Vegetarian Star

Jonathan Safran Foer "Eating Animals" Interview

“I spent the first 26 years of my life disliking animals. I thought of them as bothersome, dirty, unapproachably foreign, frighteningly unpredictable, and plain old unnecessary. I had a particular lack of enthusiasm for dogs—inspired, in large part, by a related fear that I inherited from my mother, which she inherited from my grandmother. As a child I would agree to go over to friends’ houses only if they confined their dogs in some other room. If a dog approached in the park, I’d become hysterical until my father hoisted me onto his shoulders. I didn’t like watching television shows that featured dogs. I didn’t understand—I disliked—people who got excited about dogs. It’s possible that I even developed a subtle prejudice against the blind. And then one day I became a person who loved dogs. I became a dog person.”

“The first full chapter of my book explores our divergent attitudes toward dogs and fish—fish being at the far end of the spectrum of our regard. I write about a simple trick that backyard astronomers use: If you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing. Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs and their relationship to the animals we eat is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible.”

—-author Jonathan Safran Foer, during an interview about his latest book, Eating Animals.

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