As the earth has become increasingly urban, however, conditions for all animals have changed. Twenty-first century animal and environmental activism has directed our attention to the plight of animals, but unintentionally maintains this twentieth-century dichotomy by focusing on animals in captivity and, conversely, animals in the wilderness. The most commonplace animals of the Modern era, however, were agricultural animals, not so much on farms, or even stories about farms, but at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Masterfully edited, as well as narrated and set to music, such representations were a form of domestication or at least spectacle, related to zoos, aquariums and circuses. Mass media creatures were smart, charming, dramatic, and often hilarious. Wild animals were occasionally observed in the wild, during the last American century, but more often on television programing about animals in the wild. This resulted in a culture that “understood” animals in isolation, and through the mottled lens of human interests narrowly conceived. Knowing them was generally synonymous with killing them, and always dependent on removing them from their natural environment and social context. Born and bred to serve the medical and biotech industries, lab animals were primarily studied as surrogates for human bodies. Twentieth-century techno science created a false dichotomy of lab animals and animals in the wild. We’ve been here all along, but now, slowly, we’re becoming aware. Nested in Borne, adjacent to VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, The Strange Bird brings us to the intersection of animals and the Anthropocene. While we have excluded the secret life of animals from consciousness, on some level we understand their suffering because we suffer together. A hybrid spirit strange and familiar enough to wake us from our dogmatic stupor, Strange Bird guides us into unexplored regions of literature and the psyche.
Out of the futuristic world of Borne, VanderMeer conjures a totem for the Anthropocene. At times, it’s almost too painful and too beautiful. Jeff VanderMeer’s new novella, The Strange Bird, is ingenious, provocative, and deeply moving.
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