Today Johnathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and most recently Eating Animals gave a lecture entitled “Imagination is the Instrument of Compassion” presented by The William Gifford Fund for Visiting Writers and sponsored by the English Department at Vassar. I have yet to read Eating Animals but will definitely pick it up to read over winter break after attending Safran Foer’s lecture today. As Eating Animals is his most recently published (and only non-fiction) work, he spent a good deal of Q&A time fielding questions about subject matter near and dear to Slow Food Vassar. Much of his commentary had to do with vegetarianism (Safran Foer has claimed to be some form of vegetarian/vegan since the age of 10). One of his more humorous statistics included that there are more vegetarians than Catholics on college campuses in America these days. He also mentioned that more people than ever claim that they are vegetarians, whether or not they actually follow a strict vegetarian diet- an indication of the fact that people are beginning to see vegetarianism as “an aspirational identity”. When asked about the trending topic of “locavores” the acclaimed author essentially said that while eating only locally-sourced, humanely raised meat is better than eating tons of meat from CAFOs, “local can seem right but ethical seems wrong”. While it seemed as though he did not subscribe to Michael Pollan’s method of thought as far as meat being an essential part of the human diet (in fact, Safran Foer went so far as to say “eating meat is not necessary”) he did claim “I don’t judge any eaters” and also emphasized the fact that you can’t push ideologies on people, the more you do, the more they will resist. Overall, I found it a very engaging lecture, and will definitely be picking up Eating Animals soon.
If you were at the lecture or have anything to say about Eating Animals or any of the topics discussed in the lecture/ this blog post, please comment below.
