According to Torgovnick, the modern quest for ecstasy began during the upheavals of World War I, with a dread that Western civilization had taken the demonic turn. She tells the stories of culture icons such as Carl Jung, Isak Dinesen, D. H. Lawrence, and Georgia O'Keeffe as they discovered-whether with horror or relish-the primitive as a medium for soul-searching and personal change. Such persons have become role models, rousing people today who ache to experience what they sense to be humanity's primary meaningful link to the universe. It is this yearning, the desire to transcend the limitations of the body and western culture, as Torgovoick contends, that motivates an astonishing variety of contemporary practices stimulated by the primitive-such as genital piercing, New Age rituals , and the men's movement. Torgovnick explores the psychology of our profound attraction to cultures we call "primitive." Whether located in Africa, the South Pacific, or the American Southwest, the primitive has become synonymous in the Western imagination with a range of emotions and experiences thought to be lost in modern life: reverence for the land and for nature; strong communal bonds; sexual plenitude; and, perhaps most intriguing, an ecstatic sense of connection to the universe and the life force. Torgovoick investigates the numerous ways we have turned toward the primitive out of spiritual hunger for such deeply human experiences-a hunger that could once be satisfied within the West's own mystical traditions but that often no longer can be. Written in a flowing, page-turning style. this tour of early twentieth century infatuation with the primitive utilizes many sources to offer a cultural history that is entertaining despite its lack of theoretical insight into our cultural dilemmas. The volume consists of a laundry list of aspects of our culture. Religion, art, psychology, and literature are exploited for their insight into our ideas of spirituality and gender, and, ultimately, into the hidden but vital parts of ourselves.

This is a great book and a fascinating topic -- the way that Western peoples react to "the other," from rejection to outright cultural theft. Content deals with everything from art and design to popular media portrayals of the "primitive," to scholarly works such as Margaret Mead's Samoan study.

The issue of "Transcendental Homelessness" is at the core of this very expansive look at mechanism of power surrounding primitivism and the continuing effect it has on the discourse of "us" vs. "them". Through the mechanism of the gaze (or reverse gaze, I should say), Torgovnick reverses the microscope of the humanities on the well positioned narrative of the "savage" as constructed by Bronislaw Malinowski, Michel Leiris, Sigmund Freud, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Roger Fry, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence and William Rubin. With this inclusion of modernist stars it is easy for her to construct a critique on modernism, its colonial project and its lingering effects. The power of her inclusion leaves one to wonder what happened to those she left out. Make no mistake about it, the book is a well researched critique of primitivism as a production of the west through the construction of images of the primitive or savage - placing "them" in the position of the "Other". Ultimately, she comes around to the ever familiar theme of the effect on colonialism as a strategy to maintain much cultivated notions of masculinity, hence the reference to transcendental homelessness. Funny as it may seem, Torgovnick reverses the notion of homelessness not as a "going away" but rather a "coming home" an imagined return to the 'universal' mankind of the primitive.

It is always welcome to get a second look, a different perspective. As a man in the already very gendered discourse called humanity, it is nice to examine things from a different point of view. As a case in point, one that hit home is Torgovnick's examinination of what "was the way that gender issues always inhabit Western versions of the primitive" (p. 17). Moreover, this same project includes the issue of voice and how, for example, Africa has no voice in the west until the Westerners give it one, the narrative of Africa in the west is then constructed through such unrepresentative lines as "Me Tarzan, you Jane". Make no mistake, her agenda here is decolonialization and feminist owing to a deconstructing mechanism of unmasking primitivism and identifying what might seem like a benign source of sign construction such as literature ad art - but make no mistake, the constructions and effects are as real as any other.

Allow me to just close by saying that this sense of "Otherness" is real and magnified through some very real and representative examples in art and is very much alive and is used (maybe unconsciously) as a way to marginalize and exploit. Primitivism is akin and part and parcel of the toolset of modernity and brought out into the open by the courageous Ms. Torgovnick. I am reminded of Edward Said and his project of deconstructing "Orientalism" and the misrepresentations of the Arab in western cinema and the negative effects resulting therefrom. Torgovnick's work is refreshing and poses very fundamental questions of how we construct the "us" by constructing images and notions of "them" or the "Other". After reading Torgovnick, I quickly ran to my shelf and pulled out my old copy of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and within the spaces of sexism and racism, Conrad took on a whole new dimension. Certainly not the most comprehensive and not the definitive piece on the subject, it is nevertheless compelling reading and thought provoking. Who knows, it may be destined for the dusty libraries of well read, well intentioned, liberal minded graduate students like myself but hopefully your reading this review is a small step in reversing that.

Miguel Llora

I agree with other reviewers that Torgovnick is relentlessly negative about her Italian-American upbringing, but that is just one example of what I find to be the larger problem in her writings; she's down on everything, but not in any way that you'll find enlightening.

In "On Being White, Female, and Born in Bensonhurst" Torgovnick addresses a racially motivated killing. What makes the essay so unsatisfying is the shallowness of her analysis of the event and her neighborhood's reaction to it. The upshot of her essay is "They reacted that way because that's the way they are. Isn't it awful? (And incidently, I've moved way beyond them in many ways.)" If she wants to knock her neighborhood, all right, but give us some insight into *why* they are the way they are.

This shallow, rather bitter pose towards life typifies the book. Some psychologists maintain that a fundamental personality characteristic that colors much of who we are is the extent to which we see the world as a place of opportunity, life, and pleasure, versus seeing the world as a place of hostility and danger. Torgovnick seems solidly in the latter camp. "The College Way" is a bitter recrimination of the culture at a New England college, "The Godfather" criticizes the literary establishment, and so on. Angry, avenging angels with a sharp eye for dry rot in a culture can be thrilling to read (think of Malcolm X, Martin Luther); a strident malcontent who believes that world is fundamentally unfair to *her* and people like her is not all that interesting.

A major reason Italian-Americans so often are portrayed negatively is they've not been validated by their intellectual class. Instead, I-A intellectuals sell out to mainstream America for career advancements. This gives credence to stereotypes. De Marco Torgovnick, as she presents herself in this well written but unfortunate book, is a classic example. She benefited enormously from her culture but only begrudgingly gives it any positive strokes. What a disappointment.

Dr. Marianna De Marco Torgovnick is professor specializing in American Literature in the English Department of Duke University, located in Durham, North Carolina. This book is a series of essays about her life during and after growing up as an Italian-American in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, New York. Here are the contents of the essays in her book:

(1) "On Being White, Female and Born in Bensonhurst" describes life in Dr. Torgovnick's neighborhood, looking back from the present. (2) The title essay, "Crossing Ocean Parkway," portrays this famous Brooklyn thoroughfare as a symbol of a dividing line between the author's neighborhood and an outside world she saw as much more desirable than her home arena. (3) "The College Way" charts Dr. Torgovnick's arrival as a new Ph.D. in a small, New England college town, where she faced prejudice because of being Italian-American. (4) In "Dr. Doolittle and the Acquisitive Life," "The Paglia Principle," and "The Godfather as the World's Most Typical Novel," Torgovnick interweaves autobiographical comments with observations on American culture in the areas of individuality vs. community, upward mobility vs. ethnic loyalty, and acquisitiveness vs. spirituality. (5) "The Politics of 'We'" is, to me, the most significant essay in the book, because in it Dr. Torgovnick finally admits that she received valuable things from her Italian-American heritage. Up until this point, she has been constantly directly and indirectly putting down her background. On describing her return home to Bensonhurst because of the final illness and death of her father, she, at long last, though not very strongly, and not as a means of trying assure us she has overcome her past delusion, admits to herself the important gifts her father gave to her. She states: "So [my father] was not devaluing females; he was valuing them in the way he knew best. In fact my father loved his female relatives intensely. He adored his mother….He was a family man, devoted to custom because, in his experience, custom was what kept families going. People had children because people loved children and took care of them; nothing was more basic than that to my father."

As a person who is not Italian-American, but very interested in reading accurate portrayals of this ethnic group, I was disappointed in this book. Many Italian-Americans have justly protested the stereotypical ways they are portrayed by the media. Sadly, a great many of these stereotypes are perpetuated, as in most of this book except he last few pages, by Italian-Americans themselves. If you want to read a much more positive view of Italian-American life (as something to treasure rather than flee), try Richard Gambino's Blood of My Blood.