Sensitive Anatomy

Argentine writer Neuman (Traveler of the Century) delivers a quick-witted series of meditations on the human body, each of which reads like a chapter in a madcap medical textbook. “Ornithology of the Armpit” takes stock of the armpit’s self-defeating conflict between its “vocation as hiding place” and its joy in “being seen.” The nose fares better; in “Nose as Utopia,” Neuman celebrates the appendage’s ability “to be eloquent without speaking.” Elsewhere, he describes freckles as the body’s “condiment,” a “whiff of spices” that “tickle the tip of our tongue.” Philosophical ideas figure into “Hair’s Revolutions,” which finds Neuman arguing that to “comb one’s hair is a political act. Perhaps that’s why our revolutions in this area so often end in disappointment,” and in “Rhythm and Cadenzas of the Foot” (“Like adverbs, [feet] tell us where and when”). The entries offer meaningful explorations of language, imparting new ways of speaking about the body’s constituent parts. Charming and never showy, it’s a beautiful riff on what it means to be alive. (Aug.)