Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer: Review

Eating Animals
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Published by Little, Brown and Company
Published in 2009
ISBN: 0316069906

Can you handle the truth? It seems that I can't.

For a long time, I have been bothered by this vague notion that the fact that I eat meat does not entirely jive with the fact that I am not only an animal lover but one of those people who refuses to even kill a cockroach. This isn't for any religious or ideological reason. It's just that I am a huge softie. I want to adopt all stray dogs. And cats. And some of the squirrels in our local park. Of course I can't do this. I am bound by the necessary constraints of a thing called reality (and the protestations of my incredibly patient husband) which dictate that one large dog within one smallish apartment is quite enough.

Reality bites. But I had no idea exactly how hard it would bite me when I borrowed this book from the library. I mean, let's all be honest. Those of us who choose to eat meat rationally know, somewhere in a dark corner of our minds, that an animal had to die for us to be tucking into the juicy steak/ bucket of deep fried wings/ meat pie in front of us. Obvious stuff. Even further back, we probably acknowledge that given the world population and the existence of places called 'meat works' that this process is not likely to be very gentle or even totally humane. But for me, this acknowledgement was pushed way way back behind lots of disused boxes and debris to the darkest annex of my mind called Denial. Cognitive dissonance - the process of two totally opposing views living side by side in one person's headspace. Something has to give.

So why on earth did I decide to read this book? Or at least, attempt to read it because I should be very honest with you all right now: I could not finish this book. I guess it was because I wanted to face the truth. To test my meat eating. To see if I could handle the facts of where our meat comes from.

Test result: Abject failure.
Real life result: I can no longer eat chicken that has been processed through a meat works.

The big problem is that the people I live with are avid carnivores and I need to be able to continue to at least cook with chicken. My proposed compromise on this issue is that I am going to attempt to change the source of the chicken meat. Living, as I do, in a country where I don't speak very much of the language, certainly not enough to engage in any meaningful debate about the whys and wherefores of the origin of any meat with any shop vendor, this is not going to be easy. However, my plan is to try to get my meat from the traditional markets. They have live chickens at the market and they will kill them for you on the spot. Although this may not sound like much of a compromise to some people out there, trust me if you had read the description that I had of how chickens are slaughtered on masse, you might change your mind.

You see, in all honesty, I still want to eat meat. I enjoy it (don't judge!) But now I want to eat meat in a way that causes the least amount of suffering to the animals that end up on my plate. So a quick, individualized kill at the market seems to me, at this stage, to be a better death than one at the processing plant. And I should be woman enough to look my future chicken soup in the eye before I eat it right? We shall see how I really feel about this when I scrape together the courage to actually do this in a few days.

Although I do feel bad that I wasn't able to finish the whole book, but I think that as far as what it's aim was: to make its reader seriously consider their relationship with the food they eat, it succeeded. I'd like to think that Mr. Foer will forgive me for not making it to the last page in light of the adjustments I am making in what and how I eat.

This isn't one of those books that you can recommend or not. It's something that I feel probably every single person should read, at the very least so that they an make some informed decisions about what they put in their mouths every day. It is a hard read, but Jonathan Safran Foer is an excellent writer who makes the topic engaging, thought provoking and best of all, not preachy or guilt inducing. I couldn't handle the whole truth but I don't regret that I have been exposed to it.

Sunday Salon: Caution! Thesis in Progress.

We're finally at that magical stage, folks, when the months of reading and thinking and changing directions and reading some more is coming to fruition: the real writing of my thesis. Don't get me wrong, I've been banging away on the keyboard for quite a few months now but now I can feel it all pulling together. It's making sense. It's going in a logical progression. I can see the map to the finish line. Thank Gawd. I'm taking December to focus exclusively on final write up (yay for supportive bosses!!) so hopefully by the time new year rolls around I will be all but done. That just means being a hermit for a month. Wish me luck.

In other news, it is time for Le Grande Book Club Nominations. Although I already have far too many ideas (I have a list of 7 possibles, limit per person is 2) I would like to humbly ask you to suggest others or give feedback on my choices so far. The list is:
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
The Submission by Amy Waldman
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
The Marriage Plot by Jeffry Eugenides
Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.

Also, it was my birthday this month so hubby took me to Sun Moon Lake here in Taiwan to celebrate. It was startlingly beautiful so I wanted to share a few pics here with you...

The lake at dawn

Heading off for a day up the mountain

Looking across the lake

Coming down the mountain on the gondola

Hope everyone is well and enjoying November!

Where does inspiration come from?

Divine inspiration
Image source: Lviv Polytechnic National University

I've read a couple of great posts lately on the subject of writing, one here at Books and Bowel Movements and another at The New Dork Review of Books and Greg from The New Dork Review's reply to my comment got me thinking about something. All my life I have always had this idea that to write a great work of fiction in any format, you need to have a story bursting out of you, something almost alien that consumes you and takes over the function of your hands as you frantically type away, creating a masterpiece. To be honest I have no idea why I think like this because I know, logically, that writing is work. You produce the first draft, then the second and get feedback and rework it and rework it until it's something that you're willing to release into the world. I do this all the time with my non-fiction writing so why have I got myself in such a twist about the fiction writing aspect? Is this idea that all great novels start out as a story begging to be told within the author just a myth? Who started this myth?

I was reviewing my archive of bookish podcasts while I was pondering this when I had a vague recollection of something I heard a few years back from Alice Walker so I went back and listened to it.

"I prepared by changing my life almost completely. I was living in New York City, I was an editor at Ms. Magazine, I was married... and I knew that I could not write this story which started coming to me in the actual voices of the people... I knew I couldn't write it in the city because of the tall buildings, the noise...  I also knew that I could not remain with my husband because the world that we had was charming and good but not large enough for these people and he would not have been able to understand them and he would not have been able to understand who I was to write this, so I got a divorce... we sold our house, eventually got my half of the money from the house, moved here. The people of the story, they were very real to me. They loved the beauty of San Francisco... a lot. They didn't like the earthquakes though so I knew then I had to take them out of the city to the countryside." 

Alice Walker, speaking about writing The Color Purple

BBC World Service "World Book Club: Alice Walker"

Released as a podcast 18 November 2008

Small wonder, listening to this, that I have this embedded idea when I heard such a highly respected author saying she was so inspired that she had to get divorced, quit her job and move cross-country! Then I wondered if I had heard this from other authors and found this from J K Rowling...

Sue Lawley (DID presenter): I've heard writers before, Joanne, say that stories come into their mind and demand to be written. Is that how it was with Harry?

J K Rowling: Absolutely. It was, yes. I was 25 when I had the idea for Harry and I had been writing, if you include all of the embarrassing teenaged rubbish, for years and years and I had never been so excited by an idea in my life. I'd abandoned two novels for adults prior to that, actually the second novel I was still writing when I had the idea for Harry. For six months I tried to write them both simultaneously but then Harry just took over completely.

J K Rowling speaking about writing Harry Potter

BBC Radio  4 "Desert Island Discs"

First released 5 November 2000

If we consider here what Alice Walker and J K Rowling have said, then it really does sound like a story moves in from some other place and takes over. It's the divine inspiration idea that's been around for centuries. It's a perfectly lovely idea, of course for those who want an easy explanation of how and why art of any kind is created and why it is that some art affects some people more deeply than others does. However, for those of us sat in front of a blank computer screen with only a cold cup of coffee to hand and a defiantly blinking cursor tormenting us, it's not much comfort. What are we supposed to do? Sit around and wait for inspiration to strike? Where does this inspiration come? New York city, like Alice Walker? On a delayed British Rail train, like J K Rowling? Personally, I couldn't think of two more diametrically opposed locations in terms of potential for inspiration. What do we do in the meantime? 

I like to take comfort from this quote from Khaled Hosseini. To me, this is a more realistic tale of how a great book came into being. It started off with an idea from the piece of news that the Taliban were going to ban kite-flying in Afghanistan, something which was personally significant to Hosseini since he had loved to do this when he was younger. From there, he said, it grew.

"So then I sat down, and I thought I would just write this whimsical story about kite-flying in Kabul... and of course, stories take a life of their own and gradually what started as this little kite story became a 25-page short story about this kind of complicated friendship between these two boys, this doomed friendship. And it became a story about cowardice and betrayal and honour and guilt and forgiveness and so on. And then the short story sat around for a couple of years until the March of 2001 when my wife discovered it and read it... and then I revisited the story and realised that even though it was really flawed it had a big heart and maybe the nucleus of what could become a really interesting piece of longer fiction. And that was the basis for the novel."

Khaled Hosseini, speaking about The Kite Runner

BBC World Service "World Book Club: Khaled Hosseini"

Released as a podcast  27 May 2008

From an idea to an abandoned short story to a hugely successful novel. It took was his wife's interest and enjoyment of the story for him to realise that this story was one that had massive potential, that 'big heart' despite all of the flaws that he could also see in it. 

I know that all stories have to come from somewhere, but I'm starting to think that they don't have to necessarily be that lightning strike of inspiration. Perhaps not everything we write is going to be that number one bestseller or Booker Prize winning story. Maybe we need to write a bunch of so-so stories before we can write the really good one. In the same way that you would never imagine that you'd go out and run a marathon with no prior training, maybe I should reconfigure my view to think of all writing as training for the 'big event', that hoped for and dreamed of published book. I mean, seriously. Even J K Rowling said that she'd been writing for 'years and years' before Harry came along and do you think that Alice Walker never wrote anything before The Color Purple? Exactly. I don't doubt that they really did experience that extraordinary 'boom' of inspiration but looking at Hosseini's story, it doesn't seem like it is as necessary as I once thought it was. Sure you need an idea, but that idea can just as easily germinate from a small seed as it can be transplanted into your brain. 

Looks like I just need to get myself into training for when that idea comes along. 

How about you? What do you think of the "story that just had to be written" idea?

Where is home?

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Auckland City seen from the North Shore

Image Copyright: Kath Liu 2011

For me, this one quote perfectly sums up what it feels like to return to your country of origin, be it permanently or for a quick visit, after a period of living overseas. For me, it feels like something has grown and it no longer fits like it used to, like a favourite t-shirt you used to wear all the time that accidentally got shrunk in the wash. Of course, the process of change from being overseas is a lot slower and more subtle than an overnight laundry incident and you often won't even realise that it has happened until you go back for your first visit. The process of trying on your previous life for size, as it were.

When I'm asked where I'm from, it's a challenge to answer in absolutes. I was born in Cornwall, England but I did all of my teenaged growing up in Auckland, New Zealand. I was already a bit of a mutt before I moved to Taiwan but now I feel like I've morphed into something else entirely but goodness knows what that actually is. All I know is that when I went back home to NZ for a visit recently, I felt different. Stretched. Slightly misshapen. A little odd. There were the obvious things that happen that made me notice, like the fact that I forgot that in NZ you follow road traffic conventions and keep to the left on escalators (in Taipei it's the reverse and you stay to the right-hand side) and I was shocked and appalled by the cost of living and how it had risen since I had last been back - mind you I don't think you need to have left the country to feel like that when  inflation is 5-6% per annum and wage increases are 1-2% per annum.

But there were other things that made me feel weird, like after having had a couple of glasses of wine at the wedding I was there for, I found Mandarin phrases bubbling up through. I found myself nearly saying "為什麼?" (wèishéme?) instead of "Why?" and other strange linguistic anomalies. I found myself feeling unusually intimidated by hoodie-wearing youths even though I knew that they weren't at all dangerous. I found myself feeling like a stranger in a place where I used to be absolutely comfortable - feeling exactly the same way that I did two years ago when I first moved to Taiwan. I guess if I was going to be staying in NZ longer than I was you'd say I was experiencing reverse culture shock but since I was only there for a week, I'll just call it feeling out of place in a familiar environment. 

It's a fairly lonely experience too. There you are, feeling like a fish out of water and everyone else around you has no idea you're feeling like that. Why would they? You've come back home. It's natural for them to assume that you feel like you've just slotted straight back into your old life and everything feels comfortable and familiar.  So how was I supposed to tell anyone? If I responded to "I bet it feels good to be home!" with "Actually it feels really weird and I don't feel like I fit in here anymore..." then I run the risk of accidentally offending someone or making it sound like I wasn't enjoying the fact that I was back in NZ which I was, absolutely. Being back and seeing all of my dear friends and spending time with family was fabulous. The ability to shop in regular stores who carried my size was brilliant. Going to the supermarket and seeing more cheese than you could shake a stick at was lovely. Nothing was wrong with New Zealand, what was wrong was me.

Living overseas changes you, it has to - you have to adapt to a new environment, usually learn a new language and get used to all sorts of crazy things. I mean, this makes sense logically but the emotional reality of these changes can sometimes be harder to accept. Going back to NZ pointed out to me that I wasn't the same person who left in 2009 and that felt very strange. If I wasn't that person anymore then who was I? Where did I fit in? Where was home really at? There is something rather unsettling in not really knowing which country is your home but it's also kind of exciting because it opens up all sorts of possibilities. If I can count England, New Zealand and Taiwan as my 'homes' of various types then doesn't that mean that ultimately anywhere we choose to settle could be considered home? Life without boundaries can be terrifying but also freeing. Maybe that old t-shirt no longer fits but there are many more out there that will.

Have you ever had this experience of going back to a place you used to live in and feeling like a stranger? How did you deal with it?

Life in Taiwan: My experiences with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Luckily, this wasn't my batch...

Traditional Chinese medicine. What on earth is it, anyway? When I talk about Traditional Chinese medicine I am basically painting with really broad brush strokes and including all forms of traditional medicinal and therapeutic ways of treating illness and promoting wellness that have their origins within the Chinese culture. For the sake of brevity, I will refer to it from here as TCM. This includes foot massage, 'cupping', acupuncture, food therapy and herbal reductions and plenty of others, some of which I've tried, many of which I haven't.

My first brush with TCM came when I first moved in with a Taiwanese family in New Zealand. We were taking the much beloved family dog, Rifle, out for his evening walk and we'd got all of 300 metres up the road when I fell off the pavement and twisted my ankle. This was an injury I'd had a thousand times before when I played netball as a teenager. I knew the drill. Swelling, bruising, not being able to walk properly for a few days. Upon seeing my ankle, my host mother expressed sympathies and then produced a funky smelling green patch. I must have looked doubtful as she explained that this was a Chinese remedy, it was only herbal and wouldn't hurt me. Well heck, why not. I can try anything once, so I good-naturedly let her put it on all the while secretly thinking it wouldn't do a jot of good.

Brewing the good stuff...

The next morning I could walk. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a miracle healing but it worked a darn sight quicker than anything I had ever done to my ankle to fix it before. Two days later it was like nothing had happened. It was at that point that I started to think that maybe there was something to all of this... I decided to at least keep an open mind.

Seven years and plenty more experiences like this later, I went to see my first ever TCM doctor. My reasons for going were nothing spectacular: I'd been feeling less healthy than usual this year and had been far more prone to sickness, I was low on energy, had trouble concentrating and just felt like I could do with a boost. Art, Sancia, and myself all trundled along to a little old store in Muzha (木柵) an area of Taipei City. You could smell the herbs from 20 paces and hear my heartbeat from 30, but I took a deep breath and went on in. If truth be told, I was more worried about what he would say was wrong with me than about what sort of medicine he would make me drink. I mean, I knew I was pretty healthy but I'm not one to bail up to the doctor for an annual health exam. I only see a health professional when it's absolutely necessary. Who knew what was really going on in my body?

When our number was called I nervously sat down in front of the doctor. He looked old, maybe late 70's or early 80's but his skin was nothing short of radiant and he moved around with the ease of a 25 year old. He put three fingers on my wrist like he was taking my pulse and within a few seconds listed a number of things that were wrong with me, some of which I knew and some of which I was in denial about. I swapped wrists and more of the same. It was like he was in my head. This guy had never met me, knew nothing about me and had just told me things that he couldn't possibly have guessed at. It took longer for him to write up the prescription of which herbs and other dried goods I would have to take than it did to figure out what my problems were. To say I was in awe would have been a fairly accurate description.

After the doc had seen Sancia and Art, we waited outside for our prescriptions to be made up. There were four men behind the counter sifting through various drawers and clay pots, weighing out and dividing the various dried bits and pieces onto the seven paper sheets. There were dried roots, stuff that looked like bark, stuff that look like grass, various dried berries and dried cicada shells (that wasn't our prescription, thank goodness - I'm open-minded but not that open-minded). Once they had it all, they parceled it all up like they were wrapping fish and chips, sold us a kettle to brew it up in and gave us a bunch of candy to eat after drinking it to reduce the bitterness.

That was two week ago. I've now nearly finished my second round which should be the last one for a while. While writing this I have a mug of my 'morning brew' sitting next to me. I'm psyching myself up to drink it because I will not lie. That stuff tastes foul. It's black and it's bitter. There is nothing redeeming about its taste or appearance. I have to hold my nose and skull it, or I'll never get it down. Basically, it's exactly what good medicine should look and taste like. How am I feeling? So far, so good. For the first few days I felt terrible but now I'm in the second week, a lot seems to be improving. The idea of the medicine is to rebalance my body so I expected to not feel fantastic for the first few days but now I'm (apparently) coming into balance, I am starting to feel more energetic. At the end of this round (designed to unblock my qi - energy flows in the body - and rebalance my hormones) I will let you know exactly how much of an improvement I'm feeling.

Now, to drink this morning's brew... sigh.