The World Without Us

I've never had much patience for misanthropy. Once you boil it down, it always seems to be just a self-indulgent hatred of life in general with a healthy dollop of self-righteous superiority. That doesn't mean I'm not susceptible to it, of course. I am, and I think a lot of folks with environmentalist tendencies are too. Humans really are screwing the environmental pooch, if you know what I mean. But I've always thought it was uselessly whiny to spend valuable time pining for human extinction. (Hey dipshit! You won't be here to know how great it is once that happens!)

But once you start reading -- or in my case, listening to -- The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, it's hard not to be smacked upside the head with how much nicer the earth would be for pretty much everything else if we were all zapped up to the planet Zorcon. (Planet Zorcon, on the other hand, would doubtless undergo a precipitous decline shortly thereafter.) This book takes as its premise the extinction, whether sudden or otherwise, of humanity, and tracks what happens on earth from there. The immediate impression you get from this is that the earth would be like a dog relieved of a horrendous infestation of fleas.

The elephant population would quickly resurge once the poachers were gone. New York City, inside of a few hundred years, would revert to rivers and forests. The atmosphere would begin the long process of adjusting its carbon levels back to normal.

Oh, don't get me wrong. We wouldn't be entirely unmourned. Head lice would be very upset if we were to leave, as they are almost entirely dependent on us. Cockroaches up north would die without heat in the winter.

In my doggedly non-misanthropic worldview, The World Without Us is useful -- beyond idle curiosity -- only as a guide to how to keep humans (and others) from becoming extinct in the first damn place. By raising the alarm to the indelible changes we're causing in such a creative way, the book forces the reader to question her assumptions, not the least of which is the sense of her own harmlessness.

And I'm only halfway through.

More Katz

I love Jon Katz's work. Katz vehemently protests against anthropomorphism, and in the next paragraph wallows in it. The tension between the logical and mystical elements of his personality makes for great reading. He has a new column on Slate every 4-6 weeks or so, so I've been clicking for the last week, because we're due. I hit pay dirt today: Go find out what happens when donkeys fall down on ice. (Short version: you need a border collie to save them.) Go to the sidebar on the left to read his prior columns. The ones about his steer, Elvis, were splendid.

A book group

I'm pleased to say that I've joined an environmental reading and discussion group. We'll be reading and discussing The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community by David Korten.

I'll make an effort to discuss the book from time to time here.

Warning: Here there be spoilers

I'm upset with Jon Katz.

I should have seen it coming, really. That I didn't is a testament to my natural stupidity, gullibility, or ability to place myself firmly within the safe borders of denial. Maybe it's because I read two other of his books before I read A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life. These two books gave no sign that Orson was anything but present and accounted for. After I finished A Good Dog, I checked the copyright dates on the other two. They'd been written before that one, of course.

So it was that my husband found me one morning last week in the bathtub (where I often repair with books), bearing a stricken expression. "What happened to Orson?" he asked frantically. I had been reading him some of the more hilarious bits and pieces of the book about Katz's unhinged border collie, and he'd become invested in the story.

"He's started to bite people," I said quietly.

How had I been caught off guard? Looking back, there was an undercurrent of sadness to Katz's writing style that didn't seem present in his other book I'd just finished. And then there was the blip from the critic on the jacket which called A Good Dog a "heartbreaking memoir."

Yet I remained resolutely clueless. So the ending hit me like the T-bone collision in those horrible Volkswagen commercials that occurs while the car's occupants are blissfully blathering on about nothing.

I'm not upset with Katz for making the agonizing choice to euthanize his beloved dog that had become dangerous to people and, by extension, every other dog. I wanted to be enraged at him for it, but I couldn't. Having read as much as I did about Orson and Katz, and their relationship, I couldn't see a way out of the decision he made.*

But he'd made me love that dog. As he brought me along on his journey from an unfulfilled life in a northern New Jersey suburb to his 40-acre farm in upstate New York, I became drawn to the troubled yet undeniably charismatic Orson. And so for the last twenty pages of the book, when I finally saw the end coming, I sat in the bathtub, weeping. On the rare occasion when a book or film cracks through my emotional exoskeleton, the most that ever slips out is a few quiet, nearly indiscernible tears. But reading about the end of Orson's life, I was set upon by great, gulping, noisy sobs that I couldn't seem to stop. Writing about it days afterward, I can feel my eyes burning again.

Perhaps unresolved grief from the death of my own ten-year old dog last summer has seeped in and blended with the sorrow for Katz and Orson, I don't know. More likely, it's simply that their story really is just that wrenching.

At it's core, A Good Dog is a story about human transformation. In all his other writings, Katz steadfastly maintains a hard rationality, a relentlessly logical worldview. But by the end of the book, the skeptic is consulting shamans (while ridiculing himself for it), animal communicators, and holistic veterinarians with acupuncture needles -- all for the love of this "rescue" dog that actually rescued him. By the end, Katz seems to have accepted the existence of a realm that isn't amenable to hardheaded reason. He seems to understand there are things we cannot see and do not know, and that the worship of reason can be just another form of fundamentalism.

I love Katz's work, but I've wondered a number of times whether we'd get along if we knew each other in person. My initial suspicion is that we're too much alike. He speaks of rage and intolerance always simmering just below the surface, a troubled family of origin, and lingering pain. I know all these things well. I can see in Katz's own personal evolution work that I deeply need to undertake as well -- have started already to undertake -- for the sake of children, spouse, dogs and ultimately, myself.

But I don't think it's merely this that draws me to his work. Hardy and grizzled roosters named Winston, affectionate steers called Elvis, and fascinating border collies like his Rose are also an irresistible draw. Perhaps I couldn't have one without the other. But I always enjoy visiting Katz's Bedlam Farm, if only through his words.



*A brief skimming of the Amazon reader reviews uncovers a group of folks who vehemently disagree with me on that point. That's a discussion for a post all its own, but for now let it suffice to say I tend to agree with Katz's views on biting dogs. I'd also note that for all their protests and aspersions on Katz as a human being and dog owner, few offer realistic solutions for the problem other than to state that what Katz did was horrible, wrong, and generally evil. I do wonder if many of these people aren't feeling the same thing I did -- a sense of betrayal and deep unease about being led to fall in love with this dog and then lose him in a terrible way -- and are really reacting to that. I don't know. Time and perspective may change my view of Katz, his work, and his decisions.