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The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer: Close Encounters with Strangers | 
 enlarge | Author: Eric Hansen
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy Used: $3.45
You Save: $20.55 (86%)
New (2) Collectible (1) from $19.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 123965
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0375421262
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.41
EAN: 9780375421266
ASIN: 0375421262
Publication Date: October 12, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Eric Hansen is an intrepid traveler with a keenly perceptive eye and an appreciation for the odd and unusual. He will go anywhere and try anything. Through it all he manages to capture the most revealing conversations and the most transporting moments in his travels, from the Maldives to Sacramento, from Cannes to Borneo and far beyond.
Hansen writes about the mind-altering experience of drinking kava in Vanuatu and about heartrending moments working at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying Destitute in Calcutta. He joins a grieving husband searching for his dead wife’s wedding ring at a crash site in the Borneo rain forest. He recounts his miraculous survival of Cyclone Tracy on a fishing boat off the north coast of Australia, and he befriends an elderly Russian woman who would prepare catered dinners for George Balanchine and Igor Stravinsky in her tiny Manhattan kitchen while drug dealers were shot to death in the downstairs lobby. He spends time with an ornithologist who studies endangered ants and the sex lives of banana slugs—and takes topless dancers on bird-watching expeditions.
Each essay is a passionate experience of life refracted through the eyes and voice of a singularly evocative and original writer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
Barn Dance at Sea May 20, 2008
This is the first book by Hansen I've read, and I enjoyed it. It is a very funny and quick read. There are not many travel writers who describe events like "It was like an all-male barn dance at sea." Or describe a man spitting his flaming dentures off a pier on Thursday Island.
 Also interesting for birders July 26, 2007
This is what I wrote to a USA forum of birders (birdwatchers):
Eric Hansen, well known from his impressive travel stories located in Yemen and Borneo, has published a collection of short stories titled the Bird Man and the Lap Dancer - Close Encounters with Strangers. The main story is about a real wildlife biologist in California and the interest a few female 'special club' dancers developed for going out with him to go birdwatching. It's not hard to believe how weird this story is, but possibly in a different way from what you think. Even though birding practically disappears from halfway this 45 pages long story, it's interesting enough from the birding perspective alone. There is even some serious talk about birding, like the standardising of bird census techniques in the USA. Good to know that these subjects have made it to the world literature!
The other eight stories are not about birding but often show Hansen's great gift in describing outdoor atmosphere.
All of My Stories Are True July 11, 2007
My Aunt Dagmar once told me - `All of my stories are true and some of them actually happened.' I strongly believe that is a sentiment shared by Eric Hansen.
"The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer" is an excellent read. Hansen is a first-rate writer and has no problem holding the reader's interest from one page to the next and from story to story. I was somewhat surprised to find that the first story was a character study about a relationship between two women rather than a travel story per se. However, as I read on, Hansen made me realize that travel is not just about place, but also about the people the traveler will come across in his or her journeys and I grew to appreciate the subtitle - "Close Encounters with Strangers."
I am not at all disappointed in the tales the author has to relate. But, deep down I feel that is mostly what they are - tales. This is especially true of the title story. Perhaps I come to this conclusion because in this story Hansen at times seems to lose his narrative thread and delve a little too deeply and a little too long into the psyche of the characters rather than the encounter. This story, to me, feels like a fantasy and firmly embeds this book in to the growing genre of "creative nonfiction."
While I would not place this book in the Travel section, I do highly recommend it to any one who is interested in reading about colorful people in exotic settings.
Utterly amazing! May 1, 2007
Highest recommendation! How much living can one man fit into his years? I'd guess Eric Hansen can answer that as well as any person alive today. Some reviewers have praised the chapter "Life Lessons from Dying Strangers" as the best of the book. While I thoroughly loved it, "Cooking with Madame Zoya" brought a lump to my throat as I read about this spunky, independent woman making a life in a neighborhood most men would never consider entering--and receiving help from the most unexpected of sources! What a story!
"Three Nights on the Mountain" will give you chills. "The Ghost Wind" will renew your faith in native intelligence and perception. And "The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer" will leave you shaking your head in wonder at the amazing variety of people in the world.
Read this book!
Prospecting for the nuggets of the human condition December 18, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an unusual book and for many people it will be the title that will first beckon. It was loaned to me by a close friend and once I started it I found that I couldn't wait to find out where the next essay led. As a result I turned the last page after a four hour plane trip and was sorry that there wasn't more. This is not to say that there aren't some essays that are more successful than others but each illumines a facet of this amazing life and planet that you are unlikely to read about anywhere else. In many cases it is the juxtaposition of people,their circumstances, and their associations that makes this book unique. Hansen has lived a fascinating and unusual life. In his willingness to take risks and to say "yes," before he really understands what is in store he has opened himself up to the richness of life. It was great fun to go along for the ride.
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