A review by emsemsems
Freeman's: Animals by John Freeman

4.0

‘The stakes of this moment in time, our contradictory attitudes about its moral dilemmas, and our always-intense curiosity about the lives of animals has made it an important period to re-narrate our relationship to the animal world. To strip this interaction from the fantasy of purity – as if it’s ever possible to truly know a wild living thing, or to observe it without altering its life – and to accept the messy, imperfect not-knowledge of at least some form of creative regard. Of acknowledgement by virtue of symbolic or actual engagement of shared stakes.’ – John Freeman.

Impressive collection (but that is to be expected when it comes to Freeman’s – at least in my experience) – mostly brilliant, but all of them uniquely interesting. The cover’s deceiving; definitely more ‘dog’ stories than ‘cat’. But I happen to like dogs a bit more (I think? I have more precious dog-related memories; probably just biased), so I really can’t/shouldn’t complain. It’s a diverse collection of stories by a bunch of very different writers; yet, it doesn’t feel like the diversity was forced upon. I have read a few Freeman’s and they were all very well-edited; and overall – great reading experiences. They usually contain a carefully curated list of work from writers I’ve already like and/or writers that I’m curious about, so it always makes me excited to receive/pick up a copy.

Instead of a full-blown rambling sesh about each and every writer/writing that I like, I’ve added below some excerpts from a certain few that resonated with me.

‘I find it easier to bear the suffering of human beings that the suffering of animals. The human being has its own extended ontological status, broadcast far and wide, which makes it a privileged species. It has culture and religion to support it in its suffering. It has its rationalisations and sublimations. It has God, who in the end will save it. Human suffering has meaning. For an animal there is neither consolation nor relief, because it has no salvation ahead of it. Nor does it have meaning. An animal’s body does not belong to it. It has no soul. An animal’s suffering is total and absolute. If we try to look into this condition with our human capacity for thought and with sympathy, the full horror of animal suffering is revealed, and but the same the unbearably shocking horror of this world.’ – from ‘The Masks of Animals’ by OLGA TOKARCZUK.

‘It is a rule of palaeontology that once an organism begins developing baroque adaptations to an increasingly narrow niche, or an increasingly vulnerable social network, it’s fast on its way to extinction. You can see it in the trilobites in the Wellsville Mountains in northern Utah; you can read in the layers of stone, the increasingly desperate, ostentatious, futile efforts to fit into a place that no longer wants them…Geology suggests that in hard times simplicity is pretty much the ticket to survival. The beast of time does not seem to pay as much predatory attention to the simple, but relishes the baroque. As do we. Time the destroyer; humankind the destroyer – of everything, and therefore our selves.’ – from ‘Baroque, Montana’ by RICK BASS.

‘I wandered out of our shared phantasmagoria to my room…But got lost due to fucking environmental agnosia, which I define as the opposite of synaesthesia, which I also happen to have, because the sensory pathways of my brain resemble summertime subway construction in New York City – all lines either mixed up or shut down. Everything delayed. Space and time have never been easy on me, is what I’m trying to say, so you can imagine my psychic bedlam in the fortress. Bedlam comes from Bethlehem Hospital, an asylum for the mentally ill in England, rebuilt in 1676 to resemble a castle. It was opulent on the outside, but abusive on the inside – the staff did things to the patients that made me tremble and commit when I first read about them. You have to be careful with facts; if they find you in the wrong state, they can make you puke. Where was I?’ – from ‘On Jawless Fish’ by TESS GUNTY.

And not to forget – ‘The Tongue’ by MIEKO KAWAKAMI. A short story (worthy of anyone’s time) with elements of surrealism – which opens with the protagonist, a teenage girl, out on a date (at a zoo) with a boy she isn't even really interested in. And then he very quickly makes a casual comment that triggers her personal/private anxieties. And then it transitions to her trying to basically trying to deal with her 'life' at 'home' where I suppose is also the root of all her emotional troubles – and/but portrayed in a very strange way, like an endless dream (more like a nightmare tbh) sequence. It definitely made me think that Kawakami may actually be a better short story writer than a novelist. And I would argue that more often than not, that is a more difficult thing to achieve/do, hence – truly impressive (in my opinion anyway). If you only have time for one, go for this.