Forrest’s Reviews > Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life > Status Update

The notion that shadow puppets show their body on the puppeteers side, but their soul on the shadow side is something I find strongly compelling.

The comparison and contrast between Bali's wayang kulit shadow puppet theater, on one hand, and Plato's Republic, Medieval Arabic khayal, and Kierkegaard's Schattenspiel, on the other hand, shows something of the metaphysics of the West vis-a-vis other cultures (at least Balinese culture) and the difference in mindset within each. These are some compelling insights.

This is going to be one of those books that makes me buy more books, isn't it? Ridley Walker sounds intriguing, for instance.

The chapter on Pinocchio is fascinating, and Gross shows some erudition in mentioning Coover's Pinocchio in Venice, much to his credit. However, his "hunger" metaphor stretches credulity to the point that the puppet's nose can't grow long enough to measure it.

The story of Cuttichio is heart-rending and compelling. A puppeteer destroys his own puppet as part of a performance, a demonstration of rage at the violence he had seen in Sicily (whether at thr hand of American soldiers or the mafioso) and of shame at his inheritance of a dying art, the waxing of the puppet theater.

I cannot tell you how badly I want to see the Shakespearean puppet plays Gross speaks about here. Alas, I shall just have to hope there are some youtube videos "out there" of them.

Now we are digging to the heart of the matter: the interplay between the puppeteer and the puppet, the limitations and expressions allowed only by the puppet's "thing-ness", the strangeness of life being expressed through that which is not alive.

[note to self: draw quotes from P 64, 65 that you've marked in the book]