Experimental Animals: A Reality Fiction

by Thalia Field

Stemming from a through-line of marital discord in the household of the great French vivisector, Claude Bernard, Thalia Field has discovered a number of voices, some famous, some forgotten, and allowed them all a moment in which to be heard again. This compelling tale is made up largely of excerpts and quotations, pieced together with great artistry. A beautiful and thought-provoking collage of a tale of rescued history and a sobering tribute to some of its victims. --Karen Joy Fowler

Advancing what she started twenty years ago with her earliest explorations of essayistic fiction, Thalia Field has now composed what very well might be her life's work--a tragic, comical, and utterly fascinating tale of a marriage that vividly encapsulates not only the origins of experimental medicine, but an entire age that spirited experiments in literature, science, engineering, film, etc. It's nothing less than a history--gorgeously fictional, purposefully essayistic--of how we got where we are. --John D'Agata

Why does only the past provide material that burns? Thalia Field asks in her novel Experimental Animals, an impassioned investigation of the marriage of a feisty accidental activist, Fanny, to French physiologist Claude Bernard, whose experiments transformed medicine, but at a steep ethical price: they depended on the vivisection of animals. Like Jonathan Safran Foer (Eating Animals), Field is on the side of the animals, but her novel does justice, in its form, to the weight and complexity of the problem. Knowledge depends on violence; to understand life, we have to break it to pieces, and to see the past in a new light, we have to burn up old ideas. Field's novel is an experiment which illuminates the history of experimentation; it's a wise and brilliant work of compassionate destruction. --Paul La Farge

Genres: Fiction, Literature

264 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2016

About the author

Thalia Field was born in Chicago in 1966. After attending lycée in France, she graduated with honors from Brown University. She has three books of experimental writing/prose poetry published with New Directions: Point and Line (2000), Incarnate: Story Material (2004), and Bird Lovers, Backyard (2009). A novel, ULULU (Clown Shrapnel) was published by Coffee House Press in 2008. Field's writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Chicago Review, Ploughshares, Fence, Theater, Central Park, Chain, and Conjunctions, where she served as editor from 1995-1999. Before joining the faculty at Brown University, where she currently teaches experimental fiction and performance, Field taught at Bard College and at the Writing and Poetics program at Naropa University.

Reviews

[Kubilay K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Son zamanların en heyecan verici işi CanLAB serisinin ilk kitaplarından Deney Hayvanları (Bir Gerçeklik Kurgusu); Brown Üniversitesi'nde deneysel ve disiplinlerarası edebiyat alanında çalışmalar yürüten akademisyen yazar Thalia Field'ın imzasını taşıyor. Deney Hayvanları, en temelde, 19. yüzyıl Paris'inde yaşayan fizyolojinin "babası" Claude Bernard'ın hayatı ve yaratısının bir yeniden okunması olarak karşımıza çıkıyor. Kitabı özel kılan ise Field'ın bunu yaparken "tür kırıcı" bir tavırla akademik arka planından yararlanıp alabildiğine katmanlı bir "oyun" yaratması. Açmak gerekirse, yeşil çizgilerle çizilmiş bir seksek. Karelerin içinde okuru bekleyenleri tek tek konuşmak gerek:

• Mikrotarihçilik: Field, Bernard'ın hikâyesini yeniden ele alırken geniş bir arşiv taraması yürütüp kurgusal metnine sağlam bir kurgudışı iskelet yaratıyor.

• Efemerist tavır: Field, mikrotarih saha araştırmasında elde ettiği "ıvır zıvır"ı bir efemera geçidine dönüştürüyor. Sayfalar arasında bizi gazete kupür replikaları, defterlerden alınmış solgun yazılar, beceriksiz resimler, deney planları, haşmetli heykeller, cevapsız kalmış mektuplar ve mezar taşları karşılıyor.

• Akışkan Anlatı-Degişken Anlatıcı: Deney Hayvanları beş bölümlük macerasında bize vadettiği gerçeklik kurgusunu sunarken bir yanda efemeralarla kesilen metinler, diğer yanda birinci ve ikinci tekil şahıs anlatıcı arasında yarattığı kaygan zemin ile okurunu edilgen bir okuma deneyimine saplanıp kalmaktan köşe bucak kaçırıyor.

• Aynalar ve Altüst Ediş: Eril tarih yazımı ve ondan aşağı kalmayacak tıbbın kollarında filizlenen bir biliminsanın hikâyesindeki "istismarcı dul"u (Fanny Martin) ve İngiltere'nin ilk tıp diplomalı kadınlarının en özeli; dirikesim (canlı hayvanlar üzerinde yapılan deneylere verilen isim) karşıtı ve vejetaryen bir aktivisti (Anna Kingsford) odağına alarak feminist bir yapısöküme girişiyor, resmî tarih yazımı ve "kabadayı" bilimsel anlatıyı alaşağı ediyor.

• Portreler Albümü: Efemeralardan bereketli bu metinde tarihsel portrelerin de bir albümü bekliyor okuru. Darwin'den Descartes'a, Zola'dan Hugo'ya, George Elliot'tan Balzac'a uzanan yelpazede sayısız ismin farklı kaynaklardan doğup aynı deltada buluşan şaşırtıcı nehir anlatıları metin boyu bu tarihsel geçimsiz ailenin "damarları"nda dolaşmaya devam ediyor.

Nihayetinde Deney Hayvanları, hem üslup, hem tarihsel duruş, hem metin yaratımı gereği fazlasıyla deneysel bir deneyim olarak sivri pençelerini okurun boynuna geçirip ondan sesini çıkarmasını talep eden bir metin olarak öne çıkıyor. Ülkemiz yayıncılığında görmeye alışkın olmadığımız bu metne kavuşmak gerçekten biz okurlar için büyük bir şans, bu nedenle çevirmen Didem Dinçsoy ve seri editörleri Berkan Şimşek ve Selim Bektaş'a kalpten teşekkürleri unutmamak gerek.

Edilgenliğe mahkum edilmek istemeyen tüm okurlara tavsiye.

CanLAB serisinin ömrü uzun olsun diyelim ve Thalia Field'ın diğer kitaplarını da dilimizde görme isteğimiz ile perdeyi kapatalım efendim.

Okuyunuz, okutunuz.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

"Meanwhile, The Arcades Project offers the aspiring novelist, and by novelist one must mean the innovative experimental sui generis type who finds formal clues in non-fictive genre, a whole new world of formal possibilities for that Next Great Novel" is something I said about Benjamin's Arcades Project. And I find here in Thalia Field the kind of fiction which would seem to have taken the Arcades as its model. I mean here that this novel is for you types who refuse to make that incorrect distinction between the words here subtitling, "reality fiction."



Trigger warning :: [im ernst, ehrlich] This is not for souls sensitive to the maltreatment of animal life; or it is, but do know you are headed into the 19th century.



Meanwhile, Thalia Field folks. If you've already swum through the Wake and maybe Larva too and are looking for the next brain=busting hunk of burning burning difficulty.... try her ULULU. Gods knows no one else is.....

And forthcoming '19 a work of poetry caught up in the current Dalkey transitional mess :: Leave to Remain.

And with only her five prose works I'm now Thalia=Completionista!

[A. Raca · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Gürültü bedene tesir edip onu uyandırır, çünkü - sıklıkla sağır kalmayı seçsek de- kulakların kapağı yoktur."

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://thecollagist.com/the-collagist...

[KC Snow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a little hard to review for me. I really enjoy the form, I just had such a hard time with the subject. I knew what I was getting into, but I didn't think reading some of the vivisection descriptions would actually make me physically ill. So, on one hand, I'd give this book ONE star. But that is only because I'm totally not the audience for reading about animal testing (long time vegetarian/vegan).

My first ever long essay (term paper) in eighth grade was on animal experimentation and animal rights as were many others in high-school so this isn't my first experience with reading graphic material.

I feel as though the book reads completely unbiased. The information (from various different sources) is revealed in various different forms. While it's nearly impossible (in my opinion) to come away and think vivisection is good, one may walk way thinking medicine wouldn't be what it is today without it. However, without considering the many ways we could have learned the same things without torturing animals makes the pros of vivisection moot.

I did skip areas that were too graphic for me (I'm not squeamish) however, as some of the animal liberators in the book are described I too might be a "crazy person." I could almost hear the screams of the dogs and cats described in the book. In some ways, I'd say that's good. But as the person experiencing it, I didn't really like it.

I enjoyed Fields book "Bird Lovers, Backyard" immensely. So if you can handle reading about animals being tortured (the whole book isn't filled with animal suffering images) or are okay with skipping paragraphs here and there, I'd give it a try.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would likely be a much better reader for this book if I had read Emile Zola's _The Experimental Novel_, if only because of its explicit gesture to it with the "a reality fiction" tag on the cover. And I appreciate the important archival work that results from reminding readers of all the histories that exist and not just the complacent history that people often construct. I also appreciate how the book itself resituates the activity of reading. I'm mainly just too selfish for absorption in my reading, and it was difficult to settle into the methods of this book.

[Nebulosus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible from start to finish. Disturbing, upsetting, gut-wrenching, but compelling and ultimately gratifying. I mean, there are graphic descriptions of animal vivisection, so consider yourself warned. Recommended for people who aren't squeamish, who root for the underdogs, and who enjoy close-reading and dissecting literature, pun intended.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book's execution doesn't quite work for me, I'm excited by the formal/generic possibilities it opens up, specifically by its willingness to destabilize the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, between the essayistic and the imaginative.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating subject, some excellent writing, but unnecessarily difficult and confusing.

[Abigail Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for a class. Interesting perspective. Definitely experimental. Not bad. Some parts were pretty hard to read, but interesting history.

[in8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://5cense.com/23/1111.htm

[Yumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bu kitabın ilk yarısını çok sevdim kitap aktı gitti ama ikinci yarısında ilerlemekte zorlandım. Yine de çok keyifli, iğneleyici bir dile sahip olan, feminist temasıyla sizi yakalayan bir kitaptı.

[lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked the overlooked pov of this great scientist's life

[Jed Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious project that offers a unique perspective on the rise of experimental medicine and physiology in nineteenth-century Europe. Field's strategy is documentarian, juxtaposing excerpts from journals, newspapers, diaries, and letters written by the key players in the events portrayed. This approach draws from, and presumably seeks to subvert, the realism of Emile Zola and other experimental novelists of the later-nineteenth century, and it is a risky approach, given the close connection between Zola's literary theory and the appallingly cruel experimental practices of Claude Bernard, Francois Magendie, and other French vivisectors. Field keeps her approach cold, rather than emotional and sentimental, stylistically siding with the pro-vivisectionists while using their evidence against them. A fascinating reading experience for those interested in the issues addressed, but a gruesome challenge for those unaware of the atrocities Field's work unflinchingly documents.

[Terry Pitts · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What morality says we can't do to those like us, science authorizes us to do to the animals." In this rich novel about the marriage of Fanny and Claude Bernard, Field explores the moral arguments that exploded around the role of vivisection in 19th century science and medicine. Physiologist Claude Bernard was an early pioneer of experimental medicine, but used live animals of all kinds to achieve his results, much to the growing horror of his wife, who had to put up with the animals he collected off the streets of Paris every night. Much of the novel consists of or is drawn from documentary sources - letters, newspaper articles, speeches, diaries, and so on, plunging the reader into the Paris of the 1840s-1870s. Among the important figures that appear in the book are Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo, Emila Zola, François Arago, Étienne-Jules Marey, the Goncourt Brothers., and the British anti-vivisectionist Anna Kingsford.