise.

Randomly I must pause here and note that the museum sells View-Master reels in their online gift shop. I'd be delighted with the place for that alone.

I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that here and there I recognize a bit of redundancy, and sentences that were a bit overlong - but really, that sort of stylistic quibbling didn't occur to me often because the content was that diverting. I spent a lot of time immediately googling topics I just had to have more information on, finding out what more (and what books) I could reference online. This is a book about research that just begs for you to start research on your own. Well, if you're me anyway. Thus you'll see a lot of links in the quotes! (And I'm still looking some of this stuff up. Like the author, it seems I can get addicted to this.)

I started reading assuming that I'd find out that a lot of the content in the Museum of Jurassic Technology (from now on MJT) wasn't true - and finding out that there's a lot more truth in MJT's content than I'd thought, and all sorts of fascinating historical connections. Which is basically the same journey that the author goes through.

To experience a slice of the MJT: Collections And Exhibitions (and of course the rest of their site).

A book I bumped into thanks to the subject: Summary guide by Ashmolean Museum, quotes here - Tradescant Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Random quotes:

p. 28, from the pamphlet The Museum of Jurassic Technology and You:

"Highlighting the singular collections of John James Swammerdam, Dr. Matthew Maty, Ole Worm (and his "Museum Wormianum"), and Elias Ashmole, the pamphlet went on to note how in the early days such treasure troves were the exclusive preserve of various social elites. For this reason, the pamphlet seemed to hold the late-eighteenth-century American painter Charles Wilson Peale in particularly high esteem."

p. 39, on the MJT's David Wilson:

""He never ever breaks irony - that's one of the incredible things about him." I was talking with Marcia Tucker, the director of New York's New Museum, about David Wilson. It turns out there's a growing cult among art and museum people who can't seem to get enough of the MJT. ..."When you're in there with him," Tucker went on, "everything initially just seems self-evidently what it is. There's this fine line, though, between knowing you're experiencing something and sensing that something is wrong. There's this slight slippage, which is the very essence of the place. And his own presence there behind the desk, the literal-minded way in which he earnestly and seemingly openly answers all your questions, his never ever cracking or letting you know that, or even whether, he's in on the joke - it all contributes seamlessly to that sense of slippage."

p. 41 - David's wife Diana and Ralph Rugoff (LA art critic), at David Wilson's lecture at California State University, Los Angeles:

"It was an early version of his Sonnabend spiel, which in fact for a long time existed solely as a lecture, only relatively recently having taken on its exhibitional form. "And he did it completely straight," Rugoff recalls. "Everybody there was taking notes furiously, as if this were all on the level and was likely to be on the test - the Falls, the cones, the planes, the whole thing. It was amazing. And at one point I leaned over to Diana and whispered, 'This is the most incredible piece of performance art I've ever seen.' And she replied, 'What makes you think it's a performance? David believes all this stuff.'"

p. 42 - Wilson and author in conversation:

"I asked him what had first attacted him to the museums, and he replied, "Well, their museumness. How dark and hushed they were inside, the oak-and-glass cases, the sense of being in these repositories amongst all those old things. That, and the curious style of writing - for instance, on the wall captions. Already then I was fascinated by what I've since come to see as these curious ellipses, the jumps between what you as a visitor are just assumed to know and the most minute, often bizarre, detail of explication, a leap in rhetoric that at times can be absolutely breathtaking. We've tried to preserve a bit of that effect with some of the exhibits here..."

p. 60:

"Those earliest museums, the ur-collections back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were sometimes called Wunderkammern, wonder-cabinets, and it occurs to me that the Museum of Jurassic Technology truly is their worthy heir in as much as wonder, broadly conceived, is its unifying theme. ("Part of the assigned task," David once told me, "is to reintegrate people to wonder.") But it's a special kind of wonder, and it's metastable. The visitor to the Museum of Jurassic Technology continually finds himself shimmering between wondering at (the marvels of nature) and wondering whether (any of this could possibly be true). And it's that very shimmer, the capacity for such delicious confusion, Wilson sometimes seems to suggest, that may constitute the most blessedly wonderful thing about being human."

p. 64-65, story about a tour of the University of Pavia's old museum:

""You'll never guess what this is,' my friend challenged me," [Tom] Eisner [biologist, Cornell] related, "and I didn't even try. 'Lazzaro Spallanzani's cock and balls!' " ..."Spallanzi was one of the great early modern naturalists," he offered helpfully. ..."Anyway, my colleague recounted for me how during one of the sieges of Pavia - Pavia always seemed to be coming under siege in those days - Spallanzani realized that he was dying of some urinary-tract infection; he kept careful notes on the progress of the disease so that his colleagues could study the bladder and kidneys themselves. Only, his corpse fell into the hands of his sworn enemy and fiercest rival, I forget the guy's name, an anatomist - in my own mind I always think of him as Scarpia, as in Tosca. So anyway, this Scarpia extracted not only Spallanzani's bladder and kidneys but his entire reproductive apparatus as well, which he thereupon proveeded to display with considerable glee. Remember: this is Italy, and such public emasculation was just about the worst affront to a man's honor that could be imagined. So that years later, after Scarpia died, Spallanzani's old students got ahold of his corpse, decapitated it, and preserved the head in a jar of its own which to this day rests on a shelf in the museum right nearby Spallanzani's." "

Citations of things that don't precisely exist (in reality), p72-3:
- Donald Evans - created stamps from fictional countries
- Charles Simmonds - archeology of Little People: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
- Norman Daly civilization of Llhuros: 1, 2
- Hokes Archives (Univ Tennessee, Knoxville) - Everett Ormsby Hokes - Beauvais Lyons

p. 76-77 Sir Walter Cope - Swiss visitor Thomas Platter's diary notes that Cope's castle contained:

" "an appartment stuffed with queer foreign objects in every corner"...a round horn that had grown on an Englishwomen's forehead, a unicorn's tail; the baubles and bells of Henry VIII's fool..."

p. 81: other collections:

"the Tradescants' in Lambeth, Francesco Calceolari's in Verona, Ole Worm's in Copenhagen, Ferrante Imperato's in Naples, Manfredo Settala's in Milan, Athanasius Kircher's in Rome."

p. 83 - Arthur MacGregor in The Origins Of Museums The Cabinet Of Curiosities In Sixteenth And Seventeenth Century Europe:

"Rudolf II...established at the Hradschin Palace in Prague one of the most impressive artistic centers of his time. As well as being an outstanding patron, Rudolf built up a truly remarkable collection which has frequently been likened to his own personality in its immense richness and lack of purposeful direction."

p. 84 - on the Imperato's museum's taxidermy pelican's mounting "as if stabbing itself with its own beak":

"This detail refers to the belief, pervasive at the time, that pelicans were given to tearing their breasts open so as to resuscitate their dead young with their own blood, a contention tfirst adumbrated by Pliny the elder (AD 23-79) in his Natural History but one which naturally dovetailed quite nicely with subsequent Christian iconography."

p 84, Theatrum Anatomicum of the University of Leiden: Boerhaave Museum, which contains, among other things, the reconstruction the Theatrum Anatomicum, 1988 (orig. 1596), quote via that link:

"...even when there were no dissections the anatomy theatre was an interesting spectacle. On the balustrades stood the skeletons of human beings and animals, which not only taught the visitor something about comparative anatomy, but also taught him an edifying lesson about the fragility of life, since the human skeletons carry banners with such slogans as HOMO BULLA (man is a soap bubble) and MEMENTO MORI (remember you must die)"

p 85-6, Frederik Ruysch:

"Some of his tableaux were relatively straightforward: the skull of a prostitute, for instance, being kicked by the leg bones of a baby. Some were heartrending: Ruysch had perfected ways of preserving the entire bodies of dead infants in large glass jugs in presentations that were often lavished with extra-ordinary and living care [with additions of lace, bracelets, etc.]... Some were peculiar: Ruysch proudly exhibited a box of fly eggs taken from the anus of "a distinguished gentleman who sat too long in the privy" (Ruysch's own description from his catalogue). ...his masterworks, perhaps, were a series of vanitas mundi tableaux, exquisite skeleto-anatomical variations on traditional flower arrangements... For their base, Ruysch would contrive a mound of kidney stones and other diseased organs - this in itslef was not that unusual since dried kidney and gallstones (the bigger, the better) were regularly featured in wonder-cabinets all over the continent. ...[quote from Dr. Antonie Luyendijk-Elschout, Univ. of Leiden:] "With eye sockets turned heavenward the central skeleton - a foetus of about four months - chants a lament on the misery of life. ...accompanying itself on a violin made of osteomyelitic sequester with a dried artery for a bow. At its right a tiny skeleton conducts the music with a baton, set with minute kidney stones. In the right foreground, a stiff little skeleton girdles its hips with injected sheep intestines, its right hand grasping a spear made of the hardened vas deferens of an adult man, grimly conveying the message that its first hour was also its last. On the left, behind a handsome vase made of the inflated tunica albuginea of the testis, poses an elegant little skeleton with a feather on its skull and a stone coughted up from the lungs hanging from its hand."

Image here as "Landscape with kidney, urinary and gallstones."

p 99-100: where California gets its name - Las Sergas de Esplandian (The Exploits of Explandian) by Rodriguez de Montalvo, 1510:

"The book itself was apparently nothing much to write home about, but there's considerable evidence that many of the conquistadors of the time were familiar with its story, in which Esplandian, a kind of late-medieval night, is helping to defend Constantinople...when suddenly there appears amongst the besieging horde: Calafia, Queen of California. California, for its part, turns out to be an island "on the right hand of the Indes" and "very near the terrestrial paradise," inhabited by a race of Amazonian warriors whose weapons are of purest gold, "for in all the island there is no other metal"...in California...there were also "many griffins"...when the griffins were small "the women went out with traps to take them to their cakes and brought them up there. And being themselves quite a match for the griffins, they fed them with the men whom they took prisoners, and with the boys to whom they gave birth." "

p. 103, really sums up the MJT:

"Thus we were once again tending into guinetessentially Jurassic territory, having launched out on manifestly solid ground only to find outselves...well, not really having any idea where the hell we were finding ourselves."

p. 106:

"The caption under the first read: "Mouse Pie, when eaten with regularity, serves as a remedy for children who stammer." The label under the burnt toast read: "Bed wetting or general incontinence of urine can be controlled by eating mice on toast, fur and all."

After which there followed an italicized citation:
A flayne Mouse, or made in powder and drunk at one tyme, doeth perfectly helpe such as cannot holde or keepe their water...
--1579 Lupton, Thousand Notable Things I/40

Right then and there I made myself a promise; and I've kept it: I have not gone to the library to track down that Lupton reference. there has to be an end to this.

No really."

(Later the author can't resist and does indeed look it up. He gives you his findings on the very last page of the Acknowledgements and Sources section.)

p. 107, on the Mutter Museum:

"The Mutter's show at the Jurassic featured an array of arcane and vaguely threatening antique surgical instruments, the plaster cast of a trephined skull from Peru, various gallstones, some astonishing photographs of sliced heads and haunting (haunted) bell jars, wax models of syphilitic tongues..."

p. 117 footnote, Edward Brown, 1673, A Brief Account of Some Travels in divers Parts of Europe, describing contents of a Chamber of Rarities inlcuding "a Siren's hand," elephant's tusks, etc. etc.:

"...And I must not omit the Garter of an English Bride, with the story of it; of the Fashion in England for the Bridemen to take it off and wear it in their Hat, which seemed so strange to the Germans, that I was obliged to confirm it to them, by assuring them that I had divers times wore such a Garter my self."

Oh and also there was a painting by Albrect Durer in there too. It's thanks to a lot of these private "wonder" collections that many old artworks were preserved at all.

p. 134 footnote: St George, mini city behind him in the background (click "treasure hunt" link) - close up photos were taken, showed that artist must have used single hair brush. And a magnifying glass, fairly new tech at the time.
Artist: Rogier van der Weyden, painting: Saint George and the Dragon, 1432-1435

Once Weschler started seeing relationships between images from disparate sources, he started seeing such relationships, and others (between stories and images, stories and stories, etc.) everywhere. He began to write these 'convergences' up over the years in a series of essays which eventually were collected and published by the good folks at McSweeney's.

Some of the connections seem a bit of a stretch and, at first, simply coincidence. Many may be coincidence, but the characteristics that tie these images and stories together are often numerous and repeated across centuries, leading Weschler (and this reader) to conclude that there are, at least, certain characteristics shared by these tools for passing on human experience which contribute, at least in part, to their power and timelessness.

The first essay, related to 9/11, is a bit too easy, since the emotional impact of this recent event remains strong in most, if not all, of us. But that doesn't minimize the value of what Weschler has to show us in these images (and their stories). After the first three essays, I was sold on the premise and felt that I was reading a book that provided a very special way of looking at the world and its images. Like any collection of essays not originally written as a single work, there are some which don't stand up quite as well as others, but overall, these are a fine collection of observations on today, history, art, image, and how humans percieve their world and the events that surround us.

Highly recommended.

Os.

Really fascinating series of essays about how artists unconsciously echo each other in the images they use. Lots of great illustrations.
My favorite was the photo of the welder guy next to the painting of Mars (the god, not the planet).

A fun book about weird stuff. Makes me want to throw it all away and study museology instead.

For photographers this book can be an inspiration. These essays that make unusual visual connections based on a wide education and awareness, especially in the visual arts lead the way to seeing with an open mind and encouragment to feed that mind with the study of everything, but especially politics and art history.

Not exactly what I expected but not a bad book. The first portion, I believe, was a magazine article Weschler had written specifically about the Museum of Jurassic Technology. The second part of the book expands on the concept of cabinets of curiosities, their history, etc. And a big chunk of the back of the book is extended notes by the author as well as a bibliography, etc. So it was a quick read.

This book contained a lot of interesting information, although at times it felt more like I was reading someone's scholarly paper or thesis; it got a bit dry and didactic at times, and I had to run to the dictionary more than once to look up unfamiliar words. I also sometimes felt as if I weren't in on the joke; part of the gimmick of Wilson's museum is that the visitor never knows if what he is reading/seeing is fact or fiction. Is it truly a historical or biological phenomenon, or is it something Wilson created or twisted? And maybe I'm a little dense, but I think I needed some of the answers spelled out more clearly for me. There were times when the author would mention a fact that related to an exhibit described earlier but he would not specifically say, "Aha! So this part of The Museum of Jurassic Technology exhibits is correct," or "Aha! Wilson was pulling our legs." Perhaps I need to reread the book to make all the connections.

The subject of cabinets of curiosities, or Wunderkammern, interests me. I'd like to find a more accessible, entertaining book with discussion of these collections.

The books begins when Lawrence Weschler wanders into the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California, where he encounters an oddly fascinating collection of exhibits. Beginning with the Cameroonian stink ant and the spores of a fungus, which when inhaled, cause the ant to climb upward, eventually grabbing onto the vine or trunk with his mandible, where he dies. The fungus then sprouts from the ant's forehead, raining spores down on the unsuspecting ants below. Other exhibits include a theory of memory, a very small bat and a collection of antlers, which includes the horn of Mary Davis of Saughall.

Weschler is understandably intrigued, and speaking with David Wilson, the museum's owner and curator, adds to his curiosity. Professionally presented, the museum nonetheless awakens seeds of doubt in his mind, which sprout when he researches the exhibits. Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder looks at our ideas about museums and looks at how museums came to be; originating from the wunderkammern of the early enlightenment, where wealthy men collected interesting items and grouped them together in a room or cabinet for the wonderment of his guests. Classification was optional and certainly different, with one collection including

two huge ribs from a whale (out in the courtyard); "a goose which has grown in Scotland in a tree"; "a number of things changed into stone" (in other words, fossils); the hand of a mermaid; the hand of a mummy; a small piece of wood from the cross of Christ"; "pictures from the church of S. Sofia in Constantinople copies by a Jew into a book"; "a bat as large as a pigeon"...

There is a lot packed into this slender book, from the nature of wonder itself to the history of those fascinating and eclectic cabinets of curiosity, which sprang up when explorers to the far east and the Americas began returning with things never before seen and as superstition gave way to reason.

man draws money & spends it

1.00

This turned out to be better than I expected. Quite good actually. It attempts to share a taste of the Museum of Jurassic Technology with the reader. I've been to the Museum (located in Los Angeles) which is not like any other museum I've been to. The book does a good job reproducing the seamless blending a fact with fantasy that happens there even as the author retells his attempt to sort the truth from the fiction in the museum's exhibits and history. I can't imagine a more perfect approach to a book about a contemporary wunderkammen.

Once Weschler started seeing relationships between images from disparate sources, he started seeing such relationships, and others (between stories and images, stories and stories, etc.) everywhere. He began to write these 'convergences' up over the years in a series of essays which eventually were collected and published by the good folks at McSweeney's.

Some of the connections seem a bit of a stretch and, at first, simply coincidence. Many may be coincidence, but the characteristics that tie these images and stories together are often numerous and repeated across centuries, leading Weschler (and this reader) to conclude that there are, at least, certain characteristics shared by these tools for passing on human experience which contribute, at least in part, to their power and timelessness.

The first essay, related to 9/11, is a bit too easy, since the emotional impact of this recent event remains strong in most, if not all, of us. But that doesn't minimize the value of what Weschler has to show us in these images (and their stories). After the first three essays, I was sold on the premise and felt that I was reading a book that provided a very special way of looking at the world and its images. Like any collection of essays not originally written as a single work, there are some which don't stand up quite as well as others, but overall, these are a fine collection of observations on today, history, art, image, and how humans percieve their world and the events that surround us.

Highly recommended.

Os.½

A most amazing journey with an elloqent guide: Honestly, when I worked in Culver City, I would drive by the Museum of Jurassic Technology and wonder just what was in there. I read the articles in the L.A. Times and still I could not understand what it was about. And even when I finally got to the museum, I was mystified. What was the connection? What was it all about? Finally, I have my answer. And more. This book was a superlative read. Mr Weschler never flags in his focus and his precision of language and yet doesn't overwhelm his subject matter. It would be so easy to try and write a fictional story about the museum as opposed to trying to distill and tell the real story. It is very slippery! You will not be dissappointed in this book. And you don't have to go to the museum to enjoy it. But if you read the book, you will be COMPELLED to visit the museum.