The Sound of One Thigh Clapping: Haiku for a Thinner You

By Meredith Clair

The rigors of Ornish, reduced to seventeen syllables. Weight Watchers in three lines of enigmatic verse. The paradoxof Atkins-shed pounds while wolfing down cheese, eggs, and meat-distilled to a Zen-like utterance. Or call it the path to losing oneself, in the language of finding oneself. Inspired by a weight loss guru's pithy sayings-Craving is the root of all suffering, Self-esteem = Sodium-Meredith Clair, an inveterate dieter, explores the connection between diet and haiku, eacha discipline that insists on cutting out excess, stripping down to the bare essentials, and counting, be it calories or syllables. The result is The Sound of One Thigh Clapping, a collection of tiny, hilarious moments in the epic journey to reach the Land of the Thin.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761131426
• ISBN13: 9780761131427
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.3" x 0.5" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

It IS a humor book, not a how to!!

Why would anyone interpret this book as a how-to, when it is so clearly a humor book? Oy vey! This is the funniest book I've read in a long time. It's about time someone sent up dieting culture. If I read one more how-to diet book, I'm gonna barf!

The Sound of One Thigh Clapping

This is so funny you'll want to keep flipping through to find more quips. It's a must have stocking stuffer. whether you're "stuffed" or not.

You'll laugh your love handles right off!!!

This is the most clever send-up of our obsession with weight and beauty to come along in a long, long time -- and she misses not a single diet, food item, or weight loss method! It's laugh-out-loud hilarious! Weight Watchers, Scarsdale Diet, Grapefruits, Diet Pills, Gastric Bypass -- they're all in there. What makes it even more brilliant? The haikus were actually written in the tradition of Basho. These are real haikus, not knock-knock jokes broken down into a 5-7-5 meter. And the cleverness of measurement of verse is especially cool considering the theme of the book -- counting points, counting calories, counting pounds. All in all, a perfectly executed piece of writing, and a perfect gift for anyone and everyone.