Be Specific About Books In Pursuance Of The Lives of Animals

Original Title:	The Lives of Animals
ISBN:	069107089X (ISBN13: 9780691070896)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Elizabeth Costello

The Lives of Animals Paperback | Pages: 136 pages

Representaion During Books The Lives of Animals

The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother's vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority. At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but—dare he admit it?—strangely on target. Here the internationally renowned writer J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello's own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction—Coetzee brings all these elements into play. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee's text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation.

Details Regarding Books The Lives of Animals

Title	:	The Lives of Animals
Author	:	J.M. Coetzee
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 136 pages
Published	:	May 6th 2001 by Princeton University Press (first published 1977)
Categories	:	Fiction. Philosophy. Animals. Academic. School

Rating Regarding Books The Lives of Animals

Ratings: 3.69 From 2410 Users | 199 Reviews

Judge Regarding Books The Lives of Animals

Coetzee masterfully crafted and delivered a meta-fictional novella based on the heated debates on the rights of Animals at the Third Tanner Lecture sponsored by the Princeton University Center for Human Values. To his lecture, four thinkers and writers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds (namely Literature, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Anthropology) reflected and wrote short pieces about their thoughts on Coetzees lecture. Recommended to anyone who is interested in how literature

This story is ingeniously written. Coetzee, invited to give two talks as part of a university lecture series, instead delivers a fictional story in two parts about a novelist who is invited to give a series of university talks. His lecturer, Elizabeth Costello, chooses to engage with the philosophies underlying vegetarianism and humane treatment of animals, rather than speak about her own work. Meanwhile, his protagonist (her son and a junior professor at the university), must navigate the

"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

This is another Odyssey project reading. The book as a whole is kind of interesting because of the essays that accompany the main story, which is a pair of lectures written as a fiction story.That said, the main story of the novelist giving lectures about how humans should do something in regard to animals differently than they do now falls flat for me. Coetzee's apparent alter ego of Costello doesn't seem to know what she wants people to do. She is a vegetarian, but doesn't suggest that for

Hyper-intellectual yawn. Nothing about this little book flows. There is no poetry in it. For a potentially emotionally charged subject, it is cold and text book-ish. Thank goodness it was short. Two stars because I agree with the animal rights angle, myself a vegan. Otherwise, not a pleasurable read.

I am VERY much an animal lover; however I think it is impertinent to use the Holocaust as an analogy for the production of food (or for any analogy at that). Leave the dead to rest in peace. Using it as an analogy trivializes the Holocaust, and for lack of a better word, "cheapens" it. I think it is quite disrespectful to the millions of Jews, Blacks, Homosexuals, Gypsies, and many others who lost their lives in such a horrific manner. Even if the "how" is similar (how they treat animals when

Coetzee, how could you? Really, a holocaust metaphor? Eating meat is not the same at that. Ugh