Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears (review)

Tom Lutz. Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. 352 pp. Ill. $U.S. 25.95; $Can. 36.99 (0-393-04756-3).

Crying offers a kind of smorgasbord of just about everything known about human tears from the disciplines of anthropology, literature, psychology, philosophy, history, physiology, and biochemistry. Tom Lutz is generous with examples drawn from literature and art--topics that were poorly represented in prior, book-length studies of the subject--and he goes far beyond any of his predecessors in the ease and sophistication with which he presents contemporary ideas from biochemistry and physiology. It is unfortunate, however, that he should minimize his indebtedness to earlier studies of crying. There are at least two books that should have received more notice than they do: biochemist William H. Frey's Crying: The Mystery of Tears (1985), a book based on his research about adult crying behavior, is mentioned only in passing; and psychotherapist Jeffrey A. Kottler's The Language of Tears (1996), a study of crying that includes theoretical as well as descriptive material, is ridiculed as inspirational "pop" psychology. Lutz's dismissive tone seems unnecessary, since his own book is clearly in the tradition of these earlier studies as well as an improvement on both.

My overall response to this book is mixed. It is a real pleasure to read--in fact, I enjoyed every minute of the time I spent with it. But it may be that readerly interest is achieved at the expense of scholarly usefulness. The references are thorough and extensive, yet the author's decision not to include references within the text will inevitably limit the book's utility; this practice is especially problematic in the case of quoted material. The organization of the book is also problematic. Though the material is indeed fascinating (Do elephants really cry? Are tears always a sign of sincerity?), Lutz's structure of a series of anecdotes loosely tied together leaves the reader wanting more--whether this "more" be synthesis, interpretation, or just an authorial point of view. Lutz seems wary throughout in offering interpretations of his data. The upside of this is that the reader is spared the oversimplifications that mar earlier studies of the subject. The downside, however, is that the text often reads as a narrative sequence of notecards strung together.

Of course there is much that is valuable and praiseworthy about this study. Particularly rewarding for me is Lutz's perceptive commentary on theories of emotion, which includes not only Aristotle, Freud, and Watson, but also figures like Sartre and Damasio. He seems equally comfortable in discussing ancient and modern examples; thus he can discuss the cognitive dimensions of Aristotle's idea of catharsis in one part of the book, and in another, the strategic shrewdness of Tammy Faye Bakker's messy tearfulness or Oliver North's controlled "moistness" (p. 242). Lutz's great achievement in this book is to complicate our understanding of crying, undoing or modifying earlier simplifications. For example, he corrects the widely held view that in the Western tradition men do not cry, including a section on the "massive heroic weepiness" (p. 63) of such legendary warriors as Odysseus, Aeneas, Hrothgar, Roland, and Koremori. Similarly, his careful description of the behaviors of people from different cultures and different historical periods dissuades us from believing that there is a single understanding of any aspect of crying.

Lutz's analysis of the phenomenon of crying is more inclusive than anything yet published, and teaches us that this subject is far more complicated than most of us supposed.

 

Anne Hunsaker Hawkins
Penn State College of Medicine

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