Product Description
After a mundane start in a typical academic career, the unnamed narrator is given the unusual task of tracking and recording the successful but chaotic career of one of the senior faculty, a Professor Small. After many failed attempts at meetings, the narrator takes a new approach. He simply does what anthropologists do: observe, listen, and sometimes participate. Over the course of two years, his frustration and contempt for the flighty, head-in-the-clouds Professor Small turns into admiration and trust as Small relates a host of stories about the tribes he has seen. These stories press the reader’s intuitions about subjects as diverse as love, death, gender roles, and God. By the end, the relationship has become one of master and student, with the narrator realizing just how little he has thought about his place in the wide world.