Booklist
For popular culture mavens, there is really no substitute for the RE/Search series of guides and homages to various strange and wonderful components of the contemporary scene. In this volume, the subject is bodily fluids; fortunately (?) fluidity is not necessarily the same as liquidity here, as such chapter headings as "Feces," "Flatus," "Vomit," etc., attest. Lest the faint-of-stomach find these terms repellent, it must be noted that Spinrad's treatment of these subjects is detached and tasteful, so far as that is possible. Like previous RE/Search volumes (Incredibly Strange Music and Incredibly Strange Films, for instance), the book is both entertaining and informative. There is really no other place to find information on excreta in medicine and a biography of Thomas Crapper under the same cover with data from surveys of various personal excretory habits and a brief life of Joseph Pujol, the "Fartiste." The appended publications list and survey methodology and questionnaire comprise the icing on this, uh, cake. Mike Tribby
Book Description
Mucus, saliva, sweat, vomit, urine, farts, feces, earwax and more are humorously (and seriously) described in this anthropological/historical investigation.
