1038 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [74,1972]

Comment on Gropper’s Review of THE GYPSIES

MARJORIE K. BRAUDE University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Some months ago, Professor Rena Grop- per reviewed The Gypsies by the French- man, Jean-Paul Cldbert (AA 72:640-641). I feel compelled to write a brief rejoinder since such a negative review is likely to discourage individuals interested in Gypsies from reading what is generally a useful con- tribution to the all too sparse Gypsy litera- ture.

The review begins by inferring that be- cause Cldbert is not a professional anthro- pologist the validity and quality of his book must be immediately questioned. A book must always be judged by its merits, what- ever the professional status of the author. In addition, while Gropper recognizes that Cle- bert has carefully synthesized his data,which he collected by reading, observing, and inter- viewing, she does not feel that his rigorous methodology compensates €or his lack of reference to material in English and to American data. However, she admits that should she attempt a similar endeavor there would be a dearth of Slavic and Semitic sources. It is true that there is a paucity of American data in The Gypsies, which is probably because Cl6bert intends to deal only with European Gypsies.

The most important objection I have to Gropper’s review is in regard to the fol low ing quote from CMbert’s book:

Put the same question twenty times t o Gypsies and you will get twenty different replies. This is one of the reasons why, in spite of the long sojourns I have been able to have among Gypsies, I have in this book applied myself to citing only those facts which have been recorded by standard gypsiology [p. 1691.

Gropper says of the above, “Those of you who share my anthropologically biased pre- ference for native informants over armchair ‘experts’ would be better advised to invest their time in reading Jan Yoors’ The Gypsies.” To this I must point out a passage from Yoors’ book.

On the rare occasions when the Rom chose not to avoid an actual dialogue

with the Gaje, their answers were almost as inconsistent and bewildering. If one question was asked t o twenty different Gypsies, all the answers, as might be expected, were contradictory. If the same question were asked twenty times of the same informant, there was an equally wide diversity of answers [p. 511. I t should be noted that Yoors, like

Cldbert, is not a professional anthropologist. Neither Yoors not Cldbert claim to have written an anthropological study of Gypsies. Indeed, Yoors has simply related in a per- sonal and unscientific manner his experi- ences among a group of Lowara Gypsies. Cldbert, who has had a good deal of personal contact with Gypsies, as well as having done extensive research on the subject, has pro- duced a book integrating various sources relating to European Gypsies. He does not attempt to be original; rather, his intention is to convey a general description of the history and traditions of European Gypsies, relying primarily on facts which “have been recorded by standard gypsiology.”

Reply to Braude

RENA C. GROPPER Hunter College, C UNY

I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify what seems t o be ambiguous phrase- ology in my review. Keeping in mind the Gypsy warning that “The largest thing about a dwarf is his capacity to spit,” I shall try to be brief.

(1) The quantity of written sources on the Gypsies, far from being “all too sparse,” is large indeed. As Yoors points ou t in his “Introduction” (p. 8), Dr. George Black, of the New York Public Library, listed 4577 publications as of 1914; of these many were recapitulations. Furthermore, with two pro- fessional journals being issued annually and books appearing sporadically, the bibliog- raphy has expanded appreciably since then.

(2) The fact that C16bert is not an an- thropologist, I thought I had indicated, made it difficult to handle the reviewing situation in a normal fashion since the re- view was to appear in a journal for profes- sional anthropologists (who have their own special needs and requirements as well as