Abstract

In the final chapter of Patterns of American Culture, anthropologist Dan Rose creates what he terms piece of fictional which he attempts to describe life America as total stranger to might find it (78). Generally speaking, his fictional poetics describes a young ethnographer's exploration of a strange people, all of whom are apparently masked. He, the ethnographer, believes the masks to be in some way central to the cultural values of the people who wear them (81). At one point, he decides to try on one of these masks. Once the mask is on, he comments that