The Zoo Where You're Fed to God

by Michael Ventura

The acclaimed screenwriter of Echo Park offers a riveting novel of a man's descent into madness. After a painful divorce, Michael Ventura finds himself at the zoo--hearing voices and seeing into the souls of animals. Through the love of an extraordinary woman, he slowly begins to reconnect with himself and his past.

Genres: Fiction, Animals, Literary Fiction, Novels

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1994

About the author

Michael Ventura is the author of WE'VE HAD A HUNDRED YEARS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY AND THE WORLD'S GETTING WORSE (with James Hillman) and LETTERS AT 3A.M.--REPORTS ON ENDARKENMENT. THE ZOO WHERE YOU'RE FED TO GOD is the first book of a trilogy titled THE TIGER, THE ROCK AND THE ROSE. Ventura has also embarked on a series of novels about Las Vegas. He divides his time between Austin and Los Angeles.

From the back of THE ZOO WHERE YOU'RE FED TO GOD.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was just reading my delight of a book, readers' advisory service in the public library, and the chapter i was reading was the one on "appeal". basically, appeal is how you describe a book to a patron based on its salient elements: pacing, characterization, story line, frame/tone, and style. the idea is that by using these descriptive elements, we can recommend any book to any person, whether we have read the book or not, whether we know anything about the genre, based on the appeal of these elements to the reader and always always always making sure to avoid "judgment words"; focusing simply on articulating the bits and pieces for the best and most appropriate readers of the books.

bullshit.

i'm not going to do that. not here, not with you.i was going to, for practice - going to go through all the marvelous things this novel has to offer a reader, but instead i'm going to do something librarians aren't supposed to do. i am going to impose my taste on you. that's right, bitches. and i am going to ask you to trust me. i know we don't really know one another, but let me give you my résumé of trustworthiness: the other day, a child dropped her stuffed giraffe and her parents didn't notice. even though i had just been saying - "i want that giraffe, yo", i picked it up and gave it to the mommy. SEE HOW TRUSTWORTHY I AM?? one time i found a wallet on the subway. it was the wallet of some japanese tourist, and there was all this american money inside, and after trying to call the number on the credit card (which was all crazy-japanese-language, and the american division was no help - same with the bank), i ended up going allll the way to the japanese embassy to drop it off. SEE HOW I CAN BE TRUSTED WITH MY GOOD NATURE?? i am very good at keeping secrets (even the really juicy one i heard about you. YES, YOU). i will not read your diary, and i will not steal your boyfriend/girlfriend...

but mostly, i can be trusted in my book sense. i'm not going to push my byron fictionalizations on you - i know that these are just personal fetishes, and they are crappy crappy sensationalist novels. same with my teen-survival and aftermath books. even though i sometimes like some crap, i know when something is good. and this is good:

he became a surgeon because he was afraid of knives. he got married because he was afraid of women. he had a child because he was afraid of responsibility. now, his marriage over and his child no longer speaking to him, he turned off all the lights in the house because he was afraid of the dark.

look, i'm just some chick with a mouth like a sailor who was recommended this book years ago and i took a chance and it turned out to be one of the best books i ever did read. i paid 2.38 for it on abe.com.

surely you can trust me that much, right?

come to my blog!

[Eh?Eh! · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me nearly a year to finish, partly because I'm distractable but also because it has a heaviness that saddened and slowed. I think I technically read this 3 or 4 times, since I moved back and forth with my re-reading, to remember and to re-think. Not much activity happens in the story and if you outlined the events it would only be a few points long. But wow. How to describe this?

I once knew a misguided young man who talked incessantly about "connection" and sought to "connect" with the right woman. In the less than two years that I knew him, I saw at least 3 different women pass through his, uh, life. I don't think he really knew what he wanted, with the "connection," or maybe he didn't realize he meant just the one point. Ahem. But ostensibly he sought a heart/mind/soul thing. Also, remember that one Star Trek movie with the TNG cast, where Picard and some woman had that thing where when they were together, they slowed time, "stay in this moment with me," something like that?

This sort of "connection" or "moment" seems to be important in this book. Not really with one other person, but with the world and all living things, finding contentment and balance in your own life though everything may be blind and disintegrating about you. Sigh. I wish I read more so I could reference more intelligent, eggheadier things. The only other book I could bring up that I've read is super embarassing and terrible, but at the time I read it I thought it was just about the best thing I'd ever read like that. Aw heck, see my shame, it was this: Shantaram. It was okay. Overdone language, obviously based on himself (the author) and maybe more wish-fulfillment with all the adventures and such than reality (oh geez, and he seemed to have tried to promote his own philosophy or enlightenment...I cringe). I loved it when I read it (funny, how book feelings can shift over time). BUT. This seems to be a common theme in books? Like King Solomon, or Siddhartha? The man who blunders through life, unsatisfied, seeking, until he realizes something? And that something is difficult to put into words, but Ventura managed to do it a quarter of the pages that the other (my shame book) used, much more beautifully, relatably, and harder-to-obtainably since I guess he's now out of print.

And the book is so much better than this! I feel like this is more likely to turn people away from it. Maybe it would be better to delete everything and just say "read it!"?

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book kept reminding me of Ron Loewinsohn's Where All the Ladders Start, but I think it was the just a superficial resemblance between the younger girls who become romantically involved with the older protagonist.

Karen recommended this book to the world in her review.

A friend of a friend calls it maybe his favorite book.

Some reviews call this a mid-life crisis book, I don't think it is one. It's more like an existential crisis book, but existential is such a dirty little word, maybe it's better to call it mid-life and be done with it.

I really liked it, maybe could love it. It did make me inexplicably sad, partly for the subject matter, partly because of the bleak future animals are given in the book (and in reality), but neither of those things were enough for the feelings of melancholy I had reading this book.

The way Ventura writes the girl character Lee's dialog, so that she is always saying Man, reminded me of John Hawkes dialog trick in Blood Oranges to have the character Fiona always say Baby in her lines and Hugh to use Boy all the time. Both books also have a tendency to depersonalize the characters at times and only refer to them by their relative age/gender. I'm sure that it's only a coincidence between these two books though, and I'm only aware of them because I read them back to back.

I don't really remember how John Hawkes came into my reading interest last week. Oh wait, I do, because Open Letter Dalkey is re-issuing a books of his later this year, and I was curious to see what else he had written. His first novel is a surrealistic journey through World War 2 / Post WWII Germany, and well had a Gravity's Rainbow sound to it, so I had to give him a try.

Or maybe my sadness is that on the dust jacket it says that his is the first novel in a trilogy, but in the 16 years since it has come out and gone out of print there is no second novel, nor any news of there being one on Wikipedia.org.

[Ademption · Rating 4 out of 5]

A DIVORCED SURGEON GOES TO THE ZOO AND GOES CRAY.

Sort of, not really, kidding.

The Zoo Where You're Fed to God (ZWYFTG) features a surgeon who might be going insane, or possibly having a mid-life crisis, having a spiritual awakening, or having a bad staycation in which he stops being himself. There's a sort of punk pixie girl and she might be manic, but less so than the surgeon. And there is the zoo, the surgeon's ex-wife and his son.

I liked how Ventura poetically explained that the surgeon's existential fear, and that his need to challenge and control the world drove him to study surgery. I admired how the story deftly cut away from surgery to avoid being technical and avoid exposing Ventura as out of his depth.

I liked the chief idea: People who hear voices may be spiritual or gently crazy or both. Modern society has a low threshold for sanity, because there are too many of us and no one is really paying much attention to anyone else. Therefore, as long as the spiritual or gently crazy don't get violent or frighten other people, if they pass in society by maintaining a harmless exterior, they should carry on and everyone should let them. They are harmless. And all was well, and all will be well.

Ventura has this great passage about how today the boundaries of sanity are defined by a shelf or two of books. Yesterday, they were a different set of books. Tomorrow, they will be a altogether different set of books. Therefore, be yourself, do what you do, read what you read. Speed up the change of those shelves or not, because in the long-run, those boundaries do not matter.

I also like a subsidiary idea that floats through the surgeon's mind: Humans are the agency of an extinction event. Humans living longer and continuing to multiply are wiping the world-slate clean instead of an asteroid, an ice age or a pestilence. Whatever we do, we are ruining the environment for ourselves, our fellow animals and insects. But the world will move on and create new beings after this depleted set of creatures is erased by human infestation. Michael Ventura was more melancholy in explaining this thought. I'm giving it a darker spin and not doing him justice. Rather than an excuse to begin pillaging or to stop recycling, I personally find this apocalyptic idea calming.

Ventura explores the good and the bad aspects of zoos: People get to see wild animals, but the animals are in cramped cages, but the animals are preserved in zoos while their wild habitats are destroyed, but the captive gene pool is so small that animals no longer resemble their wild counterparts over time, etc.

It's also the first LA book that made me intrigued about the city, which I have not yet seen a point in visiting. In ZWYFTG, LA is a dusty place, wild at its edges, instead of a sprawl filled with Hollywood, porn, violent gangs and violent police.

ZWYFTG is a meditative work. It took me some time to adjust to the book's rhythm. Not much happens for quite a stretch. The author maintains a calm and soothing tone as the protagonist slowly falls out of touch with himself and his family. I had to push myself initially, but I found the novel worthwhile.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Turns out this is one of those. Perfectly fine little novel. About important things like human relationships, family, zoos, god, etc. You know, flawless prose [er, please do know what 'flawless' means]. Published by simon & schuster. Publishable by simon & schuster.

Will there be more ventura in my future. Dunno. Was struck by the title We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy & the World's Getting Worse but then read the description and it's knot=Fiction ; and co-auth'd with james hillman. blech.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best novels I've ever read that was set in something close to the real world. It was nice to come back to this years later and see it still lives up to my memories of it. The whole novel has this essentially sublime mood, especially the chapters in the zoo, but this time I was also really fixated on Ventura's treatment of the characters, which is excellent. I've been getting more interested in realism recently, so this was probably a good time for me to pick up this novel again.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently, Eve Babitz said this about the novel:

'This book is just dreamy. It rolls by in a dream.'

I don't know who the hell this Eve Babitz character is, but she's got it right. This book just flows. One scene moves to the next so fluidly as to make chapters almost unnecessary. Some sections are almost trance-like.

I'm not sure if I can give it five stars, but I did really like it, and it has some absolutely beautiful passages. My only complaint is that a few sections (ones where Ventura went into great length describing zoo animals) sorta ruined the pace--felt out of place maybe.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are only two books that I've memorized the first paragraph to, and of the two, this is the only one that I memorized out of sheer love. Also, I read this book every six months or so and it never loses even a square inch of its charm.

[Jeff Falzone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe my favorite book

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

While cleaning I ran across a scrap of paper where I had jotted down this title which I had read in 1994, following my own divorce. I was also going to grad school for my MLS at the time I read and included this comment in a paper I submitted for some unremembered class I was in. I didn’t keep the whole paper, just this bit: [Recently, I read Michale Ventura's novel “The Zoo Where You’re Fed to God.” Ventura comments on the human condition by saying that “ the soul yearns to be seen and to exchange the gift of seeing”. I’m sure this is one of the reasons authors write and readers read. Librarians are in a unique position to share an incredible wealth of information and this is what makes our work worthwhile and exciting. ]

Oh to young, & be starting out again in my profession. Now retired, I will say that this is a novel that has stayed with me a long time and I really need to reread it. And yes, the very best part of working in the library profession was leading people to that perfect book.
Highly recommended.

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a quiet sort of power about this book. And more than just being clever in the way the book explores that power, there's an undeniable fun to the unfolding of the story as well. And when all that--along with the animals and the quirks and the unique polish and the careful pacing--is put together, this book grows into something quite a bit greater than what it appears. An exploration of self-actualization and the difficulties of being human, and being social while wanting to be oneself, and allowing oneself to figure out how you, individually, must be in order to survive. (And did I mention the animals? All the animals? And the gorgeous writing? Well, there you go.)

Simply put, this book snuck up on me. The title drew me in, and the author's language brought me forward, and suddenly I couldn't stop. I'll be thinking about this one for quite a while, and I think I may be re-reading it sooner than later, despite not even quite being able to tell you why.

So, yes...I recommend it. To you.

[Cora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thouruly enjoyed this read. It's about a man who can hear animals. Abbey and his son create the father-son relationship they never thought they would have. It reminds me of a deep, adult, wild thornberries type feel.

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like being in a zoo where you're fed to God...very...slowly.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I couldn't get through this book. I gave it 3 stars because while it was well written and engaging, I'm not so sure i can handle another 'mid life crisis' book right now. They all seem to bleed together in my mind. I'd like to come back to it as I'm sure it offers something different from the last; I just don't have the energy to sympathize with a middle aged, financially successful, divorcee.

[Pete Camp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Happiness is terribly dangerous. That’s why people avoid it so cleverly. A gate opens and then? Madness, of a kind, had saved James Abbey from nothingness. But what could save him from the consequences of happiness?
This book is kind of hypnotic in its prose and tempo. Reminiscent of Steve Erickson, who has a review of the book on the back cover of the edition I have

[Jason Styles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at the library because the title jumped out at me, such a fortunate find. This short novel is full of intense insight, startlingly evocative writing grounded in one person's coming to terms with the end of a world.

[Bruce Loewenthal]

one of my favorites of all time

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has a curious kind of heaviness, fitting for the title I guess. It was a good read.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something tells me that after some time the four stars I've given this book will become three. I think I'm on a high from this book.

[Brittnee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Saliym Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely Mesmerizing!

[mstan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know how to feel about this... it's a terribly haunting portrait of a man's descent into madness, but at the same time so difficult to read because of it. 3.5 stars.

[Winter Sophia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, Poetic, Powerful Masterpiece!

[TT]

"All paths cause pain, so to choose the safe over the audacious will not give you less pain, only less beauty." (Carla)

[Ben Haskett]

Read in high school. I think when I was... 16? 16 or 17. We had this thing called SSR (sustained silent reading) where the first 10 minutes of each class was set aside so everyone could read something. Stole it from my older sister, Elizabeth. I remember quite a bit about this book. The surgeon, the constant What's the physiology of that?s, the son who heard voices he described as lovely, the manic pixie dream girl who got him out of his funk, and, specifically, said girl being in a house dress, laying on her back, and then, while he was on the phone with his ex-wife, lifting her midsection--which the book described as something like, "She bulged her pubis at him." Weird. Pretty good book. I was a lot less choosy back then, probably wouldn't have read it today.