The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer: Close Encounters with Strangers

As a hardcore birder and a former lap dancer, there was no way I could resist this book. I approached the title essay with some trepidation; as an ex-stripper who chafes at the typical stereotypes, I tend to take a defensive stance when reading or viewing an outsider's depiction of 'exotic' dancers. In this case, I needn't have worried. Hansen's encounter with "Layla" reminded me of so many of the intelligent and charismatic women I have met in stripclubs; it was simply one of the best depictions of this type of dancer that I have ever encountered anywhere. (Sure, there are women who conform to the negative stereotypes as well...and Layla perhaps glosses over some of the negative aspects of the industry during her conversation with the author...but still. I stayed in the industry as long as I did partly because I met so many fascinating, wise & funny women in the clubs. I thank Mr. Hansen for giving us a glimpse of this reality.) His attempts to illuminate the subculture of the friendly neighborhood stripclub also mostly hit the mark. (However, he does get a few bird-related details wrong--things only a total birdgeek would notice.) The other stories in this book are wonderful, too. I especially loved "Cooking with Madame Zoya" and "Life at the Grand Hotel." He is a fine writer--his prose is straightforward and mostly unembellished, but deeply affecting in its simplicity. Despite Mr. Hansen's incredible adventures, there is no bluster here. The writing is not "pretty" or showoff-y, but gentle, quiet, and surprisingly winsome. I highly recommend this eminently readable volume. Upon completion, you will want to invite the author to dinner (or take him out birding, or buy him a lapdance...or all three. Anyway, I did. :)) Enjoy!

This book will introduce you to new places (Maldives, Thursday Island, and Vanuatu) and make you see familiar places in a new light (New York and California). Hansen is a wonderful narrator. He has a simple respect for everyone he meets and this allows him to penetrate deeper into their world. He has had an adventure-filled life and I'm thankful that he has shared more of his experiences here. If this is your first introduction to Hansen check out Motoring with Muhammad. It will help you understand the Arab world and give you some fine insights into the strange and often neglected country of Yemen. You won't be disappointed.

I first got my hands on this collection in bound-galley form while working in the marketing office of a bookstore. I love short stories and travel memoirs, and this was a compelling collection of both. I read most of the book aloud, over the phone from Vermont to Brooklyn, during several late night conversations with my best friend. Nearly two years later, tonight, he recalled the book and asked for the title. I had given the galley away while preparing to move to a new house, and thus embarked on a mad Google quest using only the keywords "bird" "short stories" "2004." Fortunately, luck was on my side, and I was able to scout out the title and author without much fuss. All this is to say that my friend's fond memory makes us both yearn to read the stories again. Hansen tells of his varied adventures with a deft, humorous, and engaging voice, and once I get my hands on the collection this time, I won't give it away.

Years ago I enjoyed Hansen's book Motoring With Mohammad, and so when I saw this compellingly titled new collection of nine essays I immediately picked it up. Three of these are essentially profiles of interesting people Hansen has come across in his years of globe trotting, and the other six could be grouped under the heading of travel writing, although they tend to transcend the genre. All of the essays are immensely readable and engrossing, as Hansen is one of those rare travel writers who writes beautifully and insightfully about places, people, and experience. The first profile, "Arlette and Madame Perruche", is also the shortest piece in the book. It's an 8-page sketch of the friendship between an elderly Russian ballerina and a homeless woman in the south of France. The brief piece gives a deep sense of the power of generosity and friendship. Another elderly Russian woman is the subject of the second profile, "Cooking With Madame Zoya." Here, the subject lives in New York and is renown for her authentic Russian cuisine, catering for massive parties from the tiny kitchen of her Washington Heights tenement. The mini-biography over twenty pages is compelling in its own right, but what it really does is make one reflect upon how every old person around us has rich stories to tell if we are willing to listen. The final profile gives the collection its provocative title, and is about a wildlife biologist in northern California and his unlikely friendship with a group of strippers. Like the first profile, it's about a very unlikely friendship, and Hansen spends 35 pages trying to get at what makes it work. The six travel pieces span approximately thirty years of Hansen's life and are utterly unique and compelling reading. In "Life at the Grand Hotel", Hansen is working on a shrimp trawler off the Australian coast in 1974. In only a few pages he very effectively sketches what life on a shrimper is like, and then Cyclone Tracy hits. This was a horrific storm in which several other trawlers sank, some 16 people died at sea, and Hansen's home port of Darwin was leveled. Barely making it through the storm, the boat lays up at Thursday Island and a shaken Hansen is drawn to the nexus of social life there, the Grand Hotel. This becomes his home for the next several months, and his tales of the wild people and antics there are quite funny. This is the kind of story that will make the reader want to run away from home and embark on strange adventures. It's also a postcard from the past, as globalization has clearly reached in and tamed the island since then. "Listening to Kava" is a 15-page piece that would be very much at home in one of the more interesting travel magazines. In it, Hansen journeys to Vanuatu to learn about the rites that revolve around the kava root, which is central to native culture there. It's no-holds-barred experiential journalism as he gets whammied by the powerful hallucinogenic effect and lives to write about it. "Life Lesson

Eric Hansen's travel essays (written over twenty-plus years) are upbeat, serious, downright funny and just plain strange at times. Hansen says, "The best way to penetrate a culture and mingle with the people was by getting involved with the local economy." He is the handy man for a rowdy hotel on an island off the coast of Australia; a volunteer at Mother Theresa's Home for Dying Destitute in Calcutta, India and a fish smuggler at the Republic of Maldives. "The Bird Man And The Lap Dancer" not only takes you visually to places as diverse as Vanuatu and the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, but it also exposes readers to the area's daily life by meticulously dissecting the culture. The book works due to Hansen's disarming personality and his insatiable curiosity. The author's saintly patience is tested often with comedic effect; the most hilarious moments take place in India. Hansen is put through the ringer of the country's bureaucracy as he tries to ship crates back to the States. The scenes are so ridiculously over-the-top with red tape procedures that even Franz Kafka's Mr. K ("The Castle") would have to pause and laugh. In short, the concise essays pack in history, humor, memoir, and cultural observations without straining the reader, a pure delight page after page. Bohdan Kot