By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
How do you follow two wildly acclaimed novels about researching his grandfather's life in Ukraine, which became a movie starring Elijah Wood, and a 9-year-old boy coming to terms with his father's death in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11?
Non-fiction farm writing, of course.
"Eating Animals," due out next fall, makes perfect sense once everything from vegetarianism to parenthood is illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Dowagiac's 34th visiting author since Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwen Brooks at Central Middle School in January 1992.
Speaking Thursday night at Dowagiac Middle School Performing Arts Center, Foer made it clear that his next project isn't as much of a departure as it sounds, considering that another journey is involved and it will be culled from varying perspectives, just as his novels unfold from three different points of view.
As a "vegetarian off and on for most of my life," parenthood prodded him into action. "I decided I better think about this more seriously. Feeding someone else is not like feeding yourself – especially if your decisions are going to be different from decisions most other people make."
His odyssey took him from traditional family farms to factory farms and slaughterhouses.
"I don't know how well I've written it or if it will mean anything to anybody," he said, "but I'm absolutely sure this is something people should be talking about. The (United Nations) recently released a study that was a continuation of a study by the University of Chicago that said animal agriculture – meat – is the single most important cause of global warming and in the top two or three causes of every single environmental problem globally. Have you ever heard Al Gore mention this or seen it on the Sierra Club's list of the 10 things you can do to help fight global warming? It's not on the list because it's very hard to talk about. It pisses people off."
Foer offers the perspective of someone who is not an animal activist, philosopher or journalist. "I was trying to write something from the very personal perspective of what should I feed my child? I've seen for a year and a half the various ways people farm. There are wonderful traditional farms also like existed 50 years ago. Animals are, believe it or not, outside and they are not fed anti-biotics before they're sick. I've seen the full range for this book, which traces that personal journey."