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Anthropology: 101 True Love Stories by Dan Rhodes
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(Paperback - Reprint)
Write a Review- Publisher: Canongate Books
- Pub. Date: April 2005
- ISBN-13: 9781841956497
- Sales Rank: 436,308
- 202pp
- Edition Description: Reprint
Synopsis
Simplicity finds enormous power in Dan Rhodes's offbeat collection of short (very short) stories. With his award-winning Timoleon Vieta Come Home and chick-lit send-up (under the nom de plume Danuta De Rhodes) The Little White Car, his authorial range became obvious. Now his remarkable collection, Anthropology, only enhanced Rhodes's reputation. Declared one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2003, Rhodes possesses a talent for understated wallops and profound humor, which he devotes to unraveling sex, love, dating, and the confoundingly beautiful, inscrutable girlfriend in these short (but intense) musings.
Publishers Weekly
An ingenious project in prose construction, Rhodes's book of short stories is composed of 101 tales, each containing exactly 101 words. The short-shorts boast an economy of language common to prose poems, or even sonnets, and the subject matter is love. The speaker appears to have a new girlfriend in each story. The women have names like Mazzy, Xanthe, Treasure, Foxglove or more commonly, "My girlfriend," and the adventures of the various lovers are alternately funny, goofy, clever and surreal, with an occasional drop of pathos for the speaker's oft-thwarted heart. Angelique drives the speaker to stick pins in his face, Paris is literally catatonic after her bike is stolen, Tortoiseshell is in jail, Celestia may just be a bunch of chemicals, Amber goes to the grocery store naked. The best pieces, the ones that feature comic, misunderstood dialogue between lovers, resemble poet Hal Sirowitz's humorous Mother Said, while other pieces are overly Brautigan inspired. Many of these feature a story line of the girlfriend who is so beautiful that the speaker feels sorry for her ex-boyfriends, but is also petrified at the possibility of becoming one of them. In spite of some less than sparkling entries, most of these little nuggets are fun, quirky and occasionally poetically lovely. They gather steam, increasing in violence, heartbreak and intensity as the book progresses. Like the French poetry movement Oulipo--an experimental group whose projects included the writing of an entire novel without using the letter "e"--Rhodes seems to have created a new, ostensibly senseless form that yields some true delights. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Dubbed nothing less than "the best new writer in Britain" by The Guardian, Dan Rhodes was selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists and tapped by the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program in 2003.
More About the Author
Fact File
Name:
Dan Rhodes
Current Home:
Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
Date of Birth:
February 26, 1972
Place of Birth:
Croydon, Surrey, England
Education:
B.A., University of Glamorgan, 1994; M.A., University of Glamorgan, 1998
Good to Know
In our interview, Rhodes shared some fun facts about himself with us:
"When I was 22, I was fired from a sensible office job after nine days for my failure to adapt to an adult environment. I still have difficulty acting in a grown-up manner, and this gets me into all kinds of trouble."
"The pinnacle of my showbiz career came when a copy of my first book, Anthropology, was seen on Carrie's desk in an episode of Sex and the City. It's been downhill ever since."
"I was in the audience at the final concerts of both the Smiths and the Spice Girls."
Feature Interview
In the fall of 2003, Dan Rhodes took some time to talk with us about his favorite books, authors, and interests. What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer -- and why?
This is a really difficult question. I suppose I should go back to my childhood, and a book that blew me away and made me oblivious to everything going on around me. I'll say The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I have no idea if I would appreciate these stories as much now, but at the time they really made me realize what wonderful thing books could be.
What are your ten favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
This list changes by the hour, but here are my favorites right now:
What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
I hardly ever watch films. Once or twice a year I'll try, but I almost never enjoy them. I sit there wishing I were watching a decent TV program (classic Frasier, or the Westbridge High years of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, for example), or, of course, reading a book. The only films I can stomach are funny ones. The one that's given me most enjoyment over the years is This Is Spinal Tap. I also love Billy Liar, which I first saw when I was an uncannily Billy Liar-esque 19-year-old, and it petrified me out of my torpor. I've also enjoyed Gummo and Spiceworld, but that's about all.
What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you like to listen to when you're writing?
I'm a pop fan. I love the Smiths to distraction. I listen to a lot of Magnetic Fields, Giant Sand, Arthur Lee from Love is a big hero of mine (I've always gone for the wrong role models), Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Daniel Johnston, the late great Townes Van Zandt, the Four Tops, the Shangri-Las, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, and a lot of really obvious pop. I recently went through a phase of several months where I only listened to the hits of Roxette and Ace of Base. It was a very difficult time of my life, so I hope you can understand and forgive me.
If you had a book club, what would it be reading -- and why?
I'm strangely allergic to dissecting books, and I feel uncomfortable talking about them in an analytical way, so you won't ever catch me in a book group. But if the alternative to joining a book club was death, I suppose I would be tiresomely evangelizing about Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton, as usual.
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
I spent years working in a bookshop, so I can't remember the last time somebody gave me a book as a gift -- they see it as taking coals to Newcastle. I'm always giving books as gifts, though -- I tend to give ones that I'm crazy about, and the kind of books that I think would suit people. Often they are photography books -- I've lost count of the amount of copies of This Is Blythe by Gina Garan that I've given to people. It's a wonderful book of portraits of a doll who, like me, was born in 1972. I've also given people Martin Parr by Val Williams. This is a huge retrospective of Parr's work -- he's the best photographer in Britain.
Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
I usually write after dark with a beer on my desk. I follow in the rich tradition of drunken authors -- all my books owe a lot to the bottle.
What are you working on now?
Nothing, and I'm loving it.
Many writers in the Discover program are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
I had my first offer from a publisher on my 27th birthday. I had been sending work out for about a year, which is a relatively short period for a new writer so I can't claim decades of prepublication struggle. That said, I'm on my third book at the moment, and I've not yet had anything that could realistically be called a hit. My rejection horror stories have carried on well into my professional career -- Timoleon Vieta Come Home was turned down by its original British publisher because they said it "would not stand up to critical scrutiny." I had to spend a miserable year ferociously defending it, and I eventually wrestled it away from them and found another publisher, one who saw where my writing was coming from and appreciated it. If there's anything inspirational to be found in this dismal anecdote it's that there's a real possibility that people who tell you that your work is worthless are badly wrong. So stuff them to hell and back."
If you could choose one new writer to be "discovered," who would it be -- and why?
I just read an advance copy of a book called Jim Giraffe, by the English writer Daren King. Jim is a ghost giraffe who haunts a sexually repressed sci-fi fanatic. It's the kind of book that exists in its own little world. Daren King's really stuck his neck out (pun intended) and written a work of wonderful lunacy that knocks spots off (sorry) most new fiction. I hope it finds a U.S. publisher and does incredibly well.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
It's hard to say. I don't feel as though I've been around long enough to offer sage advice. Also, I wouldn't want to encourage people to waste their time writing a book that will never come out. I don't want to sound too Simon Cowell about this, but the chances are you won't get published and would be much better off spending your time doing something else, like learning Welsh. That said, if writing is something you really, truly enjoy then that's an end in itself. And if it's something you're deadly serious about, then I'm afraid you're going to have to let it dominate your every moment to the detriment of your social, romantic, and professional lives. Otherwise you just aren't trying hard enough, and if you're not trying hard enough you're not going to write the best book you possibly can, and if you're not writing the best book you possibly can, you might as well not bother writing anything at all. That sounds gloomy, but it's a gloomy job, and I'm a gloomy bastard.
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In the summer of 2004, we asked authors featured in Meet the Writers to give us a list of their all-time favorite summer reads, and tell us what makes them just right for the season. Here's what Dan Rhodes had to say:
From the Publisher
"Crying":
story number 13 from Anthropology
"My girlfriend left me, and I started crying in my sleep. My nightly lament became so loud that my neighbors called the police. The press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. Television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. They tracked her to her new boyfriend's house. I watched the coverage. People were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that I should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl."
In 101 words each, the 101 witty, haunting stories of Anthropology chronicle the search for love in an age preoccupied with sex. Each story is a pure distillation of heartbreak, longing, delusion, and bliss. Each spins speedily, shockingly, to its unpredictable climax. And each is unlike anything you have read before.
Anthropology's macabre humor builds imperceptibly, story by story and girlfriend by girlfriend, until it reflects with surreal accuracy how we try to complete ourselves through—or at the expense of—another. Read it to laugh and forget your sorrows; read it to recognize and remember your delights; read it to discover a vivid, provocative new talent.
Publishers Weekly
An ingenious project in prose construction, Rhodes's book of short stories is composed of 101 tales, each containing exactly 101 words. The short-shorts boast an economy of language common to prose poems, or even sonnets, and the subject matter is love. The speaker appears to have a new girlfriend in each story. The women have names like Mazzy, Xanthe, Treasure, Foxglove or more commonly, "My girlfriend," and the adventures of the various lovers are alternately funny, goofy, clever and surreal, with an occasional drop of pathos for the speaker's oft-thwarted heart. Angelique drives the speaker to stick pins in his face, Paris is literally catatonic after her bike is stolen, Tortoiseshell is in jail, Celestia may just be a bunch of chemicals, Amber goes to the grocery store naked. The best pieces, the ones that feature comic, misunderstood dialogue between lovers, resemble poet Hal Sirowitz's humorous Mother Said, while other pieces are overly Brautigan inspired. Many of these feature a story line of the girlfriend who is so beautiful that the speaker feels sorry for her ex-boyfriends, but is also petrified at the possibility of becoming one of them. In spite of some less than sparkling entries, most of these little nuggets are fun, quirky and occasionally poetically lovely. They gather steam, increasing in violence, heartbreak and intensity as the book progresses. Like the French poetry movement Oulipo--an experimental group whose projects included the writing of an entire novel without using the letter "e"--Rhodes seems to have created a new, ostensibly senseless form that yields some true delights. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
Library Journal
Anthropology is a debut collection of 101 love stories, each 101 words long. Rhodes's method is to sketch a ready-made romantic drama and then push one of its elements past the point of absurdity. The form does not allow for in-depth character development, and at times we seem to be skimming through a dream journal or the transcript of a surreal therapy session. This is not really a weakness, since the sudden deaths, betrayals, and other atrocities are described with a warped, deadpan humor that ties the stories together surprisingly well. Although readers will laugh out loud at points, there is a sinister quality to this book, perhaps a guilty reaction from taking pleasure in the nameless narrator's suffering. Anthropology might make an interesting anniversary present for an ex-lover, but be sure to leave the room before he or she begins reading. Recommended for libraries with a younger, hip readership or for the collection of a writing program. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/00.]--Philip Santo, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Anthropology 101 is a beginning course on the study of Man. Anthropology consists of 101 extremely short short stories (101 words) that explore the interactions between men and women. The nameless, often-hapless male narrators describe with sometimes poignant, sometimes bizarre detail their relationships with such girlfriends as Tortoiseshell, Treasure, Paris, or Azure. These brief summaries are frequently the written equivalent of slapstick or pratfalls, but just as often, the surprising twists provoke new thinking about age-old quandaries. Personalities are quickly and surely drawn. Readers meet the "bland" girlfriend who surrounds herself with used yogurt cups, and an unemployed girl who could think of no hobbies other than smoking to put on her job application. Some situations are funny, some sad, and some even a little perverse, but taken as a whole, they give a sense of the endless variety possible in the basically universal story of boy meets girl, boy loves girl, and either wins or, more often, loses her. This collection is a literary curiosity developed with wit and skill, and is a wonderful basis for an assignment as well as a literate study of the human condition.-Susan H. Woodcock, Chantilly Regional Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Internet Book Watch
Anthropology is a collection of humorous, surreal, cleverly crafted short stories with a special twist. Each of the 101 stories by Dan Rhodes is precisely 101 words in length. Each funny, heartbreaking, sweet, and true tale is told economically while capturing the many complex emotions that encompass the notion of love. Here is love in all its aspects, fancies, facets, and guises. Anthropology is one of those anthologies that will be read again and again, clearly establishing Dan Rhodes as a skilled, innovative, and talented writer to be reckoned with and sought out in the future.
The Times (London)
Complex and playful–crushingly wicked moments make it perfectly bite-sized reading.
Kirkus Reviews
Britisher Rhodes appears to enter the contest for smallest book of the year, offering 101 pieces said each to be 101 words long. But he doesn't take the prize from the reigning Marty Asher, whose Boomer (p. 400) also had 101 tiny sections.
What People Are Saying
Jonathan Ames
You hungrily absorb this book the way you do Nietzsche's aphorisms: You look for truths; you look for yourself; you look for explanations. Of course this is more fun than Nietzsche because there are more laughs. Rhodes boils down the stories of love between men and women to their comic, sad, and mad essentials: why we want each other and why we repel each other.
—author of The Extra Man and What's Not to Love?
Matthew Klam
Dan Rhodes is the master of a new art form. In the blink of an eye he tells you everything. He's a brilliant writer who puts lightning in the spaces between words and, in one paragraph, creates a world.
—author of Sam the Cat
Product Details
- ISBN:
184195649X
- ISBN-13: 9781841956497
- Format: Paperback, 202pp
- Publisher: Canongate Books
- Pub. Date: April 2005
- Edition Description: Reprint
- Sales Rank: 436,308
Read an Excerpt
ANTHROPOLOGYI loved an anthropologist. She went to Mongolia to study the gays. At first she kept their culture at arm's length, but eventually she decided that her fieldwork would benefit from assimilation. She worked hard to become as much like them as possible, and gradually she was accepted. After a while she ended our romance by letter. It breaks my heart to think of her herding those yaks in the freezing hills, the peak of her leather cap shielding her eyes from the driving wind, her wrist dangling away, and nothing but a handlebar mustache to keep her top lip warm.
ASHES
My girlfriend died. We hadn't been together long, and I had felt indifferent toward her. She left me her ashes. "What should I do with them?" I asked her family.
"She wanted you to decide.' I really didn't care. "You two were so in love; we're leaving it up to you to choose her final resting place.' They were incredibly compassionate, and the pressure was enormous. I found myself in a helicopter, scattering her over the meadow where she had ridden her pony as a girl. Her family watched, weeping their final goodbyes as the little gray flecks fell to earth.
BABY
My girlfriend's pregnancy lasted over two years. "Maybe the doctor's right," I said. "Maybe a baby isn't going to come." She wouldn't listen. She carried on buying diapers, teething rings, woolly hats and mittens, and little bits and pieces for the nursery. One afternoon I came home to find her cradling a bundle in her arms.
"Look," she said. "It's arrived. It's a boy, and it's got your eyes."
"Well done," I said. "Congratulations."
"And congratulations to you too. After all, you don't become a father every day!'
"I suppose not. But really it's you that's done all the hard work."
BEAUTY
My girlfriend is so beautiful that she has never had cause to develop any kind of personality. People are always wildly glad to see her, even though she does little more than sit around and smoke. She's getting prettier, too. Last time she left the house she caused six car crashes, two coronaries, about thirty domestic disputes and an estimated six hundred unwanted and embarrassing erections. She seems to be quite indifferent to the havoc she causes. "I'm going to the shop for cigarettes," she'll say, yawning with that succulent, glossy mouth. "I suppose you'd better call some ambulances or something!'
BINDING
I found my girlfriend smashing our two year-old's toes with a rock. I told her to stop. "What are you doing?" I cried, above the baby's agonized wails.
"You wouldn't understand," she said, winding a bandage tightly around the crushed digits. "It's a woman thing. It'll help her get a boyfriend:'
"But darling, don't you remember what the doctor told us? It's a boy baby?'
"Really?" She looked surprised. "Oh well. Men look nice with small feet too. I expect he'll be gay, anyway. He's got that look about him. See?" I had to agree that she had a point.
BLIND
My girlfriend used my going blind as an excuse to start dressing sloppily. In the days when I could see her, she had always looked immaculate in the latest cuts of the best designer labels. Now, her high heels have been replaced by sneakers, her silk stockings and short skirts by jeans, and her smart blouses and figure-hugging jackets by baggy sweaters. I haven't said anything yet, but its getting to the point where I'm embarrassed to be seen with her as she gently holds my hand and guides me along, making sure I don't trip or bump into anything.
BULLETIN
My girlfriend is so lovely that I can't help feeling sorry for all her ex-boyfriends. I'm sure they must spend all their time thinking about her and wondering what she could be up to. So every month I send them a bulletin detailing all the pretty things she has said and done. Sometimes I enclose a discarded pair of tights, or the stub of an eyebrow pencil. I feel I should do everything I can to make up for them having lost a girl with such soft brown hair, and whose feet are so small you can hardly see them.
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