| ILL NATURE Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals Joy Williams New York: The Lyons Press, 2001 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-58574-187-4 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-58574-187-6 | 214p. | HC | $24.95 | |
Ms. Williams dislikes hunting. She is outraged by it, in fact. In her essay "The Killing Game," she vents her disgust in typical feminine-sarcastic wise by piling up quotes from hunters and hunting magazines and afterward ridiculing them. The process starts right at the beginning. Here is the essay's lead paragraph (quotes are highlighted):
"Death and suffering are a big part of hunting. A big part. Not that you'd ever know it by hearing hunters talk. They tend to downplay the killing part. To kill is to put to death, extinguish, nullify, cancel, destroy. But from the hunter's point of view, it's just a tiny part of the experience. The kill is the least important part of the hunt. . . , they often say, or Killing involves only a split second of the innumerable hours we spend surrounded by and observing nature . . . For the animal, of course, the killing part is of considerably more importance. José Ortega y Gasset, in Meditations on Hunting, wrote, Death is a sign of reality in hunting. One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted. This is the sort of intellectual blather that the "thinking" hunter holds dear. The conservation editor of Field and Stream once paraphrased this sentiment by saying, We kill to hunt, not the other way around, thereby making it truly fatuous. A hunter in West Virginia, one Mr. Bill Neal, blazed through this philosophical fog by explaining why he blows the toes off treed raccoons so that they will fall down and be torn apart by his dogs: That's the best part of it. It's not any fun just shooting them." – Page 49 |
Note that she does not explain what's wrong with these actions or sentiments; she merely ridicules them. (Except for the last one; she assumes that one is so revoltingly far beyond the pale as to need no discussion.) The comment by Ortega y Gasset is dismissed as abruptly: It's "intellectual blather." She feels no need to explain why this is so.
However, the idea that having made a kill is central to the activity of hunting is not as fatuous as Ms. Williams proclaims it to be.1 The good hunters I have known kill as quickly and cleanly as possible. Whether their objective is to put food on someone's table, or a trophy on the wall at home, failure to kill with the first shot is regarded as sloppy and shameful. Of course there are those desirous of clean-kill bragging rights, but who can only pretend they have the skill to ever actually make a clean kill, or any sort of kill. That is why there are safaris in which the guide shoots the lion upon which the client, grinning, places his foot for the photograph. I've heard that sometimes the quarry is tethered in place so the client can scarcely ever miss. I would say these are not true hunts; all they demonstrate is pretend prowess on the part of the client.
"The bitch knew this and Horton knew that she knew and there was hate in his heart but there was no time now for hate. He put his hand between the necks of the dead Martian and said to the body of his friend, "This was your hunt."
– Kingsley Amis, "Hemingway in Space"
(from memory)
Hemingway understood that facing a dangerous animal yourself and killing it by your own skill amounts to a rite of passage at whatever age you do it. If our spin-besotted culture honors the pretense as much as the real deal, that does not diminish the fact that the latter is a genuine achievement. Valid reasons to condemn sport hunting may exist: the cruelty and vanity of killing animals for trophies, or for pleasure; the inequality of the contest; the waste of food, hides, etc.; the destruction of a vanishing species; the imbalancing of predator-prey relationships; and of course the sham contests I described above. But it is not valid to dismiss the entire idea of hunting because it involves killing. This is what Ms. Williams does. And she dismisses the hunters' argument that anyone who eats meat relies on the killing of animals, but that argument too is a valid one. Indeed, I think a case can be made that killing and butchering the animals you consume by your own hand is more honorable than picking up factory-slaughtered chops, ribs, or hamburger at the market.2
I say this as someone who long ago decided I would never track and shoot wild animals with anything but a camera. I do view sport hunting as wrong. But that is largely because I see it done by so many inept hunters.3 This is one form of Garrett Hardin's tragedy of the commons: people tending to destroy a public good by mismanaging it. Subsistence hunting (which Ms. Williams also dismisses out of hand with "As for subsistence hunting, please... The subsistence line is such a cynical one.") is a valid reason for hunting. So is culling a herd that has expanded beyond its food supply and may encroach on human settlements.
The entire book should not be judged on the defects of this one essay. It is an eclectic collection, drawn from original publication in various magazines. She writes about the electric chair, about odd Ed Leedskalin and his coral castle, about Swan Hellenic Educational Cruise #447. The writing is quirky, sometimes manic, in a few places even shrill (as she herself notes.) Nevertheless, every one of these essays is enjoyable and worth reading once. Three of them are notably elegant in getting their points across. They are, in order of elegance:
Joy Williams is an award-winning novelist. I haven't read any of her novels, but I'll venture to say that those awards are deserved. While I don't rate it a keeper and can't give it my highest score, I find Ill Nature well worth reading once, and maybe twice.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.