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Lapham's Quarterly: Animals
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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About the author
Lewis H. Lapham
181 books134 followersLewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 25, 2013
The Lapham’s Quarterly has devoted its Spring 2013 issue to Animals. It’s a marvelous collection of historical essays and stories.
Many of the stories included are in the public domain, such as this excerpt from Moby-Dick.
What jumped out at me was this excerpt from the essay The Silent Majority by John Berger.
The cultural marginalization of animals is, of course, a more complex process than their physical marginalization. The animals of the mind cannot be so easily dispersed. Sayings, dreams, games, stories, superstitions, the language itself recall them. The animals of the mind, instead of being dispersed, have been co-opted into other categories so that the category animal has lost its central importance. Mostly they have been co-opted into the family and into the spectacle.
I also read a short essay Can They Suffer, circa 1780:
The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villousity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Reading historical essays such as this make it clear that the idea of animal rights is hardly novel (though it still feels that way at times). It’s perhaps as old as mankind.
That some of us question the eating of animals and have questioned it for hundreds of years is comforting though one might think it depressing. I could say to myself: Nothing changed over the past two hundred years; why should anything change in the next two hundred years? Or I could say: There was someone writing about this issue in 1780, and I have a responsibility to continue writing about it.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Henry David Thoreau, circa 1858:
Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have “seen the elephant”? These are petty and accidental uses—just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones—for everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Thoreau continues (in the Atlantic):
Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet; he it is who makes the truest use of the pine,—who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane,—who knows whether its heart is false without cutting into it,—who has not bought the stumpage of the township on which it stands. All the pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on the forest floor. No, it is the poet, who loves them as his own shadow in the air, and lets them stand. I have been into the lumber-yard, and the carpenter’s shop, and the tannery, and the lampblack factory, and the turpentine clearing; but when at length I saw the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the light at a distance high over all the rest of the forest, I realized that the former were not the highest use of the pine. It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.
Review originally posted on EcoLit Books:
http://www.ecolitbooks.com/2013/04/la...
Many of the stories included are in the public domain, such as this excerpt from Moby-Dick.
What jumped out at me was this excerpt from the essay The Silent Majority by John Berger.
The cultural marginalization of animals is, of course, a more complex process than their physical marginalization. The animals of the mind cannot be so easily dispersed. Sayings, dreams, games, stories, superstitions, the language itself recall them. The animals of the mind, instead of being dispersed, have been co-opted into other categories so that the category animal has lost its central importance. Mostly they have been co-opted into the family and into the spectacle.
I also read a short essay Can They Suffer, circa 1780:
The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villousity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
Reading historical essays such as this make it clear that the idea of animal rights is hardly novel (though it still feels that way at times). It’s perhaps as old as mankind.
That some of us question the eating of animals and have questioned it for hundreds of years is comforting though one might think it depressing. I could say to myself: Nothing changed over the past two hundred years; why should anything change in the next two hundred years? Or I could say: There was someone writing about this issue in 1780, and I have a responsibility to continue writing about it.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Henry David Thoreau, circa 1858:
Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale? Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have “seen the elephant”? These are petty and accidental uses—just as if a stronger race were to kill us in order to make buttons and flageolets of our bones—for everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Thoreau continues (in the Atlantic):
Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet; he it is who makes the truest use of the pine,—who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane,—who knows whether its heart is false without cutting into it,—who has not bought the stumpage of the township on which it stands. All the pines shudder and heave a sigh when that man steps on the forest floor. No, it is the poet, who loves them as his own shadow in the air, and lets them stand. I have been into the lumber-yard, and the carpenter’s shop, and the tannery, and the lampblack factory, and the turpentine clearing; but when at length I saw the tops of the pines waving and reflecting the light at a distance high over all the rest of the forest, I realized that the former were not the highest use of the pine. It is not their bones or hide or tallow that I love most. It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.
Review originally posted on EcoLit Books:
http://www.ecolitbooks.com/2013/04/la...
June 16, 2013
I finished reading this quarter's superb literary compilation of Voices in Time (their term) on the Animals theme in late May. This was good time for me as I didn't read it during the first 18 days of May due to traveling.
It usually takes me the entire quarter to read it. As usual the length is only around 221 pages including beautiful art reproductions but the quality of literate minds represented does require attention.
Editor/Publisher Lewis H. Lapham notes in his Preamble that man's attitude toward animals has changed over the centuries. Aesop and Aristotle noted the similarities in traits between the two and attempted to understand either better by comparing them. Early Christianity added symbolism (the bee a sign of hope, the crow and goat references to Satan) and mythical beings (the dragon and the unicorn).
Lapham:
"The resurrection of classical antiquity in fifteenth-century Italy restored the emphasis on the observable correlation between man and beast."
"Over the course of the last two centuries, animals have become all but invisible in the American scheme of things, drummed out of the society of their myth-making companions, gone from the rural as well as the urban landscape."
"Between 150,000 and 200,000 horses could be found in the streets of New York City in 1900, requiring the daily collection of five million pounds of manure. By 1912, their function as a means of transport had been outsourced to the automobile."
The three Voices in Time sections this issue are grouped Kingdom, Family, and Species.
The second item in Kingdom is an extract from Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I'd forgotten how powerful was the descriptive writing. There is a reason it is a 'classic'. I must read it again. I recall reading his short novel Billy Budd in a college lit class. "Handsome is as handsome does, that's what they say about Billy Budd" if my recollection is close. Christ-figure symbolism the professor said. Another re-read perhaps.
'Classic' goes for the Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath extract also, item five.
I enjoyed this issue. It was more easy-going than Winter: Intoxication or last autumn's presidentially timely Fall: Politics.
See my more complete review at my WordPress site:
HERE
It usually takes me the entire quarter to read it. As usual the length is only around 221 pages including beautiful art reproductions but the quality of literate minds represented does require attention.
Editor/Publisher Lewis H. Lapham notes in his Preamble that man's attitude toward animals has changed over the centuries. Aesop and Aristotle noted the similarities in traits between the two and attempted to understand either better by comparing them. Early Christianity added symbolism (the bee a sign of hope, the crow and goat references to Satan) and mythical beings (the dragon and the unicorn).
Lapham:
"The resurrection of classical antiquity in fifteenth-century Italy restored the emphasis on the observable correlation between man and beast."
"Over the course of the last two centuries, animals have become all but invisible in the American scheme of things, drummed out of the society of their myth-making companions, gone from the rural as well as the urban landscape."
"Between 150,000 and 200,000 horses could be found in the streets of New York City in 1900, requiring the daily collection of five million pounds of manure. By 1912, their function as a means of transport had been outsourced to the automobile."
The three Voices in Time sections this issue are grouped Kingdom, Family, and Species.
The second item in Kingdom is an extract from Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I'd forgotten how powerful was the descriptive writing. There is a reason it is a 'classic'. I must read it again. I recall reading his short novel Billy Budd in a college lit class. "Handsome is as handsome does, that's what they say about Billy Budd" if my recollection is close. Christ-figure symbolism the professor said. Another re-read perhaps.
'Classic' goes for the Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath extract also, item five.
I enjoyed this issue. It was more easy-going than Winter: Intoxication or last autumn's presidentially timely Fall: Politics.
See my more complete review at my WordPress site:
HERE
May 30, 2017
One of the best in the series, benefitting greatly from the topic. Each animal is it's own joy to read about, and the historical path of humanity's understanding of our co-inhabitants has evolved as well.
October 8, 2013
This review will serve as my general review of the entire Lapham's Quarterly periodical series. I have chosen the "Animals" issue simply because it was recent and is fresh in my memory.
Harold Lapham has done the world a tremendous service by not only founding this quarterly publication, but remaining deeply involved in the creation of every issue. It is, quite simply, some of the best reading I've ever known. To read in one sitting excerpts from the writings of authors separated by two millennia and then some, and to have all those excerpts stitched together into such a subtly intelligent whole, is an absolute joy. I can't stop raving to my friends about this quarterly. I really feel like my brain grows every time I sit down to read.
If you are at all broad in your interests, if you are at all moved and comforted by feeling your connectedness to humanity throughout the ages, if, in short, life means anything more to you than satisfying your wants and desires in this precise moment, then I implore you to discover this remarkable publication. I received my first subscription as a gift, and what a gift it has been.
Harold Lapham has done the world a tremendous service by not only founding this quarterly publication, but remaining deeply involved in the creation of every issue. It is, quite simply, some of the best reading I've ever known. To read in one sitting excerpts from the writings of authors separated by two millennia and then some, and to have all those excerpts stitched together into such a subtly intelligent whole, is an absolute joy. I can't stop raving to my friends about this quarterly. I really feel like my brain grows every time I sit down to read.
If you are at all broad in your interests, if you are at all moved and comforted by feeling your connectedness to humanity throughout the ages, if, in short, life means anything more to you than satisfying your wants and desires in this precise moment, then I implore you to discover this remarkable publication. I received my first subscription as a gift, and what a gift it has been.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews