inadvertent harm
The Week in Reading
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Everyone who read this book told me it was super weird, and it was. I listened to it as an audiobook on my five hour drive to the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, which was perhaps a bad call (though I spent the holiday weekend with my vegan-gluten-free-California-family, so maybe it was fitting after all.)
The novel is violent and graphic and sexual and bizarre and gross. Parts of it were really difficult to listen to. Quite honestly, I’m not sure whether or not it paid off. The central character in The Vegetarian is a woman who has decided to give up meat after having a dream. To become a vegetarian is a common dietary choice that is hardly burdensome to others. Aside from making sure to order a cheese pizza at a staff party, or picking up a few black bean burgers before hosting a barbecue, other people’s vegetarianism barely impacts meat eaters. But in Kang's novel, this woman's choice to forfeit animal products ends up driving her entire family, and herself, into madness. The book is written in three parts, each from the perspective of a different family member. We do not hear from the Vegetarian herself, aside from a handful of dreamlike passages interspersed throughout the book. We know her only in the ways in which her life affects the people around her.
The word selfish has negative connotations, though it not necessarily bad in theory. To be insular, independent, self-contained, to make choices that benefit ourselves, these are not inherently bad things. As flight attendants are constantly reminding us, we must make sure our air mask is properly secured before helping others. In order to be able to take care of other people, we must first take care of ourselves.
I have always valued independence above all else. As an only child, I spent hours alone, quietly entertained by own brain. [A side note: can we stop using birth order to psychoanalyze people? People love to tell me I am SUCH an only child, which of course they exclusively mean as an insult, but all of the traits they pin on my lack of siblings can be just as easily attributed to any other birth order. If I told people I was the oldest daughter, they would say it explained my bossiness; if I were the middle child, my narcissism would be a symptom of being chronically overlooked. If I said I was the baby of the family, it would explain why I believe the entire universe centers around me. I'm deeply self-absorbed, but it isn't because I don't have siblings.] My parents are both people that made their own way in the world, and I was raised to believe that being able to take care of yourself is paramount. I have been single for a long time. I buy myself DayQuil when I am sick, I put dinner on the table every night. I love the company of others, but I rely on myself.
This seems like not only the safest way to operate, but also the kindest. Trying not to impose on others, to do everything myself. I dream of living off the grid, in a tiny self-sufficient cabin in the middle of Wyoming. I want to chop my own firewood and grow my own food. My favorite era of history is westward expansion. I want to be a homesteader, resourceful and tough, taking on a wild wild world.
But perhaps there is no way to be truly independent. Our choices, which we make for us alone, do not take place in a vacuum. Though I can do as I please, my life bleeds onto other people's lives, whether I like it or not. There is no way to live an insular life and maintain any type of interpersonal relationship. Even if I did move to my cottage in rural Wyoming, lived off the land, didn't speak to a soul, never asked for anything from anyone ever again, I'm sure someone would miss me. Opting out of the emotional economy still creates ripples through it. Even the pioneers, operating under rugged individualism, irreversibly altered the landscape, displaced thousands upon thousands of indigenous people.
When you go backpacking, the cardinal rule is to leave no trace. Pack it in, pack it out. Bury your shit, clean up your site. A noble sentiment to be sure, if futile. We are not invisible; we leave marks on the environment around us. Human beings are first and foremost animals. Like bears and deer and other creatures that share our habitat, should we not also leave traces of our existence? A bear does not litter, but it does claw at tree bark, decimate berry bushes, leaves impressions on the meadow grass when it awakens from an afternoon nap. Like a bear, my boots will tramp a firm path across the earth; I will leave behind a pile of ash from my campfire when I pack up my campsite the next morning. My movements leave a wake that brushes up against the people and places that surround me.
When the Vegetarian gives up meat, it is a selfish act, in the way that it should exclusively affect her alone. Instead, it sets off a dramatic and disturbing chain of events. It triggers her father's most brutal, violent tendencies, inspires a fervent lustfulness in her brother-in-law, and leaves her sister despondent and confused.
Perhaps it is impossible to live without harming anyone. Our ecosystem is too entangled for us to truly live independently. Maybe the best we can do is to try to inflict as little harm as possible, to tread gently.
A lot of people have read this book and told me that it is Weird but Good. I think it was Weird and Okay, but who knows! I could be wrong! If you have read it please tell me all of your thoughts. If you read it and hate it, don't blame me, I didn't tell you to.
Further Reading
I have mentioned it before, but You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman definitely falls into the category of Weird but Good. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it at the time, but I have continued to think of it long after I finished it, so I have settled on the opinion that I liked it a good deal.
Also Weird but Good: The Sellout by Paul Beatty. So sharp and harsh and bizarre.