Concerning Eating Animals
Crucify him! Foer criticism abounds:
Three years ago, Michael Pollan published The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a much-discussed bestseller about the ethical dimensions of food (the book’s index lists 14 pages for “Singer, Peter”). Foer expresses respect for Pollan’s work, but judges his belief that slaughter is not “necessarily inhumane” as “somewhere between a half-truth and an evasion.” The last several years have also brought the publications of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and the release of the documentary film Food, Inc. So given the spate of recent, widely discussed material on the subject of our culinary ethics, what does Foer bring to the table?
He brings himself.
And the zinger concerning Foer’s curious exclusion of Peter Singer — the chair of ethics at Princeton where Foer studied philosophy — and all that, you know, smugness:
He doesn’t have time to mention Singer, but he compares himself to Kafka, quotes Derrida (more than once), and mistakes graphic design for profundity. One chapter begins with the boldfaced words “Speechlessness / Influence / Speechlessness / Influence” densely repeated for five whole pages. There are times when you can almost hear Foer thinking: Yes, these arguments have been made dozens of times before, but they’ve never been made in this font.
My wife and I were discussing Foer’s book the other day with some friends and the same topic arose. For Foer to write such a book seems a bit presumptuous and arrogant, especially when you consider the amount of research and material concerning the food industry already saturating the nonfiction market. Foer’s strengths and talent then, as a literary figure, becomes a statement of jest in itself. It’s as if Salinger were to return from his decades of absence to “contribute” a book about the dangers of global warming. You can almost picture them muttering, “Mmmm. Relevance…” Yes, Jonathan, you certainly are hitting these trends at the height of their popularity.
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