What about the movement in your work? How does that evolve in your profiles? That they sort of show themselves to be who they are. People interacting with other people are very interesting too, but there is something about interacting with animals where you feel like you’re seeing people in a very natural state. That’s always a question that I have, which is what do we care about? And why do we care about it? Our relationship with animals is a perfect template to examine that.
Writing about animals, in particular, you’re always writing about people, unless you’re a scientist and you’re really documenting the absolutely untouched life of a wild animal. Where it encompasses the human condition and the vulnerability of people.Ībsolutely. There’s something deeper to me than that. It implies that I’m looking for the thing that’s just funny, odd, or how adorable and quirky. It’s never been a matter of looking for the freak, odd story, but instead the story where I felt compelled to say, “I want to know more.” When people say to me, “Oh, you love quirky stories,” I cringe. I found a lot of romance in the notable-ness of real life. Most kids read storybooks and I certainly read my share, but the newspaper, where I didn’t understand a lot of what I was reading, was a source of interest to me and I fell in love with true stories. Did that unconventional style influence your writing?Īccording to my mom, I learned to read when I was very young by reading the newspaper. It was important to mix the domestic with the wild so the reading experience would have that diversity, and the shape of the book would stay organic.Īs a child, you read the “For Sale: Dogs, Cats, Etc.” classified section of the newspaper, circling ads and then showing them to your parents. For instance, I didn’t want a story about mules next to a story about donkeys. Then within those bookends, I liked having species diversity. The beginning and end are very first person, representing my personal life with animals. Even though people may choose not to read it from start to finish, I arranged it assuming they would.
Putting a collection together is tricky because you want there to be an ebb and flow of the reading experience in a collection. There’s a different impact to reading 300 pages about a subject rather than individual pieces. After organizing them, the answer was yes. It interested me to see them all in one place, to see whether there was concordance among them, whether there were themes and perspectives that would be strengthened by having the pieces together. What was the organizing principle of this collection?īeginning with the obvious, I gravitated regularly to stories about animals when left to my own devices over the years. You don’t want readers to be overly conscious of that.
My part is really the story of making it happen. I feel like a lot of times people will read something and say, “This or that was so interesting.” And I know that these are interesting stories. SUSAN ORLEAN: That’s the level at which I take the greatest pride. You’re a storyteller strategist who works every line with tremendous care. YVONNE CONZA: Your sentence structures are amazing. Over Zoom, Susan and I talked about craft, her assemblage of domestic and wild animal profiles, and philosophy. As the pandemic continues to wade into our lives, this collection resets our attention. Those animals grounded me, offering humor, hope, and daily lessons of resiliency. Lizards, snakes, and single drifters - including an opossum and a hilarious Muscovy duck that did his damnedest to fit in with a pack of pigeons - accompanied me on different days. In mid-March 2020, when the CDC told us to wash our hands and hum “Happy Birthday” from beginning to end twice, I bought a bicycle, a non-sporty, mint green, basket-and-bell Grandma-cruiser that I rode through empty Miami Beach streets. Orlean’s “animalish” curiosity touches upon the unexpected and genuine in ways that make us realize something bigger about life. By Jennifer S.SUSAN ORLEAN, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and author of eight beloved nonfiction books - including a biography of the canine actor Rin Tin Tin - understands that animals are complex and captivating: “They seem to have something in common with us, and yet they’re alien, unknowable, familiar but mysterious.” Orlean’s On Animals, a collection of 15 essays written over a span of 26 years, turns a tender light on the author’s personal life with animals, made up of her own backyard chickens, a speechless show dog, homing pigeons, Keiko the whale, rabbits, pandas, donkeys, and more, illuminating the material with thoughtful examination and reflection.