Enter your email Address

ENTROPY
  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Revolution for Covid

      January 14, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: My Precious: On Leaving My Abusive Ex-Husband and Being Left with the Ring

      January 13, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Review

      Review – : once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio

      January 7, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch

ENTROPY

  • About
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Advertising
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Info on Book Reviews
  • Essays
    • All Introspection
      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Tales From the End of the Bus Line: Aging Ungraciously

      January 18, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Salt and Sleep

      January 15, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      Revolution for Covid

      January 14, 2021

      Creative Nonfiction / Essay

      WOVEN: My Precious: On Leaving My Abusive Ex-Husband and Being Left with the Ring

      January 13, 2021

      Introspection

      The Birds: A Special Providence in the Fall of a Sparrow

      January 2, 2020

      Introspection

      Returning Home with Ross McElwee

      December 13, 2019

      Introspection

      The Birds: In Our Piety

      November 14, 2019

      Introspection

      Variations: Landslide

      June 12, 2019

  • Fiction
    • Fiction

      The Birds: Little Birds

      December 11, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Perdix and a Pear Tree

      December 9, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: A Glimmer of Blue

      November 23, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: Circling for Home

      November 13, 2020

      Fiction

      The Birds: The Guest

      November 9, 2020

  • Reviews
    • All Collaborative Review Video Review
      Review

      Review: Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

      January 18, 2021

      Review

      Perceived Realities: A Review of M-Theory by Tiffany Cates

      January 14, 2021

      Review

      Review: Danger Days by Catherine Pierce

      January 11, 2021

      Review

      Review – : once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio

      January 7, 2021

      Collaborative Review

      Attention to the Real: A Conversation

      September 3, 2020

      Collaborative Review

      A Street Car Named Whatever

      February 22, 2016

      Collaborative Review

      Black Gum: A Conversational Review

      August 7, 2015

      Collaborative Review

      Lords of Waterdeep in Conversation

      February 25, 2015

      Video Review

      Entropy’s Super Mario Level

      September 15, 2015

      Video Review

      Flash Portraits of Link: Part 7 – In Weakness, Find Strength

      January 2, 2015

      Video Review

      Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

      March 31, 2014

      Video Review

      The Desert Places by Amber Sparks and Robert Kloss, Illustrated by Matt Kish

      March 21, 2014

  • Small Press
    • Small Press

      Gordon Hill Press

      December 8, 2020

      Small Press

      Evidence House

      November 24, 2020

      Small Press

      death of workers whilst building skyscrapers

      November 10, 2020

      Small Press

      Slate Roof Press

      September 15, 2020

      Small Press

      Ellipsis Press

      September 1, 2020

  • Where to Submit
  • More
    • Poetry
    • Interviews
    • Games
      • All Board Games Video Games
        Creative Nonfiction / Essay

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Games

        Hunt A Killer, Earthbreak, and Empty Faces: Escapism for the Post-Truth Era

        September 21, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Victoriana and Optimism

        December 14, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: Lady of the West

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Session Report: Paperback and Anomia

        July 27, 2019

        Board Games

        Ludic Writing: The Real Leeds Part 12 (Once in a Lifetime)

        November 10, 2018

        Video Games

        How Zelda Saved Me: The Inspiration, Feminism, and Empowerment of Hyrule

        November 2, 2020

        Video Games

        Best of 2019: Video Games

        December 13, 2019

        Video Games

        Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the Spirit of Generosity

        December 31, 2018

        Video Games

        Best of 2018: Video Games

        December 17, 2018

    • Food
    • Small Press Releases
    • Film
    • Music
    • Paranormal
    • Travel
    • Art
    • Graphic Novels
    • Comics
    • Current Events
    • Astrology
    • Random
  • RESOURCES
  • The Accomplices
    • THE ACCOMPLICES
    • Enclave
    • Trumpwatch
LiteratureReview

Lovely Reads #1 – “Enter Wonder”

written by Alex Kalamaroff March 31, 2014

Sometimes students ask me, “Why must every book be so sad?” Tell us, why does 87% of literature view the human condition an unpleasant, mordant, smelly thing? Really, isn’t this plethora of tragedy just drab?

With that in mind, knowing that the majority of well-lauded books are pretty gloomy affairs, I’ve decided to pen a series. Lovely Reads consists of musings on fiction and non-fiction books that are above all else delightful.

***

You are a creature of wonder, suffused with curiosity, skepticism, and amazement, with the propensity to exclaim—even in this Internet age where near-everything can be explained away thanks to tech know-it-alls like Google and Wikipedia—“Holy shit! That exists.”  Wonder bursts through the usualness of our lives as a blast of ecstatic bafflement. For some it can be a drug or dream worth pursuing with radical abandon. Such pursuits are what Lawrence Weschler’s book is all about.

cabinetMr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders, published in 1995, is a believe-it-or-not tale of the strange endeavors, visions, and failures now featured in the Jurassic Museum of Technology, a present day Wunderkammer located in Culver City, CA. Here you will find centuries of assorted strangeness displayed with typical museum authoritativeness and without irony. There is, for example, an exhibit on micro-miniature Armenian-American sculptures of Jesus, Disney princesses, and the Pope, and a famed exhibit on the African stink ant, which, after being infected by a brain-eating fungus, will climb vines skyward and eventually stab its mandibles into the plant’s flesh—self-affixing to its death spot. Slowly, after the ant dies, a spike grows out of its head like an inverse pin. This protrudent spike will grow to be about 1.5 inches long, grossly exceeding the length of the ant’s tiny body.

Megolaponera Foetens, Image Credit: http://www.forensicgenealogy.info

Megolaponera Foetens, Image Credit: http://www.forensicgenealogy.info

This spike sticking out from the ant’s head becomes Weschler’s symbol for the kind of odd obsessions that drive us all. And for those driven by obsession, first and foremost we have Mr. David Wilson, the founder and director of the Jurassic Museum of Technology, who while in high school had not quite a vision, but something maybe “well, like a conversion experience,” which lead him, ultimately, to establishing this institute where wonder could flourish. The Jurassic Museum of Technology, which is still around and open Thursdays through Sundays for those of you living in greater LA, is a maze of such odd exhibits and attractions.

Iguaza Falls, Image Credit: http://www.iguazufallstours.org

Iguaza Falls, Image Credit: http://www.iguazufallstours.org

Employing the second-person voice with absolute elegance, Weschler walks us through JTM. “The foyer, as it were, features a kind of half-hearted attempt at a gift shop, but probably you won’t tarry long as your curiosity is already being drawn toward the museum proper,” he writes at the start of our tour. In every alcove and passageway, there’s another chronicle of some nutty project, person, or natural occurrence. There’s the stink ant, the micro-miniature sculptor, the would-be bridge over the Iguazú Falls, and a singer of German Romantic lieder songs who’s lost her memory. The real heroes of wonder, it turns out, are not the well-known scientists or historical figures you’d meet in a normal museum, but instead, more likely, those who history forgot—the adventurers, psychologists, architects, and artists whose lifelong efforts did not contribute to their fields in any lasting way, the Fitzcarraldos whose oeuvres are now no more than footnotes, whose zeal and arrogance were too much even in less cynical times, who imagined the world not as it was or could be but as it once appeared to them in a fantastical, half-remembered dream; these are the avatars of marvel.

Image Credit: http://www.gameinformer.com

Image Credit: http://www.gameinformer.com

What’s dazzling about this short book is how much value Weschler gives to wonder itself. Tracing the history back to the early Renaissance, a time period in which there was an “avalanche of wonder” as Europeans encountered the rest of the world and sought, however ruthlessly, to collect the treasures, trinkets, and exoticness they found, Weschler goes on to connect the curiosity cabinets of the late 16th century to the palatial private museums of kings to the Jurassic Museum of Technology today—basically, it’s the apotheosis of eccentric accumulation, thankfully free of the dry didacticism and characterlessness common to so many contemporary museums. The JMT, and Weschler’s book about it, seeks to recapture what’s lacking, to regain this sense of extreme, enrapturing splendor that arises when encountering something totally, unfathomably new. It’s especially touching in 2014 as we live in a time where almost nothing, except the next generation of iPhones, feels new, where mash-ups, re-mixes, re-tweets, and re-posts are the representative art forms of the day, where content regurgitated dominates over content created. In times like these, who doesn’t thirst for the wonder of something splendiferously new?

Weschler writes with such charming journalistic prose, at once serious and silly, that it’s impossible not to be sucked into this world, where the rare and exquisite mix with the accidents and errors to create a safe house of splendor and to ignite our souls—to wonder at, to wonder if, to wonder why, to wonder how the heck did it that come to be. It’s impossible not to be infected by this brain-eating fungus, as it were, which is what makes this book a Lovely Read. Because eventually that spike sticking out of the ant’s skull? Its tip turns orange and erupts, showering the rain forest floor with more fungus spores. These will be inhaled by other stink ants who will join their deceased colleague on a doomed journey skyward. They’ll climb the vines high enough until they too will reach their end and more spores will shower down. So obsession and strangeness spread. Wonder is danger and contagious.

Lovely Reads #1 – “Enter Wonder” was last modified: March 28th, 2014 by Alex Kalamaroff
Jurassic Museum of TechnologyLovely ReadsMr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders
0 comment
0
Facebook Twitter Google + Pinterest
Avatar
Alex Kalamaroff

Alex Kalamaroff is a writer and educator living in Boston. He is the Book Reviews Editor for Entropy. alex [at] entropymag.org / @alexkalamaroff

previous post
COMICS I’VE BEEN GEEKING OUT ON
next post
Basal Ganglia by Matthew Revert

You may also like

Motherboard: on Andrew Brenza’s AUTOMATIC SOULS

April 23, 2020

Review: Two Californias by Robert Glick

February 10, 2020

Piss Cameron by IIIIIIIIIIIIIII

October 27, 2016

A Review of Mirtha Dermisache: Selected Writings

November 12, 2018
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Recent Comments

  • Lei Yu wow so beautifully written!

    Review – : once teeth bones coral : by Kimberly Alidio ·  January 18, 2021

  • Lisa S Thank you so much for your kind words and your feedback. I can only hope my story is able to help someone who needs it.

    WOVEN: This isn’t love ·  January 8, 2021

  • Ann Guy Thank you, Josh. And glad you didn’t get tetanus at band camp on that misguided day.

    A Way Back Home ·  December 24, 2020

Featured Columns & Series

  • The Birds
  • Dinnerview
  • WOVEN
  • Variations on a Theme
  • BLACKCACKLE
  • Literacy Narrative
  • COVID-19
  • Mini-Syllabus
  • Their Days Are Numbered
  • On Weather
  • Disarticulations
  • The Waters
  • Session Report series
  • Birdwolf
  • Comics I've Been Geeking Out On
  • Small Press Releases
  • Books I Hate (and Also Some I Like)
  • The Poetics of Spaces
  • Fog or a Cloud
  • Tales From the End of the Bus Line
  • 30 Years of Ghibli
  • Cooking Origin Stories
  • YOU MAKE ME FEEL
  • Ludic Writing
  • Best of 2019
  • The Talking Cure
  • Stars to Stories
  • DRAGONS ARE REAL OR THEY ARE DEAD
  • Foster Care
  • Food and Covid-19
  • LEAKY CULTURE
  • Jem and the Holographic Feminisms
  • D&D with Entropy

Find Us On Facebook

Entropy
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

©2014-2020 The Accomplices LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Read our updated Privacy Policy.


Back To Top