Bruce P. Grether: Bruce P. Grether (Swami B) and his partner Hyperion are among the Faeries of Wimberley. This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (#47). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
Roy Grinker has produced a fascinating, beautifully written and meticulously researched biography of the famous anthropologist Colin M. Turnbull, a man best known for his detailed and groundbreaking study of the African Pygmies.
Less well known is the private life of Turnbull, though he lived through the second half of the last century as an openly gay man. The author of this haunting biography admits from the start that he dishonored the wishes of his subject, by writing about Turnbull instead of his subject's black partner, Joseph Towles. The interracial couple defied the conventions of their times and Turnbull championed Towles until his partner's death in 1988. Though better known and acclaimed in his field, the anthropologist loyally fostered the notion that Grinker should write a biography of Towles. Turnbull lived out the rest of his own life under an assumed name, as a Buddhist monk. Grinker also provides a detailed look at the nature of modern fieldwork, in which a researcher cannot avoid becoming involved with the subjects. The portrayal of the Pygmy people and their culture bound up with the forests they live in is sure to fascinate readers. Not since “Woman In The Mists,” Farley Mowat's biography of Diane Fossey, has the life of a famous field researcher of recent times been so vividly and intriguingly depicted.commenting closed for this article