Man Seeks &quot;Secret Of Female Grace&quot;; Finds It In Other
MenS  Can we have a moratorium, please, on "defining feminine
beauty?" No? Okay, then! Here's a 500 page book on it! Available
for Kindle!  William Vollmann is a well-known novelist. And, as
those of you who've read his Imperial or other fiction know, a
good one. He's also, other times, a questing journalist and his
latest book is not a novel. Here's the title: Kissing the Mask:
Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater,
with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf),
Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Hou.
And in case that didn't clear things up, here's the PW
description:  The performance of female characters by male Noh
actors sparks a deeply researched, lovingly detailed, and
obsessive discourse on the nature of feminine beauty by award-
winning novelist and essayist Vollmann (Imperium). The book
charts an increasingly peripatetic path through the meticulous
yet ineffable art of Noh drama from