There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown.
Published in 1960, this is a monumental poem (which ruminates the meaning of humanity) in disguise as a clinical socialogical study of the pathology of crowd behaviour. I never could enter a theater or stand in a line of people in the same way after reading this book. Years after I had first read it, I witnessed the very beginning of a riot in downtown San Jose. I watched the transformation of a group of disparate individuals into the churning mass of vandalising rioters via the mechanism of a kernal of seven or eight people whose unconcious activity galvanized the entire street into madness. I just happened to be there when the thing exploded, and as each little domino fell into place, the dynamic followed Canetti's every cause and prediction like clockwork. But this is merely the most surface of readings of this monumental book. Canetti was romantically linked with Iris Murdoch, and both writers share an incredibly dry sense of humor blandly laced into their deep preoccupations with the human condition. You may feel while you read this book that it was written by a veternarian or a biologist about animals, as I did; I think that is because of the relationship between facism and the seduction of the mass which is nicely and dispassionately dissected by Canetti.
