Reading to Write: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS

I heard about this book in The Shit No One Tells You About Writing podcast. If memory serves (I’m linking the podcast episode below, but haven’t re-listened to it to confirm), I think Karen Joy Fowler was promoting a newer book, Booth, but they discussed this book and the fact that the publisher included a major spoiler on the book cover, which the author would not have chosen to disclose to readers that early.

All this to say, I knew going in about the major spoiler, and I hadn’t been able to resist reading the cover to see what it was. And that meant I read it watching to see how she had kept Fern’s identity/nature a secret, and why Fowler thought it was important to share it later.

I think it was wise authorial decision, given that a major theme is stated explicitly toward the end of the book: “… the significant, the critical finding of their study, the finding everyone was choosing to ignore, was this: that language was the only way in which Viki [a chimp raised with humans, like Fern] differed much from a normal human child.” (pg 288) Most people would find it easier to ignore this finding, and so the best way to make that hard to do is to hide from the reader the identity of Fern, so that the similarities seem obvious to them.

But then, when that point is made, and the reader believes that chimps and humans are essentially identical EXCEPT for language, what are the consequences of that finding? I think the crux of the issue is whether language is only an activity we do, a means of communicating, or whether it is a signifier of something more. Is language necessary for consciousness? Is it evidence of consciousness? And is consciousness really the thing that makes us human?

One could argue that it is our humanity, our kindness and consideration for each other, that makes us human. What, then, do we think of Fern, who loves her family, but who also has a streak of cruelty that seems to be common to her chimpanzee nature. But, but, that too is not necessarily a difference between us and chimps. Our treatment of chimps, of other animals, is evidence that we, too, have a mean streak, a capacity for cruelty that, once exercised, becomes stronger. So, where then is the difference between us?

What I most enjoyed about this book is the moments when the narrator makes us ponder our own behavior, the reflections caused by the few dissimilarities she notes between chimp and human behavior:

“If chimps used money and we didn’t, we wouldn’t admire it. We’d find it irrational and primitive. Delusional. And why gold? Chimps barter with meat. The value of meat is self-evident.” (pg 228)

What is the value of intellect, of consciousness, of the abstraction made possible by language, if it allows us to make up things like money, participate in a collective delusion, that makes us worse off?

“… humans are much more imitative than the other apes.

For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity.” (pg 202)

This seems to me to be the cause of both ritual and of time-wasting bureaucracy. We seem by nature to be unable to cut to the chase, to value the performance of completely unnecessary steps.

And finally:

“I still haven’t found that place where I can be my true self. But maybe you never get to be your true self, either.” (pg 298)

I love this breaking of the fourth wall to address the reader (which I think happens at least one earlier time in the novel as well). Maybe we’re all chimpanzees trying to fit into human society. Rosemary has the benefit of being able to cite studies that elucidate the ways she is different from her chimpanzee sister, as well as ways that she was influenced by growing up with her sister that made it difficult for her to socialize with human children. The rest of us? We’re each different, and often feel that we need to perform, act a certain way, to ‘fit in,’ but we don’t have the benefit of research to show exactly how different we are.

Reference to podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/how-to-be-creative-during-difficult-times/id1530250126?i=1000554330865