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3.0 von 5 Sternen
Average At Best, 14. März 2000
An Underground Education has an admirable premise: fill us in on, or disabuse the reader of, various myths, misconceptions, suppressed facts, the "Arcana Mundi." And indeed, Richard Zachs does this with some skill, energy and wit. However, the information contained in the book, despite being divided by topics such as politics, art, and of course, sex, is too brief: By trying to touch on just about everything under the sun (or should I write, hiding in the shadows?) in the less-pristine history of humanity, the author falls prey to his own dislike of ignorance, dogmatic teaching, and general ineptness among supposed scholars and luminaries. For example, in his discussion of the long-toed shoes, or poulaines, which he rightly places after his juicily giddy discussion of codpieces, he fails to explore the equally juicy history of the poulaines; European folk beliefs equated foot-fize with penis-size (think also of noses...) and the tips of the poulaines were thus phallic symbols. The tops of poulaines were also often painted with images of male genitals. The author also fails completely to discuss (was he even aware) the female-analogue of the codpiece: the merkin, or a wig for the pubes...One has to dig for this sort of information. To look at the bibliography, the author consults with, at most, two or three sources when writing his entries. In effect, he has done little of his own research, despite crowing about his own linguistic abilities. Ovid's Ars Amatoria surely belongs somewhere in this book; sadly, Latin is not listed as one of the author's mastered languages. There are good translations, to be sure. Another example: Mr. Zachs labors to tell us about Joan of Arc's clothing, and correctly points out the her then-crime of wearing men's clothing; and also that she died at the hands (or whims?) of France and the Holy Catholic Church. However, he fails to strip away the saviour/warrior myths of St. Joan. She was an extraordinary young woman in many ways, but she was not at all like the statuesque Milla Jovovich hacking her way through the enemies of France. Mr. Zachs simply has not bothered, in several instances, to question his own assumptions and erroneous teachings, and this harms an otherwise entertaining and at times biting social commentary. Other nit-picking: Either his editor was asleep, or Mr. Zachs himself missed the boat again and again when going over the galleys before the final printing: weird punctuation, odd word-choice and usage, fanciful grammer. This could have been a much better book, had he narrowed his scope, looked more deeply into his subjects, and learned how to punctuate.
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