Anatomy of Love
O'Brien, Dennis
known, can interfere with our willingness of everything in the world except sharp, however, lies in his very formulation of to take imaginative works on their own small, immediate, and...
...An acute reader will note that "make love" is being used out of its normal usage...
...Do Commonweal 26 February 1993: 25 tion is not subject to any moral censure...
...Bonobos in the San Diego Unless there is a high individuation among and the wayward ape who severs a relaZoo...
...Like gods, animals expressed the "fullness roots of human marriage" (italics added...
...thread, connecting two souls in "an expansion,/ Like gold to airy thinness beat" that Suzanne Keen marks the poems most vividly...
...A rose is a rose is a rose...
...Do they...
...Whatever the fidelity of animal attrick is to apply a crucial term in quota- even explanations-by smell won't do...
...Love at first sight, we are told again and again, provides a shaky basis for marriage...
...If infatuation agent who can promise love and marmark displacement dodge...
...is a panoply of intense emotions, thought...
...With all due respect to go- nurses, psychiatrists and consultants...
...brings long satisare likely to be put off by Hagstrum's ob- ruptive could lead to lasting relation- factions to the couple and also to most servation that the Decameron, notwith- ships-that Eros could be a stabilizing, of those who witness its formation and standing its "modern" feeling, "falls short let alone a civilizing influence-strikes wish it well...
...Andrew Hudgins Refined beyond dross into sheer Houghton Mifflin Company, $17.95, 67 pp...
...Not only marriage but romantic love itself has fallen out of favor...
...it comes line becomes the sign of the father's gefrom a hoard of objects discovered at nius: Broigher, County Derry...
...Unlike the gabby new and (worst of all) guilt...
...When humans arrive in chapter 13, that...
...thought have tuned to other themes, in- ic music and a solemn voice-over...
...The assertion preferable to a style of criticism that re- solution than romance to the intractable that this process operates "mysteriously," flects ethical judgment as completely be- problem of male-female union...
...Before anyone knows it, Presto...
...Wilson, the fatuation...
...it is the roots of marriage...
...The writing least with safe sex) but not with Eros, the of animals display all sorts of wonderful is happily jaunty and disjointed: "In"decoration of sexual impulse by art and personal traits from longing to loyalty to fatuation...
...finds so shocking...
...Fisher argues that peace is a better poli- of being...
...To explain the twentieth-century re- the case against romantic love...
...In Uncle Walt's ic earnestness...
...We come to believe that the usage is not "stretched" but literal in For Men An Women very truth...
...To expect fi- f you like Walt Disney movies, pages of notes, bibliography, and index that delity, permanence, undying attachment you will love Helen Fisher's give Fisher's effort the gloss of scientifis to court disappointment...
...Either way we are Moses marks a radical turn toward the My rapid reader may think that it is mar- discussing practical options, not moral strangely human when he stumbles on a riage that will be explained but it turns out demands...
...Shared hobbies and tastes, a mu- ANATOMY OF LOVE replay of animal ancestry...
...For whatever it is worth, when huWhich is, of course, the point of the reason's skeleton of morality and law...
...Thus Hagstrum misses the satiric terchangeable pleasures...
...Where the oars are needles and the quired...
...It plays very Fisher lacks any theory of moral mean- dom, they thought better of animals than well on "The Donahue Show...
...Male gorillas mate with a sta- In The Minis ble group of multiple females...
...What exactly is supposed to be explained...
...kindly deer are attacked by the nasty ic of sensations...
...Friendship, ho- Anatomy of Love...
...It is precisely the belief that of [upholding] a satisfying ethical norm...
...Reading her book is like one of roller coastering from high to low, hinged adorned, put securely in its place among those "True Life Adventures" in which the on the pendulum a single being...
...Admirers of Boccaccio's artistry full force...
...In Helen Fisher's world, all sorts their armpits as love tokens...
...On the cover divides father and son-and stretches beof the book there is a gold boat, a marvel tween them-in "Markings," where the of survival as well as ancient craft...
...cy for gene persistence...
...It had very peculiar, indeed unique, human charFisher's strategy is virtually invisible a new center and that center was Marilyn," acteristic of being a person, a rational to the rapid reader...
...We disHagstrum's literary history of roman- vulsion against romantic love lies beyond like a mystery...
...The harems The program for Psychology and Religion of the great sultans often consisted of over at Saint Louis University Medical Center 100 women: wives, kadins (who had the meets the special needs of religious, clergy status of wives), concubines, and ser- and lay ministers who require vants...
...They must allow is clearly a cartoon-and the end credits for the possibility that one of them will are considerably shorter than the 118 probably outgrow the other...
...Lovers should not demand Dennis O'Brien vantage for Disney is that Mickey Mouse too much of each other...
...God who talks and hands out moral laws...
...The idea that anything so dis- induced erotic love...
...These women were all subject to psychological treatment...
...It Center, P.O...
...My desire...
...Louis MO 63110...
...last century argued that war was good ge- ever themselves...
...We rillas, using "harem" to describe both the also operate a national evaluation and seraglio and the pack is like confusing To order your tape bouillabaisse and bananas because both treatment center serving religious, clergy send $7.95, check or are food...
...314/577-8703 and renewed vision...
...Norton & Co., $22.95, 431 pp...
...We crave what we can contic love, because it seeks ethical guidance the scope of Hagstrum's enterprise, al- trol-even if the price we pay for control from the past and not just a better un- ready ambitious enough without this is drastic shrinkage of our imaginative and derstanding of our ancestors' foibles, added burden...
...but the ex- Seamus Heaney that small boat out of the Bronze Age planation does not tell what we have ac- Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $19, 107 pp...
...Fisher The interesting question is why anyone cluding the inevitable misunderstand- offers us the music and text...
...Fisher says that gorillas have harems...
...2 + 2 = 4 has greater survival value than 2 + 2 = 5. But as one commentator points out, "We can explain why we should have acquired SEEING THINGS "The Biretta" in a sequence of similes: mathematical understanding...
...to re-encounter the metaphors Heaney draws and crosses the line that and purposes of journeying...
...We like our sexual impulse un- love...
...What fascinated our ancient ancesquotes) into the biological background, the nical terms...
...sexual impulse in works of art, he obintent behind Boccaccio's depiction of the Even the "joy of sex" is now shadowed serves, makes us "understand that the pasconventional marriage between ill-as- by AIDS...
...The elaboration of the terms...
...The anatomy of human love hangs on versa...
...Box 15250, spirit...
...No wonder infatuation Sex with us is a science, while art and wolves to the accompaniment of dramat- is such a problem...
...The hint of an explanation, emotional horizon...
...grand guru of sociobiology, blesses her sue of "perhaps," "this is speculative," "it The peculiarity of human love is very "new explanation of the roots of human could explain," "probably," "I think it much involved in the fact that Marilyn is marriage, sex, and love...
...Does explain- Much of Fisher's book is a "good read" If anyone is puzzled about the populariing the root system of the rose explain the as one wanders through the stunning vari- ty of books like Fisher's, it is worth rerose...
...I call it "the quotation says one of her informants...
...To understand that we must turn worked gold frail to logic and the foundations of mathe- THE NEVER-ENDING STORY As the intact half of a hatched-out matics, which are concerned with rea- New Poems shell, sons, not causes...
...Why Louis University Medical relaxation with refreshment of mind and is "reasonable" in quotation marks...
...Heaney's elegies relentlessly Virgil and Dante, Seamus embark upon mourning, investigate the Heaney's Seeing Things car- breach between the dead and the living, and ries the reader on a voyage negotiate the difficult return...
...Why membering that when Moses showed up ed in biology, but marriage is what has is the animal kingdom so fascinating...
...would take Fisher's account seriously, ings between men and women, their The basic argument of the book is that yet we are assured by the book jacket that essential incompatibility, the instability whatever you might find in human love she received the American Anthropological of all attachments, and the unreliability behavior, from dalliance to divorce, is a Association's Distinguished Service 24: 26 February 1993 Commonweal Award in 1985 and makes numerous radio smells and the limbic system explain in- Balkan armpits, infatuation should prove and TV appearances...
...the marks A Hel in Han disappear and we forget that "love" has been dis-placed...
...Morality is good genetic pol- tors was that animals hunted, mated, and less one has to fuss about thought, choice, icy...
...The adpassion cools...
...Not a female in a certain plausibility to this sort of thing Fisher's own description involves a "mys- estrus, but this person, Marilyn, is what I in order to get selected by the Book-of- terious" interest in just this one...
...The more ing...
...Elsewhere he speaks of the "notack" on the institution of arranged mar- "decorated" forms-has returned to us in tion that suddenly and mysteriously riage...
...A rapid reader, however, will scarcely note the little floating quotes...
...far from reassuring us, seems to clinch side the point...
...mosexual or heterosexual, seems more re- World, bad foxes lead innocent Like a good cartoon, Fisher's book is liable to us than love, just because it is youth astray, crickets give moral fun and full of surprises...
...A harem, in short, is We integrate expertise in a complex social, legal, and moral struc- psychological, physical and spiritual ture defined by delicate distinctions be- issues and use a multi- disciplinary team tween wives, kadins, authorities, servants, of psychologist, pastoral counselors, and the like...
...image...
...whole world had been transformed...
...Of course human marriage is root- ation of animal and hominid behavior...
...Sociobiology may explain the persistence of a practice but it cannot explain the inherent value in the practice...
...Created especially for people worn seems that even Fisher recognizes how by the many demands of ministry, St...
...In the Balkans less demanding and intense...
...a mosathe "facts of life...
...Human individuals and societies may banded in silence...
...Fisher tries a se- ~.r o I~IL MEDICAL CENTER ries of explanations from the olfactory to the chemistry of phenylethylamine...
...What Fisher blurs and blots is the the-Month Club...
...known, can interfere with our willingness of everything in the world except sharp, however, lies in his very formulation of to take imaginative works on their own small, immediate, and more or less in- the romantic ideal...
...Whether it is tual commitment to compromise, and a Helen E. Fisher Disney making mice human, or Helen willingness to admit that things never stay W.W...
...It surfaces in You also loved lines pegged out in 26: 26 February 1993 Commonweal...
...mans first emerged from the animal kingwhole thing: no moral censure...
...The reader catches glimpses of the gold COVENANT vessel throughout this book of lyrics and Alan Shapiro sequences, but it is Donne's attenuated University of Chicago Press, $9.95, 90 pp...
...garded as evil...
...One hears talk, more wistful than tablishes "unshakable bonds" that the even if the norm in question is too much ironic, about the wisdom of arranged modern mind (or is it the postmodern defined by the "emergent," is vastly marriages-all in all, it is said, a better mind...
...Infatuation by the center of my world...
...be stupid if they establish bad moral (ge- planetary inhabitants who could lie, cheat, Fisher appeals to sociobiology, a sci- netic) policies, but they could not be re- and deceive-as well as promise, decree, ence doomed to fail at its purported task...
...Fisher wants to Religion, Behavioral our audio cassette, "Gatherers at the explain the mystery of infatuation...
...There must be does...
...us as a consummate piece of mystifica- a "sudden, overwhelming attraction" esYet this ethical interrogation of a text, tion...
...Wilson's praise: "...explanation of the netic policy (it cleansed the gene pool...
...Animals were like gods, not like that one can slide human "value" (note they are certainly rational but only in tech- men...
...Social Darwinists of the and praise-animals were ever faithful, Consider the titillating fuzziness of E.O...
...As Medicine Division, Saint Spring of Being" combines physical a strict scientist she offers "some `reasonable' explanations of emotion...
...The sly quote mark is not confined money order to Program Developed for clinical use in the to specific claims, it infects the basic for Psychology and Program for Psychology and Religion, sense of the argument...
...and lay ministers...
...El guilt...
...Fisher's actual argument is a tis- to be generic, not individual...
...There WHEN PERFECTION IS OPENHANDED is an obvious survival value to getting the right sums in mathematics...
...the control of the sultan's mother and guarded by eunuchs...
...always gaze at each other as they `make love...
...I think it does not...
...The sense of sexuality as a dan- sion aroused early and mysteriously sorted couples and makes him out to be gerous, dark, and unpredictable presence carries over into a calm and fruitful mara reformer instead, the author of an "at- in human life-all the more so in its ried life...
...El amounts also to a defense of romantic love, written with a heartbreaking awareness that lifelong marriage no longer serves as the standard to which erotic prac- MAKING HUMANS MOUSY tice ought to aspire...
...Fisher making humans mousy, it all comes the same are more likely to endure when to the same delightful mishmash...
...Friendship advice, and candelabra pontificate on eti- some men carry handkerchiefs under easily coexists with sex (these days, at quette...
...tachments, they are not based on promises tion marks...
...Doth multiple mating a harem make...
...much she is stretching the notion of "rea- it guides the listener to a place of rest son" in these "explanations...
...The two souls belong to father and son, not the lovers of Donne's "A Valediction, Forbidding Framed by translations from Mourning...
...The explanation of infatuation fails both as an explanation at all and as an ex- ~~y~~~ ~- r 7 SAINT I.Ot'IS t'NIVE WSITY planation of infatuation...
...with the Ten Commandments, everyflowered by human choice replete with Fisher would have us believe that it is be- body else was busy worshiping a Golden moral lessons, legal sanctions, and, alas, cause animals act like humans (or vice Calf...
...The essential is individualized, then "explanations"- riage...
Vol. 120 • February 1993 • No. 4
