Scan barcode
A review by poachedeggs
The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness by Mark Rowlands
4.0
An accessible 'beginner's philosophy'-type book (much better than Sophie's World), revolving around the life and times of a wonderful wolf, Brenin, with his owner, Mark Rowlands himself.
Quite unlike schmaltzy books about animals that romanticise man's relationship with their pets and encourage you to run out to get a dog/hamster/rabbit/iguana immediately, Rowlands's memoir actually makes its reader feel quite unequal to the task of managing the intense relationship between a human and an animal that the latter deserves in any domesticated situation.
I was quite uncomfortable with the man=ape=simian argument, but I need to think through that a lot more...
I wonder if I am going to surprise myself one of these days by becoming vegetarian.
[The edition I read, which is published by Granta, is pretty awful though. The copy editor had not spotted a few glaring errors - e.g. 'gave him a wide birth' and 'I did not have clue' (argh!). The phrase 'consisted in' was also used several times, which threw me off - is this particular to the U.K.? I can't trust internet sources nowadays.)
Quite unlike schmaltzy books about animals that romanticise man's relationship with their pets and encourage you to run out to get a dog/hamster/rabbit/iguana immediately, Rowlands's memoir actually makes its reader feel quite unequal to the task of managing the intense relationship between a human and an animal that the latter deserves in any domesticated situation.
I was quite uncomfortable with the man=ape=simian argument, but I need to think through that a lot more...
I wonder if I am going to surprise myself one of these days by becoming vegetarian.
[The edition I read, which is published by Granta, is pretty awful though. The copy editor had not spotted a few glaring errors - e.g. 'gave him a wide birth' and 'I did not have clue' (argh!). The phrase 'consisted in' was also used several times, which threw me off - is this particular to the U.K.? I can't trust internet sources nowadays.)