{"product_id":"9780061228490","title":"Kissing the Mask : Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eKissing the Mask\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): William T. Vollmann\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Intrepid journalist and novelist William T. Vollman’s colossal body of work stands unsurpassed for its range, moral imperative, and artistry.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003cem\u003eBooklist\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliam T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of \u003cem\u003eEurope Central,\u003c\/em\u003e 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.  \u003cem\u003eKissing the Mask\u003c\/em\u003e is the first major book on Noh\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003eby an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study \u003cem\u003ePisan Cantos and the Noh \u003c\/em\u003eby Ezra Pound. But \u003cem\u003eKissing the Mask \u003c\/em\u003eis pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e“The performance of female characters by male Noh actors sparks a deeply researched, lovingly detailed, and obsessive discourse on the nature of feminine beauty....[A] fervently reflective, probing narrative...[that] rewards it on almost every page.”\u003cbr\u003e“[A] provocative inquiry into beauty and desire... [Vollmann] is a passionate and penetrating observer ... a daring, brilliant, and idiosyncratic quest astonishing in its discernment, scope, and feeling.”\u003cbr\u003e“[Vollmann’s] evocations of [Noh’s] death-haunted stories, its eerie masks, its male actors playing women...are so electric and strange, so enchanted, that they made me long for the very dramas that have often sent me toward the exit before the intermission.”\u003cbr\u003e“Reward[s] the reader who stays with it for the long trip, the way a travel chronicle does.... Vollmann is not just a writer who admires. He is a writer who looks and touches.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780061228490\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":41049181814990,"sku":"9780061228490","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/9780061228490_7f0d7b62-b737-4427-989a-520c7962b3ef.jpg?v=1652127887","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780061228490","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}