A new book out from the MIT Press, a new sculpture from the artist who gave us the iconic ducklings, and a book talk on the Cape - The Boston Globe

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Physical culture

Poet and philosopher Paul Valéry suggested that we possess not one but four bodies. The body we live in and can never perceive completely unless looking in a mirror; the body that others perceive; the inner body of our organs; and the “fourth body,” which is both real and imaginary, part of our environment and distinct from it, “neither more nor less distinguishable than is a whirlpool from the liquid in which it is formed,” as Valéry puts it. It’s the fourth body that draws the attention of Frank Gonzalez-Crussi in his new book “The Body Fantastic” published this month by MIT Press. This body is the one “immersed in an atmosphere made of history, symbolism, myths, legends, tales, mental representations, desires, fears and hopes.” Looking at the body’s place in dreams, in psychiatry, philosophy, medicine, and mythology, Gonzalez-Crussi reveals how the deepest recesses of our psyches come to play on our most basic conceptions of our physical selves. Playful, erudite, expansive, the book gives one much to chew on, widening our understanding of our corporeal selves, as well as how that understanding has shifted and evolved over time. The uterus, he reminds us, was believed not only to wander the body, but to be a sentient organ, averse, for example, to bad smells. He writes of the stomach, hair, orality, pleasure and pain, giving us a new lens to understand and experience, as John Banville puts it in his foreword, “this tender but tough machine that houses us so diligently for our time on earth.”

A sculptural love story

Sculptor Nancy Schön, whose iconic ducklings waddle across the Common, has recently unveiled a new sculpture, two decades in the planning. Last week, at the Nonquit Street Green at Upham’s Corner in Dorchester, Schön’s new sculpture, “Diversity — The Owl and the Pussy Cat” was placed in permanent installation. Just as her ducklings are taken from literature, in that case Robert McCloskey’s timeless children’s book “Make Way for Ducklings,” the Owl and the Pussy Cat comes from Edward Lear’s magical, incantatory 1869 bedtime poem in which an owl and a pussy cat fall in love with and take to the seas together: “They took some honey, and plenty of money” in a “beautiful pea-green boat.” The unexpected pair agrees to get married, and “They sailed away, for a year and a day, / To the land where the Bong-Tree grows.” They find a ring on the nose of a pig, and dance by the light of the moon. Schön wanted the sculpture to celebrate the diversity of Upham’s Corner, and emphasize to children the importance of “love, tolerance and finding community among disparate types.” The Owl and the Pussy Cat sculpture is the second piece of permanent art to be installed in Upham’s Corner; the first was also a sculpture of Schön’s, that one, “A Dragon for Dorchester,” was installed in 2003.

Talking jazz

Larry Tye, an author and former reporter for this newspaper, is at work on a new book, this one on a triad of jazz musicians titled “The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Satchmo Armstrong and Count Basie Transformed America” (HMH). This book follows acclaimed and best-selling biographies on Joe McCarthy (“Demagogue”), Bobby Kennedy, Superman, and baseball pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige, among other books. On Thursday, Aug. 19 at Lowell Park on Cape Cod, he’ll be talking about his in-process work in conversation with Cape and Islands NPR station host Mindy Todd. In addition to the discussion, Cape Jazz will perform, bringing the music Tye writes about to life. The event will benefit the Cotuit Library. Tickets are $25 and the event begins at 5 p.m. at Lowell Park, in Cotuit. For more information and to purchase tickets visit cotuitlibrary.org.

Coming Out

“Gordo” by Jaime Cortez (Black Cat)

“Storm” by George R. Stewart (NYRB)

“Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption” by Rafia Zakaria (Norton)

Pick of the Week

Autumn Siders at the Country Bookseller in Wolfeboro, N.H., recommends “Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars” (Tim Duggan): “H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power, and Virginia Woolf all lived in Mecklenburgh Square in the early 20th century at different times. Their paths did not cross, but their lives were intertwined. Wade does a superb job of bringing these women to life and showing how their thoughts, their work, and their achievements paved the way for generations of equally brilliant women to come.”

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of “Wake, Siren.” She can be reached at nmaclaughlin@gmail.com.

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