A witty, tightly written, and well-integrated look at our eternal
struggles between order and chaos and the need to find a practical
medium. Since the time the Creator in Genesis divided light from
dark, Zerubavel (sociology/Rutgers) says, we have continued to
follow His example by structuring our own lives into territories,
partitions, classes, and other "discrete islands of meaning" that
are both comforting and constricting. This is especially true when
such demarcations as white and black, Gentile and Jew, or
homosexual and heterosexual pose more trouble than they are worth.
Growing up in Israel during the 1950's, Zerubavel witnessed
firsthand humanity's "inordinate preoccupation with boundaries"
that are often self-imposed illusions. Here, he suggests ways we
can ease our common "fear of dissolving" by being more tolerant of
ambiguities and striking a compromise "between the ocean and the
bathtub." It therefore makes sense that his writing takes "quantum
leaps across mental divides" with a "gelatinous" meld of
psychology, theology, literature, theater, art, math, zoology, and
even embryology in an attempt to help us open our "ossified mental
cages." He examines, for example, the open-ended criteria
separating man from ape, the ambiguous civil rights of fetuses, and
the multiple meanings behind Freudian slips, and offers ingenious
analyses of iconoclasts such as M.C. Escher, Jorge Luis Borges, and
Lewis Carroll - all of whom, Zerubavel says, challenged the "solid
entities" of time and space. A bright overview unafraid to glean
the beauty in "blurred-edge essences" and to expose the hazards of
the rigid mind when nature prefers "twilight zones." (Kirkus
Reviews)
Eviatar Zerubavel argues that most of the distinctions we make in
our daily lives and in our culture are social constructs. He
questions the notion that a clear line can be drawn to separate one
time or object or concept from another, and presents witty and
provocative counterexamples in defense of ambiguity and anomaly.
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