SHELF LIFE; What Do St. Francis, Babe Ruth and Crocodiles Have in Common?
CRYING The Natural and Cultural History of Tears By Tom Lutz W. W. Norton. 352 pages. $25.95 When battle-weary Odysseus thinks of Troy, Homer tells us, ”sometimes hot tears come, and I revel in them, or stop before the surfeit makes me shiver.” There is an unexpected, sensuous pleasure to be found in tears. The Romanian writer E. M. Cioran called tears ”music in material form.” There is also unexpected mystery in them. Tears are the marks of saints (St. Francis of Assisi was said to have been blinded from weeping) and sinners (”You’re good, sister,” Bogart sardonically tells the tearful Mary Astor in ”The Maltese Falcon.” ”Very good.”). They seem to challenge some gender stereotypes (Norman Schwarzkopf publicly wept; so did Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth) and reinforce others (several studies have shown that American women cry four or five times as often as men). Tears have been treated as aphrodisiacs, sacraments, curses. The mystery is not dissolved by Tom Lutz’s u
