Jaime de Angulo

The title of an article in the academic journal Current Anthropology nails it: “Not a Dull Life.” Pair that with the title of the book being reviewed in the article — Rolling in Ditches with Shamans: Jaime de Angulo and the Professionalization of Anthropology — and you get an even better sense of the man in question. A man who occasionally dressed as a woman and who frequently drank to excess. A man who produced reams of creative writing in addition to scholarly papers on subjects such as “La Psychologie Religieuse des Achumawi.” A man referred to by his pen pal and fanboy Ezra Pound as the “American Ovid.” A man who lost a son in a car accident and attempted suicide. A man who throughout adulthood maintained a devotion to exploring in his own psyche and in the Indigenous communities of the American West what’s sometimes called “the old ways.”

Professionalization of anthropology? Going pro was not de Angulo’s thing, at least not if it