Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire

by Judith Thurman

Cleopatra's Nose is an exuberant gathering of essays and profiles representing twenty years of Judith Thurman's celebrated writing, particularly her fascination with human vanity, femininity, and "women's work"--from haute couture to literature to commanding empires. The subjects are iconic (Jackie, the Brontës, Toni Morrison, Anne Frank) and multifarious (tofu and performance art, pornography and platform shoes, kimonos and bulimia); all inspire dazzling displays of craft, wit, penetration, and intelligence.



Here we find explorations of hunger for sex, food, experience, and transcendence; see how writers from Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer have engaged with history; meet eminent Victorians and the greats of fashion. Whether reporting on hairstyles, strolling the halls of power, or deftly unpacking novels and their writers, Thurman never fails to provoke, inspire, captivate, and enlighten. Cleopatra's Nose is an embarrassment of riches from one of our great literary journalists.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Art, Fashion, History, Feminism, Science

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Judith Thurman began contributing to The New Yorker in 1987, and became a staff writer in 2000. She writes about fashion, books, and culture. Her subjects have included André Malraux, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Cristóbal Balenciaga.

Thurman is the author of “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller,” which won the 1983 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, and “Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette,” (1999), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography, and the Salon Book Award for biography. The Dinesen biography served as the basis for Sydney Pollack’s movie “Out of Africa.” A collection of her New Yorker essays, “Cleopatra’s Nose,” was published in 2007.

Thurman lives in New York.

Source: www.newyorker.com/magazine/contributo...‎

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't bad or anything, but I'm just not that into it. I've read a few of the essays and I'm just kind of bored, and keep picking up the Robert Moses instead of this at every chance I get. If I'd paid for this book, or even if I didn't have a ginormous stack of other things I'm dying to read, I'd keep going, but I'm just not feeling terribly enthusiastic about it. I think one problem I'm having is that Thurman's essays don't ever give me any kind of "we're in this together" kind of feeling; they just make me feel really distanced from her, and instead of feeling like I'm benefiting from her experiences, I'm mildly resentful than she had them, and I didn't; I feel like in a successful essay, you're happy the other person did something instead of you doing it, because they write about it so engagingly.

In the first one about Vanessa Beecroft (the most interesting essay I read), I felt very detached from the writer, and I really felt like she and Beecroft had a lot more in common with each other than I did with Thurman, which was a little weird for me. She seemed kind of judgmental and snooty, which can be great in a writer, but I just wasn't feeling it in this book. I felt like she looked down on Beecroft just a little for being a bulimic, exploitive nutjob, but she also respects Beecroft's designer clothes and the glamour of her life; then in the essay about the French lady who fucks everyone, I felt like Thurman looked down on that lady for being schlumpy and kind of pathetic and I guess for fucking everyone.... None of this is necessarily in her writing, it's just how I personally felt while reading it. I suspected that if Thurman were ever to meet me, she would be disappointed and condescending. Obviously, this would be the case with most smarty-pants, fancy writerly types, but I feel like I kind of need their writing to obscure that fact, if I'm going to stay on board for an entire book of essays or articles or whatever these things are. This isn't just about me being jealous of writers with more fabulous lives than mine, it's about the question of how successfully said fabulous writer is able to bridge this gap between her rarified, intellectual existence and her off-the-rack, slow-witted popular readership, and maybe this is some weird transference of mine that has nothing to do with Thurman, but I just didn't experience that here. I needed to feel like Thurman and I were a "we," and I didn't. I felt like she would be the popular girl with the Guess jeans in the cafeteria, and I would be wearing the Payless Docs. I think this was distracting and maybe part of why I couldn't pay attention to her writing about subjects I ostensibly find fascinating. "Desire" is my number one topic of interest at the moment! But In the one where she goes to Japan on a tofu expedition, I didn't have the good travelogue feeling of "I got to stow away in your suitcase"; more just this kind of deflating, "Wow, I wish someone would send me to Japan on a tofu expedition, her life is so much cooler than mine. She is smarter than me and probably has an amazing wardrobe. And this article is boring. It seems like it was a lot more fun to research than it is to read. I'm going to put this down now and go eat some tofu." (Which I did.)

Anyway, this really isn't bad by any means; it just didn't really capture my imagination, and I'd read a few more except I really do have a trillion other things clawing at my leg right now, so.... maybe I'll give it another shot someday, but for now I'm going to bail.

ARGH!! Except I just now reread Ginnie's review, and it makes me feel like I should keep reading. I mean, Thurman really writes about themes that interest me. This really seems like something I would love! But right now I'd rather read this book about Katrina, so.... I won't take it back to the library yet, but it is coming off my "currently-reading" shelf, which is looking a bit ugly bloated and definitely needs to be purged.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every sentence in every essay stabs. She's so smart, reading her is like an ice-pick lobotomy that makes you smarter and more sensitive.No one has ever made me feel like reading Flaubert so much.

[Roberta · Rating 2 out of 5]

After slogging through 33 of the 39 desires, I gave up.
I admire Thurman's biographies of Colette and Isak Dinesen but this collection of articles written for the New Yorker is not a pleasant experience. I kept waiting for it to get better but it just didn't happen.
I learned bits about major players in the fashion industry, and the literary world, but after a while her mean-spirited tone and inflated vocabulary just left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just finished reading Judith Thurman's, Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire (New York: Farrar, Giroux & Strauss, 2007). Thurman a staff writer for the New Yorker has collected 39 short, witty and fun essays on desire for this book. After the heavy, but sometimes ponderous reading of books on Federalism and the early Republic, Thurman's light and deft touch was a welcome breath of fresh air. Divided into six sections, Thurman's writing touches on fashion designers, artists, writers, craftsmen, royalty and mistresses. She weaves them all together like an incandescent string of pearls. As outlined by her subtitle all the essays deal iwith of desire and longing. Thurman suggests it was "revealed" to her by a quote from Blaise Pascal, "Anyone who wants to know the full extent of human vanity has only to consider the causes and effects of love, Cleopatra's nose: had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed." (ix) Thurman's writing awakens curiosity about subjects I did not even know were interesting. Her text bounces along in a light, spritely manner that makes reading her work fun and enjoyable, especially in the darkness just before bed

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I had read and enjoyed Thurman's Isak Dinesen The Life of a Storyteller. Overall, Thurman can write and makes wonderful use of the language.

However, there are far too many essays about fashion for a non-fashionista like me to really, truly, enjoy the book. I doubt really want to read about Chanel or Blass.

The essays that are not concealed with fashion are interesting. Perhaps the most interesting is the one that describes the history and process of tofu. I still don't like it, but now I have respect for it. (Inicidentally, the best fashion essay was about kimono making. Thurman does seem to like Japan). I also enjoyed her essay about the Brontes. I do like reading essays about books I like, and Thurman's critique of Possession A Romance was on point. Her closing essays are historical sketches.

[Lauren Van vice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't normally review anything I haven't finished or used but this is one of those books that will likely live by my bed for a year or two as I pick my way through it between things.

Thurman is sharp. I sat for a while trying to come up with a suitable adjective and that's where I arrived. Sometimes she's delicate in her writing but she is never soft. She doesn't stop to explain things unless it gives her the opportunity to wax poetic about the semi-erotic experience of tasting tofu prepared in centuries old kitchens and is best taken in small doses. Happily, she is an essayist so it all works out in the end.

I was lucky enough to find Cleopatra's Nose at The Dollar Tree (Seriously, you have no idea the authors I find there. Saul Bellow and once even Steven Pinker) is full of interesting tidbits and lovely language. It'll make you laugh and it'll make you grimace as you imagine Thurman imagining you laugh but it probably won't bore you.

[Fer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Para los hispanohablantes que se topen con este libro (no pude encontrar una edición en español donde poner mi comentario) y estén indecisos entre empezarlo o no sólo les puedo decir: ¡Háganlo! No se arrepentirán. No sólo es un deleite el leer la fluidez narrativa y lengua mordaz con la que Thurman nos envuelve en sus ensayos, sino que es interesante y de cierta forma, impresionante, darnos cuenta de la cantidad de datos curiosos, datos históricos y anécdotas que esta mujer tiene para dar, sin contar que parece haber conocido a la mayoría de las personas de las que habla, lo que le confiere también un toque personal y de cercanía propia con el sujeto.

[Howard Cincotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Yorker writer Judith Thurman shrewdly announces that the theme of human desire links these essays that date from 1990s through this century’s first decade. Inevitably, some have become dated (a review of A.S Byatt’s Possession) or a profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry in 2004), but the writing is always astringent, refreshing, and full of rewarding language, even for lackadaisical reader.

The title comes from the thought by Blaise Pascal that human love and desire can indeed shape history: “Cleopatra’s nose: has it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.” And indeed, Thurman offers a sparkling commentary on a Cleopatra exhibition at the British Museum in which she surveys the historical uses and misuses of the Cleopatra myth.

I enjoyed reading about fashion designer Chanel’s checkered career, especially in World War II, but otherwise only skimmed the considerable sections devoted to the European fashion industry.

For me, the standouts are the essays on literature. Thurman is an admitted “Flaubertian,” and her piece “An Unsimple Heart” is a wonderful commentary on the fallible life of a writer who sought to write timeless infallible prose that eschewed moralizing and sentimentality.

Her essay on Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre is equally insightful, especially he account of Charlotte’s forays into London society, where she both craved and rejected public accolades, never able to overcome the resentments she accumulated from her years of isolation in the Bronte parsonage.

The legend of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s bohemian life and loves in Greenwich Village has long outstripped her reputation as a poet, and in a review of two biographies, Thurman explains why. She does so with a wry yet sympathetic account of her troubled candles-burning-at-both-ends life.

Thurman is tougher, justifiably so, on Leni Riefenstahl, who managed to outlive the controversies over her association with Hitler to produce her films Triumph of the Will about the Nuremberg allies and Olympia on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Thurman shrewdly notes that many of the people who defend Riefenstahl’s filmmaking have seen only a few isolated scenes, but not the slack, unoriginal whole, with “transitions on portentous cutaways to clouds, mist, statuary, foliage, and rooftops. Her reaction shots have a tedious sameness …” It may be just as well that she reinvented herself in later years as a photographer.

[Josie Ellerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a collection of essays written by the Author. At first, I was really enjoying the essays even though I knew who the subject was about once out of every three articles (I'm not very cultured, I guess). I made it a little over halfway through when I just lost all interest. While some of the articles were very interesting many of them just felt extremely overblown and kind of pompous. It felt like the author was trying to impress the audience with her knowledge of classic novels and authors or designers and couture. Maybe for an artistic community in New York subjects like these would be entertaining and intriguing but for a yokel from the Midwest it just didn't connect. As for the author's actual writing, I found that the story would be moving along at a good pace and suddenly it had taken a turn or she'd introduced a new person and I felt a little lost-even in a story the size of a large essay. Not a terrible book just really not for me.

[Mangieto · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

I feel inclined to leave it on 2 stars, but I might consider to raise it to 3 stars later.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the first part of the book, it was shocking and interesting and all so well tied. Also I didn't knew the subjects of the essays, neither I had ever taked fashion in such a serious way, nor so carefully relate it to the artist's life.
BUT it all faded away by half the book or so. I don't really know why, because the writing is the same and I can't honestly say that topics were less interesting, so maybe I just got tired of the author.

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was on a list of must-reads for people interested in fashion, but it is really the final section with reviews of shows, both museum and runway, and biographies of Chanel and Marie Antoinette that Thurman turns her enviable literary talents to fashion. Her writing is everything one expects of a New Yorker writer: fluent, intelligent, literary, competent and compelling.
I loved much of what she wrote about Chanel - it seemed fresh and sharp. Her writing is consistent in its well placed and knowledgeable references and perspectives. Cleopatra doesn't appear until the end...

[Susan Kinnevy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess the author is well know, but I'd never heard of her, the essays were for a book club. I just didn't find them compelling at all. When someone writes about a third party, biographically and/or critically, I think the piece should make want to investigate that party further for myself. These essays didn't do that for me.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judith Thurman is one hell of a writer. I picked this book up on a whim at a library sale and I'm so glad I did. Will definitely be revisiting these essays, and probably checking out Thurman's biographies of Isak Dinesen and Colette.

[Verónica Frágola · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pesado. Denso.

[Elise Trimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

What you have to understand is that in it's time and place the erudite mot juste was not considered mean spirited. At the time lancing the ego so it could drain was a medical necessity. Unctuous care not to offend was unnecessary when private lives were lived in private.

[Leah W · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I had no opaque white underpants to wear under my own white linen suit, looked for a pair up and down the rue de Rennes, couldn't find any-there is no such thing, in Paris, as opaque white under pants, which is a reason to love Paris[.:]"

Initially, I wasn't terribly fond of this book. Perhaps I shouldn't have read this right after Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, which is also by a woman who writes for the New Yorker (Joan Acocella), who also writes book reviews of artists, but is better-known for her criticism of a more ephemeral art (for Acocella, dance; for Thurmer, fashion). I do think Acocella is a better book reviewer, and Thurmer has a habit of bringing up something completely unrelated to her essay's topic, using it as an introductory metaphor, and then discarding it. This was done in at least ten of these essays.

However, once she moved into fashion, I was delighted. I am in no way a follower of fashion, but just reading Thurmer's reports of fashion weeks long past and trends long discarded (Neoprene was big in 2003? Really?) has led me to be more interested in fashion than I ever have been before. Also, her museum reportage was excellent, and the penultimate essay about Cleopatra was terrific.

In the end, I can't begrudge Thurmer for not being Joan Acocella. I'll just enjoy them both, and avoid any other New Yorker staff writers for awhile.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the first book that I read because of Good Reads. I'll let you know what I think of it when I've read more.

I didn’t ever read that much more. I read three of the essays and started on a few that I never finished. I picked it up after having read a couple Good Reads reviews because it seemed like an intelligent dealing of desire. I was most interested in the texts about fashion. Critical writing of fashion is something that I have been wanting to read. The commercialist celebrity cult that mainstream fashion writing fosters is not all that there is about clothes, and I was hoping that Judith Thurman take it further than the average Vogue article. Thurman however doesn’t really make any deeper analysis of fashion but rather portraits its big icons, Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli and other grand dames and monsieurs. Despite the name, Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, the essays lack an analysis of the desire that seems to be essential to fashion. My interest in the book stem from the expectation that I thought it would answer some of my questions of how desire is produced, how it is connected to clothes and fashion and what it all means, but that is unfortunately not what Judith Thurman is dealing with here, and she leaves me unsatisfied.

[Alexa.elam · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are Thurman's collected essays from her work for The New Yorker. I had read many of them when they were first published, but her work is so crisply and eloquently written that it is a pleasure to re-read these essays. A big to-read list grew from reading this book-- starting tonight with "A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer."

I especially love Thurman's writing on fashion and fashion figures. She is able to put fashion and style in a socio-historical context that underscores its relevance, rather than being relegated to the watered down women's section (or "Styles" section as The New York Times euphemistically titles their women's page).

Finally-- her piece on Tofu is fabulous! You will want to get on a plane to Kyoto to try the real thing-- I do!

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I was reading with a dictionary I'd be learning a whole new vocabulary. These essays by Judith Thurman, a staff writer for The New Yorker, are brilliant and so erudite I can feel my brain stretching. They are essays usually about women, but they explore unusual aspects of being a woman, women's work, or a particular woman being profiled. So far I've read about a bulimic performance artist, the making of tofu in Japan, Diane Arbus, etc. The Diane Arbus essay inspired me to check out a catalogue of one of her exhibitions--Family Album--that Thurman refers to throughout. So interesting. I may have to buy this book eventually because it takes me so long to read each piece.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judith Thurman writes for The New Yorker, and is most well known for her articles about fashion designers - the big ones like Balenciagia, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Saint Laurent. All of these and more are included in this collection, but one of my favorite essays is called "Eminence Rose", about Mme. de Pompadour. One of Thurman's observations.."If Hillary Clinton had held evey cabinet position in her husbands administration and controlled every appointment, her influence might have approximated Pompadour's at the height of her power". She also sent French generals her ideas for battle plans marked with her beauty spots.....I wonder if Carla Bruni ever read this essay?

[Kristen Leanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! In fact, I'd have finished it much sooner had I not become ill in the middle of reading it. It's a dense book, over 400 pages, but it never felt long to me. Quite the opposite actually, I couldn't get enough! I enjoyed every single one of her essays and, I think, learned something from each one. Her writing is brilliant and insightful. I've never read The New Yorker but I know its reputation, and this is exactly the caliber of writing I'd expect from a magazine that carries so much prestige. I felt smarter after reading these essays. That's a rare occurrence for me nowadays, indeed.

[Lightsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Present from my darling husband. . . and what a wonderful read. Thurman makes one so much more informed in so little space, almost by magic, the way Colette makes one automatically more sophisticated (and sexy) in a page or two. I am lapping this up. . .
So I should perhaps add, as a caveat, that after the miscellaneous first section there is a heavy dose of fashion writing. If that's not your thing, well, perhaps try something else by Thurman. But if, like me, you're fascinated by plumage and starved for smart commentary thereon, it's catnip.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thurman writes beautiful, precise sentences that spool out to form vivid, erudite essays. I found her many aphorisms completely delightful and deft. From her essay on the biographies of Charlotte Bronte: "novel-writing seems to be a work of high-minded betrayal and biography a work of dirty-minded fidelity;" from her essay on Cristobal Balenciaga: "Piety and chic may not obviously be compatible, but penitents and perfectionists tend to have a lot in common." I'll be reading her biographies soon, and hopefully everything else she writes.

[Anie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of essays from the New Yorker. Thurman is an attentive writer and a knowledgeable woman, and the two combine quite well. The collection unfortunately begins with some of the more lackluster articles - I admittedly didn't like the article on bulimia at all - but the fashion and biography articles, two topics on which Thurman is very strong, are excellent. It's highly suggested - and you can always skip articles you don't like, anyways.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read about half of it, and found that I had previously many of the pieces in The New Yorker. I liked some of the essays and found others boring, so I recommend you pick and choose. I really liked the essay about Elsa Schiaparelli, not the one about Anne Frank. I think the best ones are about fashion, but personally I am not that into fashion or the New York scene.

[Ryan Chapman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm pretty much addicted to any collection of essays culled from the New Yorker, and Thurman doesn't disappoint. Her topics are wide-ranging and always grounded despite their beautiful prose. I pick this one off the shelf when I'm between books, open to a random essay, and often find something illuminating. Especially great is the opening essay on performance art and eating disorders.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far I really love this book, although it is definitely not the kind of thing you can read in one sitting. The essays have a very intellectual bent and require close reading. The topics are fascinating.

[Laine Bergeson]

I couldn't get through this book. Too abstruse. I really wanted to read it, especially on the light rail to work, so that the other riders would think I was smart. But I just wasn't smart enough, I guess. So now they see me reading US Weekly, and I'm fine with that.

[willow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a guilty pleasure, since all the articles have been previously published in the New Yorker it was reading a magazine that looks like a book.
Thurman is an great essayist- concise, drawing esoteric parallels and making us hunger for more by the last paragraph.

[Catherine Corman · Rating 2 out of 5]

As Pliny tells it, Cleopatra challenged Antony to outspend her at dueling banquets, then, to win her bet, dissolved the world's largest pearl - one of a pair she wore as earrings - in a cruet of vinegar and drank it.

-Judith Thurman, Cleopatra's Nose