At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay

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Opens ones eyes

Essential book to read before visiting Paraguay

Hate it or love it - I'm much more partial to the former

A Very Good Book with a Very Bad Title

Death by language

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay
John Gimlette
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | South America | Latin America | Travel | Subjects | Books
Paraguay & Uruguay | South America | Latin America | Travel | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1400078520
Release Date: 2005-03-08

Book Description

Haven to Nazis, smugglers’ paradise, home to some of the earth’s oddest wildlife and most baroquely awful dictatorships, Paraguay is a nation waiting for the right chronicler. In John Gimlette, at last it has one. With an adventurer’s sang-froid, a historian’s erudition, and a sense of irony so keen you could cut a finger on it, Gimlette celebrates the beauty, horror and–yes–charm of South America’s obscure and remote “island surrounded by land.”

He takes readers from genteel drawing rooms in Asuncion–where ladies still gossip about the nineteenth-century Irish adventuress who became Paraguay’s Empress to the “Green Hell” of the Chaco, a vast, inhospitable tract populated by aging Mennonites and discouraged Indians. Replete with eccentrics and scoundrels, ecologically minded cannibals and utopians from every corner of the earth, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig is a madly entertaining book.

Customer Reviews:

Opens ones eyes.......2007-09-26

Amazing book; though you may need to read it more than once (as I have) to fully digest its contents, particularly if you are not familiar with Paraguayan history (as I was not). While I am no literary expert, I found the tales quite inspiring and I have since visited many of the places in the book simply on the Author's account. Gimlette hides little of the brutal, yet fascinating, past or the continuing struggles and quirks of this relatively little known country. My copy is dog-eared and well traveled, and without it I would never have enjoyed my visits to Paraguay as much as I have.

Essential book to read before visiting Paraguay.......2007-08-12

John Gimlette is a travel writer in the same league as Eric Newby and Grahame Greene. I went for five days to Asuncion a couple of years ago and I wish I had read the book before I went instead of after; the city would have made a lot more sense (if that were possible).

Hate it or love it - I'm much more partial to the former.......2006-10-18

I was in Paraguay this past March.

I'd been living in Argentina as an English teacher and spent some time in Asuncion and Encarnacion, a city in the south just across the river from Argentina. While Paraguay is indeed a landlocked, little-known country, contrary to popular belief it's quite easy to reach. I took an 18 hour overnight bus nonstop to Asuncion from Buenos Aires, but for the more time sensitive there are short direct flights between Asuncion and Buenos Aires, amongst many other South American cities. The fact of the matter is, in the 21st century it's just not difficult to reach this country, distant - geographically and spiritually - as you may believe it to be.

Now about the book. Try as I might, I couldn't get past page 68. I knew something was amiss when I'd constantly put off reading it as I would homework in high school - not exactly a desired trait of so-called "pleasure" reading. While I concede that my brief exposure to this book may seem to limit my qualifications in effectively critiquing it, that I agonized in equal measure through the beggining, middle, and end of the passage I read strongly leads me to believe the rest of the book is unlikely to be very different. That said, caveat emptor: I did indeed only make it through 68 pages. My mind just wouldn't permit me any further. Here are a few observations.

- Each anecdote need be superfluously hyperbolic; each snippet of dialoge the height of melodrama or (attempted) wit. Every event described in this novel, no matter how trivial (example: putting on a suit) just has to be more interesting in Paraguay than at home. What a coincidence that when the author gets all dressed up to meet some of the Paraguayan government elite his finery is all bunched up and requires a frantic smoothing; save for the nice woman at the dry cleaners, most at home would find this hardly an event worthy of detailed description, much less in an exotic, faraway place. I guess it'd just be too easy to pass up an opportunity to artificially foment high drama, and in that regard, Gimlette succeeds extraordinarily well.

I don't completely blame him though. Take a quick look at most travel writing these days, and it becomes readily apparent that gratuitous over-dramatization has become the de rigueur writing style of employment. Either that or the always hilarious "fish out of water" tale. (Let me tell you about that time I spent all my money hitchhiking 10 hours to a decrepit Indian village despite not speaking a word of the local language and knowing nothing of their local cannibalistic customs...) Yes, Paraguay is quite an enigmatic place. But for all of the people who sit around pining for the days of the 1800's era President's mistress while feasting on tea and crumpets, most Paraguayans are out doing unromantic, normal things like marching off to work, talking on the phone, or even defecating. Of course, that's not very interesting - we in the civilized world hate it most to hear that all those people living outside of North America, Western Europe and Australia occasionally put down their spears to spend time with their family or catch an episode of the Simpsons like we do. Perhaps this insatiable demand for constant amusement is to blame for the hollow, over-sensationalized caricatures that many writers paint of the places they go.

- The thing is, Gimlette seems to be blissfully unaware of any of this (or maybe he simply doesn't care; after all this is his story). His tone is insufferably smug, chock full of attempts at esoteric allusions - many which reference his own underdeveloped declarations - as if he was talking to some like-minded friends, leaving the reader firmly out of the loop and scratching his head. Speaking of these "friends," oddly enough each one portrayed in the novel seems to have the same personality as the author. Not only content to be sarcastic, melodramatic and self-absorbed, every friend is required to end his exchange with the author with some half-baked one line revelation that attempts to be ironic or timelessly witty. Arnold Schwartzenegger these people are not, and this all grows old very quickly.

This book comes off much more as the author's vanity project than a portrait of an extraordinarily idosyncratic country. Yes, Paraguay is a very poor country with a tragic history of brutal governance. Ha, ha. Of course its history and current existence is ideal material for a book; like Uganda, Germany, or even Canada its story should undoubtedly be told. The thing is, Gimlette's approach is that of a self-satisfied outsider who knows it all and has oh-so-generously decided to indulge us all in what we really need to know about the place. Being that Paraguay is an untrammeled land that few visit, much less know anything about, the author's sense of authority/entitlement is made even greater. For the wide-eyed armchair traveller whose world exposure is limited to CNN or the BBC, this may not be a problem. But to anyone who's actually seen past the tired old cliches and prejudices firsthand (of any place, not just Paraguay), Gimlette's authority - much like the despots he chronicles with condescending amusement - serves only to benefit one person.

A Very Good Book with a Very Bad Title.......2006-06-09

Fascinated by Paraguay's uniqueness, Gimlette does an excellent job of conveying its geographic variety, its turbulent history, its bilingualism, and its fascinating mixture (and stubborn non-mixture) of races and cultures.

I had occasion to try it myself. My family lived in Paraguay for a year, in 1964-65, when my husband served as Community Development Advisor with the United Nations for a year. I worked on the third edition of "Land of Lace and Legend," a guidebook published by Las Amigas Norteamericanas del Paraguay to help newcomers adjust to the country. I was happy to find that Gimlette refers respectfully to a sixth edition.

His fascination with Paraguay is clear. His prose sparkles with humor and unexpected turns of phrase. The photographs, however, fail to convey much about present-day Paraguay. Las Amigas did a better job with illustrations.

Death by language.......2006-05-07

I was required to read this book for a Latin American geography course. As a geography major I was very interested to learn about Paraguay, because it is not well known to most Americans. Gimlette spent enough time in the country to be well versed in just about evey aspect of it, but how he communicates it to the reader is simply terrible. He sacrifices directness and brevity to fill the pages with whimsical adjectives that don't need to be there. Can anyone tell me what a "cooing, dovish waltz" is exactly? Sometimes his narration style is so casual that I'm not sure if he's providing accurate information or simply rumor and folklore. I found this book rather unpleasant to read.

Magical realism.(BOOKS)(A Death in Brazil : A Book of Omi)(At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig : Travels Through Paraguay)(Book Review) : An article from: Commonweal

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Magical realism.(BOOKS)(A Death in Brazil : A Book of Omi)(At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig : Travels Through Paraguay)(Book Review) : An article from: Commonweal
Joseph A. Page
Manufacturer: Commonweal Foundation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Commonweal, published by Commonweal Foundation on November 19, 2004. The length of the article is 1219 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Magical realism.(BOOKS)(A Death in Brazil : A Book of Omi)(At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig : Travels Through Paraguay)(Book Review)
Author: Joseph A. Page
Publication: Commonweal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 19, 2004
Publisher: Commonweal Foundation
Volume: 131 Issue: 20 Page: 29(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig Travels Through Paraguay

Average customer rating:

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig Travels Through Paraguay
Gimlette John
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

Challenges major economic thinkers and conventional economic theory in providing a detailed and revealing description of how market power imposes supply and manipulates demand to determine the actual prices we pay for the goods and services we need. Offers some prescriptions for solving what could become a source of social unrest in the 21st Century.

Book Description

A 19th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Finalist!

Take a revealing look at gay history--and the man who helped kickstart gay activism in today's society

The Mattachine is the origin of the contemporary American gay movement. One of the major players in this movement was Hal Call, America's first openly gay journalist and the man most responsible for the end of government censorship of frontal male nude photography through the mail. Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation, the Hal Call Chronicles travels back to the times before Stonewall and its aftermath, to the beginnings of the modern homosexual movement and the lesser-known individuals who started it. This stunning chronicle gives the unexpurgated history of the activists who organized homosexuals--using the biography of the controversial Hal Call as its springboard.

Behind the Mask of the Mattachine provides a revealing illustration of gay life in the past through an intergenerational history of the early gay men's movement. Noted author James T. Sears generously weaves oral history, seldom seen historical documents, and rare photographs to provide a rich behind-the-scenes look at the first wave of Mattachine activists and the emerging gay pornography industry. This historical chronicle of a previously neglected era is packed with details of Call's personal struggles, his celebration of the phallus, and his assertion linking homophobia and heteronormativity to our culture's sex-negative tradition. The reader is transported to the underworld of youthful hustlers, porno kingpins, spurned lovers, sex clubs, cruising grounds, secretive societies, and personal in-fighting over the direction of gay activism. This enthralling narrative is impeccably referenced.

Behind the Mask of the Mattachine examines:

The origins of the Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Foundation of Harry Hay and others of the "Fifth Order"
The Weimar Republic in Germany--the roots of the modern homosexual movement
Networking of homosexuals through correspondence clubs and speakeasies in Depression-era America
The intense rivalries between San Francisco and New York City Mattachine groups
Censorship of books, magazines, and films
And much more!

The book explores the lives of three generations of pre-Stonewall gay activists:

Magnus Hirschfeld and Benedikt Friedländer
Henry Gerber and Manual boyFrank
Harry Hay and Hal Call

Behind the Mask of the Mattachine puts a needed spotlight on a time in lesser-known gay history, and makes illuminating reading for historians and gay persons interested in the history of the gay men's movement.

Customer Reviews:

Sex, Politics and Desire.......2007-09-01

Sears, James. "Behind the Mask of the Mattachine: The Hal Call Chronicles and the Early Movement for Homosexual Emancipation", The Haworth Press, 2007.

Sex, Politics and Desire

Amos Lassen

The Mattachine Society is what began the movement for gay rights long before Stonewall. James Sears takes us back to the beginnings of the modern homosexual movement and to those unfamiliar names that were the early heroes of our movement. This is the first history of the activists that organized gay people and Sears looks at one in particular, Hal Call who was the consummate early activist. "Behind the Mask of the Mattachine Society" is a vivid history and Sears manages to create a wonderful book about an organization that we should know about but don't. Here is the genesis of the gay movement and it is examined richly and in great depth.
Using interviews, documents and analysis, Sears brings history to life, Hal Call was a "hard-nosed, self-sacrificing genius who energetically saved the movement" and with the study of Call the man, we have a history that has been hidden for all too long. At almost 600 pages in length, we get our history which reads like a living document. Sears looks at the debates with in our community all the way back in the nineteenth century and gives a penetrating look at those who made waves. We go up to the 60s and we watch Hall Call wrest power of the Mattachine Society from its founder Harry Hay and then save the movement from the probes of McCarthy.
The Mattachine Society was visionary both in its agenda and its self sacrifice. Hal Call was the first openly gay journalist in America and crusaded against government censorship of male sexual imagery. He was the leading conservative voice in the entire gay movement and his influence was great but largely unnoted. When he "stole" the leadership of the Society in 1953 he ruined the image that it had once had and it became a front for his own commercial enterprises. Yet the truth of the matter is a great deal more complex than this and this is what Sears finds. Even though he was contradictory, he was not only a political conservative but a sexual libertine and realized that sex was the single factor that brought all gay men together and it was sex that built a community.
The research that Sears did to write this work is monumental. He puts a whole new spin on everything, By doing so he lets us see those men that have been regarded as Communists--the founders of the Mattachine.
The book is interesting on every page and by reading it we learn what it was to be a gay man in the 1940s and 50s. The behind the scenes stories are fascinating and the new biography of Hal Cal fills in a lot of what we did not know.

Behind the Mattachine Mask.......2007-07-30

I'm not sure what Sears thinks he is doing but lumping together profiles of three generations of gay rights activists into his enormous, authoritative study, but if you ask me, I could have done without those heaping helpings of Hirshfield and Manuel Boy Frank.

Be that as it may, nothing will prepare you for the depth of research Sears has performed on the most interesting and still controversial years of gay liberation, the Mattachine Society and its series of constitutional conventions in 1953. After all the scholarship in the last 20 years on the subject, you'd think there would be no more to say, and yet Sears has found a way to put a new spin on everything but approaching the controversy from a completely different angle. This book doesn't treat Harry Hay as a sacred cow or some kind of Joan of Arc angel; indeed as the subtitle shows, Sears is here placing front and center Harry Hay's worst nightmare, the San Francisco printer and porn impresario Hal Call as the hidden master of the Mattachine.

It's an unconventional stance but it causes us to view anew our prejudices towards the original, "communist" founders of the Mattachine and to probe into a delicate area, to what extent did the "tainted" pasts of these leaders pre-doom the movement early on. Even to pose the question carries a thrill of transgression, and Sears winds up backing off from the implications of some of his answers. I had the funny feeling while reading the book that, as often as Sears speaks of Hal Call's heroic iconoclasm, his man's man stance towards sex and war and everything in between, that he (Sears) wound up not liking Call very much as a human being.

Much has been made of the unusual collage and enjambment methods Sears employed, almost like a novelist of the Dos Passos stripe, while putting together the multiple narratives of BEHIND THE MASK OF THE MATTACHINE. The effect is as hard to describe as to analyze, but sometimes entire chapters are worked up out of people's letters in a way that looks like a two-character play, as though they are speaking back and forth; sometimes Sears takes these quotes from actual correspondence between two people, but just as often there is no direct link between the speakers, and Sears is using them as a sort of point-counterpoint way to make us scrunch up our scalps and sigh over the unreliability of any one person to tell the truth about a complex social event.

His notes are generous and detailed; the problem is thatm in at least the one collection I'm familiar with, the Hal Call Papers at Los Angeles' One Institute, the papers themselves are barely organized rendering it impossible for Sears to actually be able to direct you into the right container, so it has been difficult for me to replicate all of his findings--the material is in what my dad used to call a shambles. Nevertheless I must say that Sears has done amazing work making sense, for example, of the poet Jack Spicer's role in Bay Area Mattachine affairs, and he gives us example after example of the ways in which Spicer served in multiple capacities in the Oakland Area Chapter, not just as a dilettante or looker-on, but getting his hands dirty in every conceivable way, far beyond what any of us had previously imagined.

A vast compendium.......2007-07-12

Of an early British historian it was said that "he makes a heap of all he knows." So too James T. Spears in this vast, sprawling volume. However, much of what is in the heap is intensely interesting. The detailed quotations, revealed by Spears' archival research, help us to realize what it was like to be a gay man in the forties and fifties, an era that now seems almost prehistoric.

The blurb says that Hal Call saved the gay movement. I don't think that that is the story this book tells. Instead, it shows how one man pioneered in turning the purposes of the gay movement to a commercial porno enterprise. This was far from the noble vision of Harry Hay, Dorr Legg, Don Slater and the other Los Angeles pioneers. Call's legacy is an ambivalent one, but it proved influential.

The REAL Story--Finally!.......2007-01-01

This is a GREAT book! Full of behind the scenes stories of the early gay movement that other historians have been too timid or lazy to uncover. Sears does a terrific job in not only writing the biography of Hal Call, one of the key leaders of the Mattachine Society, but of integrating that story with the real story of 70 years of gay organizing before Stonewall. To top it off he does a brilliant job documenting the connection between gay activism and gay sexuality. This book belongs on the bookshelf of any person who really wants to know about our gay history and heritage!

Call Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a Transexual

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Call Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a Transexual
Nelson
Manufacturer: Writers Club Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

A Powerful Story of Survival.

Overcoming prejudice through childhood, ostracized by the Church, criticized by many for making a living as a female impersonator...

An impelling story that begins when a male prostitute convinces a new client to be a madam of a call service and house, catering to the needs of a growing number of gay men.

A story that concludes with a decision that is most courageous—to change sex and deal with all the obstacles that go along with it.

Male Call: Becoming Jack London (New Americanists)

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An exemplary study of London and US imperial malehood.

Male Call: Becoming Jack London (New Americanists)
Jonathan Auerbach , and Jonathan Auerbach
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

When Jack London died in 1916 at age forty, he was one of the most famous writers of his time. Eighty years later he remains one of the most widely read American authors in the world. The first major critical study of London to appear in a decade, Male Call analyzes the nature of his appeal by closely examining how the struggling young writer sought to promote himself in his early work as a sympathetic, romantic man of letters whose charismatic masculinity could carry more significance than his words themselves.
Jonathan Auerbach shows that London’s personal identity was not a basis of his literary success, but rather a consequence of it. Unlike previous studies of London that are driven by the author’s biography, Male Call examines how London carefully invented a trademark “self” in order to gain access to a rapidly expanding popular magazine and book market that craved authenticity, celebrity, power, and personality. Auerbach demonstrates that only one fact of London’s life truly shaped his art: his passionate desire to become a successful author. Whether imagining himself in stories and novels as a white man on trail in the Yukon, a sled dog, a tramp, or a professor; or engaging questions of manhood and mastery in terms of work, race, politics, class, or sexuality, London created a public persona for the purpose of exploiting the conventions of the publishing world and marketplace.
Revising critical commonplaces about both Jack London’s work and the meaning of “nature” within literary naturalism and turn-of-the-century ideologies of masculinity, Auerbach’s analysis intriguingly complicates our view of London and sheds light on our own postmodern preoccupation with celebrity. Male Call will attract readers with an interest in American studies, American literature, gender studies, and cultural studies.

Customer Reviews:

An exemplary study of London and US imperial malehood........1999-05-21

A deeply historicized, wry, and often funny look at the process by which London fashioned a model of US masculine selfhood and expanded territories of (barely sublimated) territorial/regional conquest. One of the best books I know on a single-author study of a Pacific author from imperial era of national expansion, then or now [sic].

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One Of Her Best!
From the back cover:
Weird Proportions

Male Call (Single In The City)
Heather Macallister
Manufacturer: Harlequin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0373691289

Customer Reviews:

One Of Her Best!.......2007-09-11

Even though Male Call is actually part of a three-book group, it was great to see it back on the bookshelves! I bought it... again. I had forgotten just how entertaining the "skirt" series was, and was delighted to re-read Male Call. Now I need to find the other two!

From the back cover:.......2005-09-20

The City: San Francisco, California

The Single: Desperate but determined computer geek Marnie LaTour

The Solution: The Skirt

After the guy she thinks she's dating tells her she's not girlfirend material, Marnie LaTour decides to make some changes. She's going to learn how to be a femme fatale - or else. Only, attracting guys isn't as tough as she thinks. Especially when she's wearing the skirt her landlady swears works like a man magnet. And it sure isn't long before rugged construction worker Zack Renfrew finds himself under the influence.

Single in the City - It's a dating wasteland out there!

Weird Proportions.......2003-05-18

I love Franco! Better than a big brother, he's protective, knows his color swatches, and really cares about the other characters. Marnie, well she realizes her attractiveness and catches onto the "girlfriend" too quickly to make her believable. Also, the way she and Zach misunderstand each other is just ridiculous. Otherwise it is a pleasant read.

Male Call 112 Of The GI Comic Strips By That Name

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Male Call 112 Of The GI Comic Strips By That Name
Milton Caniff
Manufacturer: Simon and Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J1S0SY

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Call Boy
Tony Calvin
Manufacturer: Ember Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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I am a Hollywood call boy
Mark Shelby
Manufacturer: Brandon House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007HJ5BQ

Just Call Me Mr. Wonderful: The Single Woman's Handbook, Translating 101 of the Most Popular Expressions, Excuses, and Come-Ons Rehearsed to Perfecti (Studies ... in contemporary female/male relationships)

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Just Call Me Mr. Wonderful: The Single Woman's Handbook, Translating 101 of the Most Popular Expressions, Excuses, and Come-Ons Rehearsed to Perfecti (Studies ... in contemporary female/male relationships)
D.V. Robbins
Manufacturer: Grunwald & Radcliff Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0915133075

LOVERS, FRIENDS, SLAVES... ". The Nine Male Sexual Types. Their Psycho- Sexual Transactions With Call Girls

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LOVERS, FRIENDS, SLAVES... ". The Nine Male Sexual Types. Their Psycho- Sexual Transactions With Call Girls
Martha L Stein
Manufacturer: Berkley Pub. Corp., NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0425027538

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Lovers, friends, slaves: The nine male sexual types, their psycho-sexual transactions with call girls
Martha L Stein
Manufacturer: Berkley Pub. Corp. : distributed by Putnam
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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