From man to beast and back again

If there’s one shared characteristic of the so-called ‘new nature writing’ it is a failure, with a few notable exceptions, even to approach what up until very recently writing about the non-human had as its core ambition; that is, to dissolve the ego, to melt the self in the recognition of the other and, through that and in a wonderful paradox, to stretch the knowledge of what it is to be human. The solipsistic trait of the age is, it seems, pandemic; try consciously and ostentatiously to be a beast and you’ll succeed only in being a beast of a human being. Emblematic of this is a kind of empathetic glee in the suffering of animals, as if the evolutionary botch of Homo sapiens could ever be as pure and as perfect in its predations as, say, an otter or a sparrowhawk. Much grubbiness is the result, when what you are is overlooked in favour of who you are.