8 July 2009

BIGFOOT IN AMERICA AND CHINA: A CONVERSATION ABOUT WILDMEN

At the beginning of June Peter Rogerson wrote a review of Joshua Blu Buhs' book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Mystery:
(http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2009/06/joshua-blu-buhs.html).
Peter thought this was an excellent book, describing it as "likely to the be the definitive history of the Bigfoot of the imagination for some considerable time" and concluding "Buhs' study is very much in the Magonian psychosocial tradition, even to the practice of the dreaded cult of librarianship, in that his expeditions are to remote and barely accessible archives, rather than remote valleys and mountain peaks. Here however he meets Bigfoot as it once was, before the numerous revisionings."
🔻
I've just had a email from Stephanie Hlywak, of the University of Chicago Press, the book's publishers:

"Thanks for the review of Joshua Buhs ’s Bigfoot. Given your interest in the book, I thought you might be want to read a series I’m publishing this week on our blog: it’s a conversation between Buhs and Sigrid Schmalzer (author of a book called The People’s Peking Man about popular science in China) about the wildmen of their respective books and what they do and don’t have in common. The first installment is up today, and the conversation will continue tomorrow and Thursday. Please feel free to link to it and tell your readers about it. It’s a fascinating conversation!"

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2009/07/07/bigfoot_and_the_yeren_a_conver.html

It looks as though this is going to be a very interesting conversation, with bigfoot and the yeren as 'wildmen', being discussed in a psychosocial context. I will be following it with interest. Part two is now up on line:

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2009/07/08/bigfoot_and_the_yeren_part_ii.html

The third and final part is now ready:

http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2009/07/09/bigfoot_and_the_yeren_part_iii.html

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