Reviewed by Ward

Following the huge success of his debut novel Everything Is Illuminated and its follow-up Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer has now turned his hand to nonfiction, offering up the less poetically but very aptly titled Eating Animals, a survey of modern animal agriculture and the role we as consumers can and do play therein.

To readers familiar with the work of Foer this — temporary — transition from fiction to fact should not come as that much of a surprise. The autobiographical protagonist of Everything Is Illuminated was already a vegetarian, an element explicitly present throughout the entire novel. Furthermore, Oscar, the nine-year-old protagonist of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, was a vegan even, though charmingly exempting the occasional dairy ice-cream. With these two characters Foer gradually lay the foundation for Eating Animals, a book not merely starring a vegetarian or a vegan character but focusing exclusively and explicitly on the widespread practice of, indeed, eating animals.

While most literature on animal exploitation and animal rights can be seen as being fairly heavy — be it because of being of a philosophical nature on the one hand, or of too explicit, confrontational and/or supposedly radical a nature on the other — Foer seems to shoot for a wider audience with his book and thus opts for a lighter voice. A voice that, while being honest and truthful — and therefore inherently shocking and confrontational — is also funny, clever, and poetic at times. By this I do not mean to say that Eating Animals is light reading, but rather that Foer impressively manages to combine the brutal reality of animal exploitation with an undertone that is very much human.

For Eating Animals is not simply a holier-than-thou lecture on what you should and should not do — or in this case, should or should not eat — but rather a personal account of Foer’s own experiences regarding vegetarianism and the reasons that led him to making this choice — as well as those that kept him from committing fully to it until recently. Or as Foer already states early on in the book: “I, too, assumed that my book about eating animals would become a straightforward case for vegetarianism. It didn’t.” At the same time he rightly points out that whenever he told people of the book he was working on, they would assume that it was a case for vegetarianism. “…a telling assumption,” according to Foer, “one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case.”

While the former is most definitely true, and proven many times over throughout the entire book, it is the latter that is most important here. For if people know deep down that something is wrong with modern animal agriculture, then why do they choose to perpetuate rather than to end it? Is it because we as a species have become so insensitive and so far removed from nature that we fail to see the suffering of others, or are we so superior that it simply does not matter? (more…)