MERDE

Não. Não se trata de qualquer disquisição de história militar, referida ao lendário mot de Cambronne em Waterloo, e muito menos expressão opinativa sobre estilos de governo.

É a, no mínimo, curiosa, obra de Ralph Lewin, descrita na espirituosa crítica de Peter Kurth como uma "scientific excursion into the cultural and social and anthropological and mythological and biological aspects of what we might as well call coprology".

"...Quite apart from its subject matter, this is a perfect book for the john. Shitting doesn't lend itself to any narrative pattern, and "Merde" is best read in short or long installments, depending on the state of your colon. At times, Lewin strives too hard for puns and clever remarks: "We are told that in a single year the French king Louis XV was subjected to more than two hundred purges and a comparable number of enemas. (Evidently not all of his time was spent on the throne.)" But you won't find a more elegant or a wittier treatise on shit in any bookstore this season..."