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A review by versmonesprit
Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
5.0
It’s really hard to say much on perfection. Of Cattle and Men is one of the few brilliant pieces to come from contemporary times. If ever Steinbeck were to have an heir, he would have it in Ana Paula Maia.
The immediate reference to Steinbeck with the title is not amiss at all. Both in its subject matter and the ease and simplicity of its writing, Of Cattle and Men could have very well come out of his pen. Except it came from Maia’s, and my God, is it a blessing! I couldn’t thank Maia enough for blessing the world with this beautiful, beautiful book.
I’m so glad I did not read the blurb, because it is incredibly misleading. It unfairly sets Of Cattle and Men up for failure. This is not an eerie book, not a thriller, not anything to do with what the blurb evokes. Almost biblical plagues descend upon Senhor Milo’s slaughterhouse, but Of Cattle and Men is a book of a situation, though briefly inordinary, that is so ordinary it could be called a working class gothic. It’s a look into the lives of unfortunate men who work in a slaughterhouse. They’re poor, their situation desolate. As Maia writes, they’re separated from the cattle they butcher only by a partition: they’re all part of a ruthless system that cares little for them, a system that will keep turning and churning out victims so long as there are those willing to feed upon it.
And though what they do is morally abominable (to kill), Maia makes the excellent point that those of us who eat are just as guilty. And it’s true, we all know it’s true. Maia uses the power of this truth to confront the readers with the heartbreaking reality of the meat industry. The book opens with a slightly mistranslated quote from Adorno that makes “it’s just an animal… just an animal” into plural, and all throughout states the unfathomable nature of the cattle’s eyes, saying in fact how they are far more than animals for slaughter, how they are not so different than us.
And the book’s sympathy doesn’t end there. Through the incredible sobriety of such a clear, simple prose Maia (like Steinbeck) humanises these unfortunate men to the point you care for them the way you would for real people. The only other writer with such precision in writing that I can think of is Claire Keegan, another favourite of mine. Sometimes you don’t have to bend the language to do something stunningly special with it: sometimes, at the hands of a master, it suffices that the language is used at its most basic to invoke the most complex of situations and sentiments. Without ever getting emotional itself, the writing manages to be deeply moving and harrowing. It’s impossible not to adore such talent.
Of Cattle and Men is one of those masterpieces of literature that timelessly capture the zeitgeist of our global society: it’s such a cruel world, even the cruelest undoings of our every day lives is absorbed into the monotony of its cruelty. We’re all cattle on the slaughter line, and the cogs turn ever incessantly. Not much but our manmade walls separate us from those we prey upon.
Hallelujah, hallelujah.
The immediate reference to Steinbeck with the title is not amiss at all. Both in its subject matter and the ease and simplicity of its writing, Of Cattle and Men could have very well come out of his pen. Except it came from Maia’s, and my God, is it a blessing! I couldn’t thank Maia enough for blessing the world with this beautiful, beautiful book.
I’m so glad I did not read the blurb, because it is incredibly misleading. It unfairly sets Of Cattle and Men up for failure. This is not an eerie book, not a thriller, not anything to do with what the blurb evokes. Almost biblical plagues descend upon Senhor Milo’s slaughterhouse, but Of Cattle and Men is a book of a situation, though briefly inordinary, that is so ordinary it could be called a working class gothic. It’s a look into the lives of unfortunate men who work in a slaughterhouse. They’re poor, their situation desolate. As Maia writes, they’re separated from the cattle they butcher only by a partition: they’re all part of a ruthless system that cares little for them, a system that will keep turning and churning out victims so long as there are those willing to feed upon it.
And though what they do is morally abominable (to kill), Maia makes the excellent point that those of us who eat are just as guilty. And it’s true, we all know it’s true. Maia uses the power of this truth to confront the readers with the heartbreaking reality of the meat industry. The book opens with a slightly mistranslated quote from Adorno that makes “it’s just an animal… just an animal” into plural, and all throughout states the unfathomable nature of the cattle’s eyes, saying in fact how they are far more than animals for slaughter, how they are not so different than us.
And the book’s sympathy doesn’t end there. Through the incredible sobriety of such a clear, simple prose Maia (like Steinbeck) humanises these unfortunate men to the point you care for them the way you would for real people. The only other writer with such precision in writing that I can think of is Claire Keegan, another favourite of mine. Sometimes you don’t have to bend the language to do something stunningly special with it: sometimes, at the hands of a master, it suffices that the language is used at its most basic to invoke the most complex of situations and sentiments. Without ever getting emotional itself, the writing manages to be deeply moving and harrowing. It’s impossible not to adore such talent.
Of Cattle and Men is one of those masterpieces of literature that timelessly capture the zeitgeist of our global society: it’s such a cruel world, even the cruelest undoings of our every day lives is absorbed into the monotony of its cruelty. We’re all cattle on the slaughter line, and the cogs turn ever incessantly. Not much but our manmade walls separate us from those we prey upon.
Hallelujah, hallelujah.