The Rear View: A Brief and Elegant History of Bottoms Through the Ages

Acme of perfection in ancient Greece, the human buttocks became associated with the devil and hell in the Middle Ages, when the backside was also a source of lewd and grotesque humor. But artists and writers from Michelangelo to Toulouse-Lautrec, da Vinci and Verlaine rescued the rear end from the negative connotations inflicted on it. In this erudite, enjoyable, at times voyeuristic excursion, full of forgotten literary, cultural and artistic lore, French writer Hennig, who lives in Paris and has worked for Rolling Stone, offers a rarefied survey of rumps, extending from the hairy, partly concealed prehistoric predecessors among our hominid ancestors, to ""virtual behinds,"" synthesized images of bottoms in cyberspace. Spiked with allusions ranging from Hieronymus Bosch to Yoko Ono and decked out with 16 pages of photos (not seen by PW), this unusual study consists of 21 vignettelike chapters with such titles as ""Brothel,"" ""Surgery,"" ""Gross"" and ""Swimsuit."" With Gallic wit and clinical detachment, Hennig considers the buttocks as inflamer of passion, site of punishment, display of manly pride or female grace, seat of mystery. (Apr.)