Three Forms of Sudden Death: And Other Reflections on the Grandeur and Misery of the Body

by F. González-Crussí

A collection of essays, from thoughts on hermaphroditism, to aging, to the female breast to hair balls

Genres: Science

207 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[fake]

Despite the title, the book is more about living bodies than the dead ones. And yes, the author's job is to cut the dead ones, but only in the day time. He is seemingly bored of that as death is an ever vanishing subject of his inquiry. He is professionally tired of the dead so writes about live objects and all that is inside of them in his spare time. He does it with delight (both mine and his), spitting vast collection of curious facts right into my stupid face.

Yet a human body for him is still preferably immovable so that he can dissect it properly, but no scalpel in his hands, and lots of stolen-in-a-good-way ideas, that he shares with poor minded folk like me. Yeah, "the best is not to be born", neither he or me deny that, but we all were, so we should somehow endure and make sense of that. He does a good job in this. Professional reflexes take over often and each body part is carefully studied in a separate chapter (penises turn into a rod to be electrocuted so are in great danger if you are homeless and pee on the subway rails; tits are nice and source of anxiety for lots of people; cannibalism is fun, but scary; anus is important and linked to capitalism as "gold is excrement", etc).

"The power of feminine body is eternal", but still "the next best thing to death is to exit from this life as expeditiously as you can manage". Joyful read.

[no elle]

ah, be still my beating heart! i think the last gonzalez-crussi book i read was there is a world elsewhere, which i unfortunately did not love, but my affection has returned full force for this. how can someone turn morph cannibalism into such hilarious eloquence? idgi but it's a pleasure as always. dreamy sigh.

[Paul Bond]

An anatomist dishes on the body, its (ahem) functions, dysfunctions, and ultimate mortality. Brisk, funny, learned, with a steady undercurrent of dark humor.

[Astir]

I love 2/3rds of this book so very much. The author is a charming encyclopedia. The final third on emotion rather than anatomy drags though.