Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
Language: English
Published by Ecco, 2010
- Hardcover
- Used

Seller: ThriftBooks-Atlanta, AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.ThriftBooks-Atlanta
AbeBooks seller since March 24, 2009
Condition: Used - Very good
£ 6.15
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Missing dust jacket; May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.
Seller Inventory # G0061228486I4N01
- Title
- Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
- Author
- William T. Vollmann
- Publisher
- Ecco
- Publication year
- 2010
- Condition
- Very Good
- Dust jacket
- No Jacket
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0061228486
- ISBN 13
- 9780061228483
- Item weight
- 1.6 pounds
“Intrepid journalist and novelist William T. Vollman’s colossal body of work stands unsurpassed for its range, moral imperative, and artistry.”
—Booklist
William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of Europe Central, offers a charming, evocative, and piercing examination of the ancient Japanese tradition of Noh theatre and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty. Kissing the Mask is the first major book on Noh by an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study Pisan Cantos and the Noh by Ezra Pound. But Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Back Cover
From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central comes a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty....
What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extraordin-ary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look into the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself.
Sweeping readers from the dressing room of one of Japan's most famous Noh actors to a transvestite bar in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Kissing the Mask explores the enigma surrounding Noh theater and the traditions that have made it intrinsic to Japanese culture for centuries. Vollmann then widens his scope to encompass such modern artists of attraction and loss as Mishima, Kawabata and even Andrew Wyeth. From old Norse poetry to Greek cult statues, from Japan's most elite geisha dancers to American makeup artists, from Serbia to India, Vollmann works to extract the secrets of staged femininity and the mystery of perceived and expressed beauty, including explorations of gender at a transgendered community in Los Angeles and with Kabuki female impersonators.
Kissing the Mask is illustrated with many evocative sketches and photographs by the author.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
ThriftBooks-Atlanta
AUSTELL, GA, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since March 24, 2009
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