The Body in Four Parts

Flesh Made Word #2

by Janet Kauffman

A non-linear passion play; an eloquent demand for a return to the roots of our being, our most ancient and elemental nature--air, earth, fire, water.

Genres: Fiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1993

About the author

Janet Kauffman was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and raised on a tobacco farm. She teaches at Eastern Michigan University.

Reviews

[A.E. Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really did change my life. Sounds dramatic, I know, but it fundamentally changed the way I think about myself, about the world. Worth the read for the language alone.

[Jacob Wechsler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just simply wasn't for me. I was almost about to put it down but because of its length, I pushed through to see if it would speak to me. It never truly did.

After reading a few reviews, I understand how it could impact certain individuals. The writing style was unique and eloquently twisted to a certain degree. It was surprising to see some "hand written" cursive in the book, something you dont see that much of these days.

There was beauty in certain passages but I thought the writing style and content was too splintered for my taste. There never seemed to be a nice "flow" to the story or characters. That might be the whole point but maybe I read too fast and wasn't reading between the lines.

The title caught my attention. I realize Kauffman has written mostly to a female audience based on some research online. I appreciate her... Universal humanity expressed in this book, but it just didnt hit home for me.

[Jessie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her vocabulary is pure elastic; her actual words aren’t strange, but their usage and arrangement are wild, wild, wild; I thought my mind was pretty stretchy, but, in my friend N’s words: my mind has been doing yoga with the elderly and this book was like doing sweaty young-folk yoga, and it kind of kicked my butt (in a good way). The read is arduous and enjoyable; the tone is no-nonsense, warm, humorous and affectionate, as if Kauffman’s Margaretta and company have agreed to take you under their wing and show you the ropes—Kauffman does whatever she wants to do with her prose, and her characters follow suit:

“It’s a good wind blows nobody ill, an ill wind blows nobody good, whichever it is, a Jack-proverb turned to confuse and make itself strange. I won’t take proverb tests. Jack is ill, good, wind, a kite, the buzzard on the silo, wings askew, hello there Jack.” (30)

This book doesn’t go deep with empathy, though; it’s not that kind of book; it stays with the intellect and wows the reader with image after image and with some of the best dialog I’ve read for compression and character-development; in general I prefer her short fiction because, for me, it’s a form better suited to JK’s punchy syntax, but I’m so glad to have read this. I would put the book down and say, “Dang, woman,” because the prose is really all muscle, and I was carried through to the end, even through the parts where I had no idea what’s going on, as in Dorothea’s story-within-the-story – I was clueless but I loved it (I do think Dorothea’s stories offer a little bit of comment on writing itself: she lets the pages go soggy and fade away because maybe permanence isn’t the point; but the commentary is loose and flyaway, as is the political, feminist statement in the book, which is both dreamy and anchored in the physical body’s experience, as I’ve seen it in other work by JK).

Check out the stretchiness of these sentences:

“Well, it is like the smell in the air before rain—the Guernsey cow smell over the gravel road, the outspreading diesel fumes, the faintest purpling.” (13)

“I can say this about myself, and it could be said across the board: she is piecemeal, she is not herself, she’s numberless, not numb, she cannot be counted out, she’s gusted air, open fire, she is not watered down, she’s dirt and debris. Also, she is a hank of hair, hacked.” (18)

[regarding Margaretta’s hair]
“Or else it is tinted towards blue, a dark gray going on dark glue, and then the hairdo swoops up, defies the gravity of Margaretta’s wrists, up and back in a stern wave so that, were Margaretta not wearing fishbone earrings spray-painted chartreuse, she would stand there, agèd fishwife, the hair colors and angles suggesting, in the abstract, decrepitude.” (19)

[Cody VC · Rating 5 out of 5]

kauffman writes about the body like kathryn davis writes about the world: mystical in a sense but always undeniably grounded - this is bone, this is blood, this is warm breath on skin. the prose has the thudding fluid urgency that comes from love, i believe, the kind "so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere" (as another fine writer once put it).

It is the dream of the body--to know a place bodily and to say so. To take words into and out of itself. To have words assume bodily shape, salamander or milk, it doesn't matter. To inhabit a shore, a fabulous body of water, debris, insects drilled in the sand.
Where in the world can the body say, I am in my element?
The body strips to its flesh, and flame, and dives. When air gives out, and blues and greens simplify into dark, lips open the way lips open for kisses.
But the body, more fully desirous, recalcitrant in the extreme, says, even there, No, this is not the world I dreamed of. This is not the world.

the story's a bit spare on plot, traditionally speaking, but that's because the real plot, what drives the reader along, is an effort to explore bodies and identities - shared multiples and others - and see what there is to understand, how and if it matters:

The more of this mix, this confusion, and with Jack it is all confusion, the more I can move about, and speak for myself.

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was used in my critical theory class to illustrate the difference between teleonomical and teleological journeys (don't ask). The Body in Four Parts is like visiting the intricacies of thought and depth representated in four sibling relationships personified in four parts; it is who we are and where we go and how we move on the earth. The book felt like a fluid exploration into the crannies of the physical world and of thought and behavior. However evasive this book review is, I highly recomend giving it a shot. It's a meditation on the powers that drive us.

[Michele · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite book in the whole world... best read out loud in the bathtub due to the acoustics. Such pretty writing as I have never seen in any other book.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

read for college Literary Theory course