The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"He pulls the car over, switches off the engine, takes his mother in his arms. He inhales the smell of cold cream, of old flesh. 'There, there,' he whispers in her ear. 'There, there. It will soon be over.'"

The article in Wikipedia about The Lives of Animals (1999) classifies the book as a metafictional novella, which is not an accurate characterization. The Lives is not a novella but rather a collection of diverse literary pieces: it contains two honorific lectures, a report of the audience reactions to the lectures (the only component that resembles a novella), and a set of essays on literary, philosophical, and scientific topics related to the lectures. Neither is the book metafictional, which usually means 'self-referential' or 'emphasizing its own fictional nature.' I would call the book 'parafictional', where the prefix 'para-' means 'beside' or 'beyond.'

For instance, it is completely unimportant whether the lectures are 'real' of 'fictional.' They are presented by Elizabeth Costello, a fictitious Australian writer created by J.M. Coetzee. But Coetzee had once read Costello's lectures as if they were his own. So now, were they real? Yes and no. Incidentally, the question whether something is real or not is grossly overrated. One should rather ask whether a literary construct is realistic. In that sense Costello's/Coetzee's lectures certainly are.

The lectures are about how we treat animals. How we torture them, slaughter them, and then eat them. Through the lectures Ms. Costello conveys her message: sympathy toward animals should be a moral and ethical imperative. Animals are not that different from us, she points out: they feel pain, they suffer, and - most importantly - they have their "sensation of being." She argues that since we are able to think about our own death we should also be able to "think ourselves into the being of [an animal]."

The notion of human reason is invoked: one could conceivably construe that Ms. Costello juxtaposes reason and sympathy. We learn about her "disdain for so many taboos of rationalism" while she stresses sympathy that "allows us to share [...] the being of another." Ms. Costello verbalizes one of the most famous Coetzee's quotes:

"There is no position outside of reason where you can stand and lecture about reason and pass judgment on reason."

I am not a native English speaker yet I dare to doubt that the word 'sympathy' is the right one to represent how Ms. Costello wants us to treat animals. I would rather use words like 'compassion,' 'caring,' or 'kindness.' Or maybe even the more general term 'decency,' which J.M. Coetzee considers the highest moral imperative (I completely agree with him, see my review of his Waiting for the Barbarians .)

In the 'novella part' of the book Coetzee presents (almost verbatim) Ms. Costello's lectures, The Philosophers and the Animals and The Poets and the Animals, and portrays the reactions of the audience at the lectures. The reader will also find a slim thread of 'fiction' where the author quotes Ms. Costello's conversations with her son and his wife.

To finish on a personal note: I abhor killing of animals; I even try to walk carefully and never step on an insect or a lizard. When I have to kill a rodent maimed by my cat I strive to be most humane in the process. I despise hunters and would not shake hands with anyone who kills animals for "sport." Yet I eat meat. Similarly, but on a lower degree of violation of moral principles, Ms. Costello wears leather sandals and carries a leather purse. How dare I and Ms. Costello be like that?

Four stars.


View all my reviews