Non fiction

Interview with Joseph Smith

By Sophie Hawker, Sophie Shad, Stephanie Tew and Sophie Tuhey.

Animal literature often situates itself in the sphere of children's writing, where the texts are can be deceptively profound investigations of identity, selfhood and humanity. In George Orwell’s allegorical masterpiece Animal Farm an unassuming 'fairy story' offers a complex critique of Stalinist Russia, exposing the author’s distrust of communism through his orchestration of animal characters. The ‘question of the animal’ is, as Jacques Derrida articulates, of central concern to contemporary critical thinking. In order to understand what it means to be human, a growing number of theorists have begun exploring the lives and minds of animals, attempting to deconstruct the complexities of human-animal relations. As the legal and moral status of animals has achieved widespread attention in recent decades, human-animal studies have been propelled to the forefront of critical analysis.

Exploring the lives of animals is a focus of Joseph Smith's work. He studied philosophy at Durham University before writing his first novel, The Wolf. He employed first 'person' perspective throughout, utilising the voice of the animal to allow a direct connection with the reader. His writing highlights the irony that exists in animal texts which use language to express the lives and minds of animals, despite language being the principle difference between the human and the non-human. Smith opts to explore telepathic communication through animals' eyes, imagining them exchanging memories and thoughts. Whilst other authors have shown similar connections these have largely existed between humans and animals, rather than animal-to-animal, a bond which is intensified through the animals’ inability to speak. The human-animal divide is also accentuated through the negative image of man painted throughout the novel. As a consequence, human beings become strange and unnatural creatures.

What is it about animals that particularly intrigues you? Both of your novels, The Wolf and Taurus, are written from the point of view of animals. Could you elaborate on your decision to explore such a focus? Did you consciously attempt to establish an affinity with recognized animal representations in literature and continue to re-work the animal fable, or did your writing evolve more from an individual curiosity?

I think it’s a fusion of those two things, probably more the latter. An evolution of individual curiosity, like you said, but also over the years I’d read animal literature such as London and Kipling and other stuff going even further back, so it was present in my mind. But to actually sit down and write with an awareness of other literary works that are there, I wouldn’t go that far. But equally, I knew that the wolf has––I’m talking just about The Wolf for the moment­––it has this reputation in mythology and in literature as being a villain. So on one side, deciding on the course of writing about a wolf, I realised that it could be subverted to a certain extent. So in that sense, I was aware of what had come before.

How would you describe the kind of reader for whom you consider yourself to be writing? Did you assume some element of literary awareness in your readership, that is to say, readers with a consciousness of human-animal relations in literature who would situate your writing within such a genre? Did you imagine that your novel would be studied at university?

No, absolutely not. I had big problems at the beginning of this novel––which was essentially at the beginning of my writing career as well––because I got in to exactly that trap. I was thinking, ‘who am I writing for? Is this a children’s story? Is it an adult’s fairy tale? Is it even a children’s illustrated story?’ I really didn’t know what I was doing with it. I was quite far in when I realised that it had to be written from the first person perspective and I had to remove all thoughts of what was beyond ‘getting the work complete’. And from then on, where it was headed was of no concern; it was just a case of me trying to get it down on paper. So no, I’m afraid you weren’t taken in to consideration!

Could you elaborate on how you feel about the fact that we are studying your book––does it interest you that we would see it from that kind of literary perspective?

Sure, well, what you and other people get from it is sometimes surprising to me and sometimes not so surprising because while you’re writing, what you intend (at least for me), what you intend and what actually gets produced and even published are two different things and they’re not always entirely parallel. So again, I realised going down this path of writing about an animal, writing about the wolf, I had quite a lot of leeway to play with certain preconceptions and icons and things like that. So if there are traces of different things within there then perhaps half of them were intended and, I don’t know, half of them were happy accidents.

Why did you decide to narrate the novel in the first person? This appears a difficult task to undertake, a task which seemed to me even more challenging after reading Nagel’s essay ‘What is it like to be a bat?'. As far as Nagel can imagine being a bat, for example having webbed arms to enable him to fly, he states that this ‘tells me only what it would be for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task’.[1] He highlights throughout his essay that whilst we can imagine our experiences within an animal’s body, there is great difficulty in understanding what it is like for the animal to be itself. Following from this, what process did you employ in entering a wolf’s mind? What kind of research did you undertake and did you encounter any difficulties through employing this writing style?

Before I’d settled upon the first person format, I was encountering difficulties. So, in fact, to find the first person, it was one of those middle-of-the-night moments, where I got up out of bed and switched on the word processor and tried it out. From that, it just flowed, as they say. So it wasn’t so much a difficulty as an aid, because as soon as you’re in a strong voice you have to have rules. While I was constantly bending those rules in both novels, they were always there to guide me from straying too far from the physical and the immediate. Of course, there are long stretches of philosophisation from the animals which is obviously not particularly naturalist or realistic but writing from the first person was a definite aid. It’s like rails, I felt secure and happy in the voice and once that was there the rest could follow.

I like the fact that you mentioned Nagel. I haven’t actually studied his writings or his essays––even though I supposedly did a philosophy degree––but I do know his famous quote of ‘what is it like to be a bat’. It’s an interesting dilemma––we can say we have no idea what it’s like to be an animal but perhaps equally we must then say we don’t have much idea of what it’s like be another person either. So I think there’s an interesting tension between positing yourself through the eyes of something else or attempting to posit yourself as another human. So I was definitely aware of that, and happy to be an animal rather than a human, especially in these works which for me are early, so it was easier if you like. Humans are more difficult beasts to write. So that’s why I went first person essentially.

How did your philosophical background influence your writing? Our studies have been concerned with the wider ethical and epistemological issues explored in animal texts and The Wolf provides a particularly fruitful addition to such debates. Your account of the wolf’s hunt invites debates concerning the nature of survival, endurance, life and death––indeed, your narrator questions his own existence and desire to kill (‘I don’t know why it is that I should chase him again, or what I will do when I have caught up with him’).[2] Were you consciously inviting such a philosophical reading? Furthermore, were you attempting to encourage a debate about the ethics of human dominion over animals, or interested in investigating whether human and animal experiences are similar or radically different? Finally, can you draw any conclusions from these questions?

That’s one hell of a compound question there. Alright––human dominion over animals. I think it’s definitely an issue, perhaps one we have to address if we’re going to progress as a species, a civilisation, a society, whatever you want to call it. Obviously the wolf is a big part of this. What the red squirrel is to English nature, the wolf seems to be to conservation projects, because do we want the wolves back in the wild? Do we embrace the savagery of the wild? Do we just let them get on with it? Is it a good thing that wolves have passed from certain areas of the country? So no, I cannot draw any conclusions myself from this. Part of the reason I wrote it is because these problems and the problems of cruelty within nature, even before man was involved, did trouble me. You’ve got to remember that a large part of that book is stuff that was seeping up from my experiences and then trying to hammer it in to a plot and using external ideas and all sorts of fusion, so it’s very difficult for me to delineate one thing from another and give you a nice packaged answer. But yeah, he is prone to philosophising, as is the Bull in the second one. But no, I can’t draw any conclusions.

And finally, to conclude that compound question with my compound answer, a lot of decisions made are aesthetic. I’m not sure if you can strictly apply that aesthetic to literature or a group of words, but lots of these decisions are made for the sake of the separate work of art, shall we call it, or literature or whatever, as opposed to being a sort of flag-waving for causes or greater meanings, so I think you have to be wary of over-interpreting sometimes.

In The Wolf, the woods made up the wolf’s world, outside of which was an unknown realm that the wolf was both excited and terrified by. Does this not parallel the human beings’ relationship with the universe beyond our planet, which we long to understand yet are frightened of, too. There are also links between the wolf’s quest for the swan and a human quest for god; a prospect that keeps us going and gives us a will to carry on when obstacles arise. The wolf’s time in the cave––with a fear of eternal suffering––almost felt like a form of hell in itself. Could you reflect on the idea that The Wolf can be linked to the ‘grander scheme of things’?

I like that you related the woods to the stars and that vast separation from the galaxy beyond because that’s something I’ve just become quite heavily interested in. I would like to be able to say that that was my intent. I’m happy that parallels can be drawn and I think correctly they can be drawn, but I did not intend a direct parallel between the woods, our galaxy, and beyond the woods of the planet. But there’s a definite feeling of home and a sense of home that the wolf has (and I think we all have). Following on from that, the swan as a symbol of hope, as possibly a religion… I think the wolf’s interest in the swan stems from the stomach, which is visceral rather than spiritual. Then it becomes perhaps a little more spiritual rather than just a hunger. So I don’t know; where does religion come from? Is it rooted in our basic needs? That’s a question that I will certainly posit, but I’m not going to make any direct statements or anything like that. The cave being a state of hell is interesting again. I think it was a desire for the dramatic that made the cave dank, dark and not very pleasant. Because it could have been the opposite, it could have been some rarefying crystals dripping from the ceiling or something like that. So I think it was, again, an aesthetic decision to go the other way. But for me if it fits, I do it. I don’t always have an answer to why it’s done.

Considering the profound stylistic similarities between The Wolf and Taurus, did you have a particular reason behind the deviation in the names of the texts? Why not The Wolf and The Bull? Was there an astrological influence on your decision? I ask this because there is a dense concentration on the sun and the stars, primarily at the beginning of Taurus, although this presence (or lack of) is significant throughout. Do you believe in astrological symbolism?

Taurus is not called ‘The Bull’ because ‘The Bull’ is just too blunt. It sounds like somewhere you drink in, for me. So when I started thinking about ‘The Bull’, again it was just a melting pot of ideas, of where I was at the time as well… I am a Taurus by the way, I was born in May and I was aware that Taureans are supposed to have certain characteristics. And of these characteristics, some of them I have quite strongly. Do I believe in astrology? Not particularly, no. The Enneagram‘s more my bag, but I’ve been influenced there by other parties. But again with a title like Taurus you have this desire to look for more than what he has around him, it gets him out of his enclosure. And Taurus just sounds better than ‘The Bull’, for me.

Following on from this, in Taurus the bull seems to display typically Taurean traits and with reference to The Wolf, John Bauguess writes on the cover of Of Wolves and Men (the book you noted for its influence) that the text means that 'we not only learn a great deal about wolves, but we come face to face with ourselves'. Many writers have explored human-animal relations in literature, but do you consider the wolf to be special in its human-animal relationship? Is there something intrinsic in the nature of a wolf that you think invites exploration? Do you think wolves (or other animals for that matter) play a significant role in our personal development and allow us to have a better understanding of ourselves? Is it thus your intention through writing these two texts to examine yourself and/or humanity in general?

The second part of your question is difficult. In The Wolf there’s very little human contact, and where there is contact it has a big impact. So, I think we can learn more about ourselves if we admit to ourselves that a lot of our impulses come from this biological bestial frame that we are all encumbered with. We probably would all like to be more rarefied and the same in our outlook, but the fact is, we have to eat several times a day and other things rule us, clearly, and I think I could say, if I could look back to a time of my life when I was very strongly ruled by these sort of baser instincts, I wanted to find a way of expressing that, and to exclude man from discussion by keeping him as a sort of distant waffly figure. This was helpful both for the plot, but also to make the voice purer. Man-animal interaction––yes, that’s a different kettle of fish. I didn’t want any sort of gratuitous bonding between man and animal because that’s been done. But no, it just wasn’t necessary to the plot. But the second part of the question, no I’m sorry I don’t have an answer for that.

At times the book seemed to be a journey of psychological peaks and troughs, presenting moments of weakness and moments of newly realised strength to conquer the falls. This commentary on the psychological ‘will’ to persist can be digested by human beings. How do you feel about readers who might perceive The Wolf as speaking to humans about being humans? Perhaps bringing them back to a more pure way of thinking about life; reminding them of a natural ‘will’ to carry on?

I would like it if people did recognise that the book is not only about the wolf; for me it’s quite a human book. To inspire ‘will’ in people? That’s definitely not my role. My aim is to create a good piece of work, a good book that people will enjoy reading, and what they take from it… if they can take a range of things from it––great, I’ve done my job even better. I think the reason for the ‘will,’ or the subject of ‘will’ that’s very much in The Wolf, is that wolves are famously wilful creatures, so I mean: they will chew themselves out of a trap, they will pursue prey over hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. I don’t know if any of you saw ‘Frozen Planet’, it was running recently and there was a film at the end where the wolf attacks a bison, a sort of hour long tussle and the wolf has been completely pounded by this animal, three times its mass and I think you have to admire something that is… well it’s so close to our world because many of us have dogs, me included, I’ve had dogs, and then you have this complete other side, the wild side, which is independent and wilful and so powerful. I have to say, I admire it. I don’t revile wolves, I don’t particularly love them or like them, I think that they’re quite aggressive and perhaps even nasty creatures, but I certainly wouldn’t go out eliminating them either, or anything like that. But I think you have to admire anything that has that temerity, that strength of the mind. And if that comes through in the writing… I suppose because perhaps in a little way, I just wish I had a bit more of that myself, you know; that power that some wild animals have, along with the best or the worst of humanity. So ‘will’ is definitely important for the book.

Man plays a key part in the journey of the wolf and you give the reader a clear understanding of the wolf’s feelings towards these creatures when he says, ‘I stand here not with admiration at what man has made, and not with any awe at the strangeness of his home, with its straight lines and sharp corners but with contempt, for the shell in which men hide. Dead is the stone from which it is made, so different from the merely sleeping trees.’ Reading this and the rest of the book made us question what it is to be human––a sense of shame that we as humans may not truly live but rather exist. What intrigues you about the theme of misanthropy? To what extent, as an author, do you aim to project a particular view on your reader, if at all?

I would hope that I don’t project a view on to the reader. I wouldn’t like to read a book and feel that I was being given a constant message, so I wouldn’t attempt to do that myself but if it happens naturally, fine. I’m OK with that, because it might be a different message from whatever I was writing or thinking. It could be completely disconnected. In terms of having mankind distanced misanthropically... that was definitely part of the wolf’s voice. He had to have that hate of man so that his downfall would be more poignant. So again, perhaps it was an aesthetic decision extrapolated from wolves always being ‘big bad wolves’, villains etc. So why are they the villains? Why do they slaughter a whole field of animals when they just take the one? So perhaps I was just trying to flesh that aspect out, give it foundation, substance, but it meant it was important for the character that he hated man.

We were struck by the mention of eyesight throughout the book and found its presence poignant, from the moments of attack where predator and prey’s eyes are locked, the loss of the wolf’s eye in the middle of the story, to the wolf’s lack of sight as he makes a leap in complete blindness in the darkness of the cave. This made me question the further significance, if any, of the role of eyesight.

That’s interesting because there was a journalist in Spain actually who asked me a very similar question, but he used light instead of eyesight. He had got from the book that there were lots of different ‘lightings’ as it were, I think they are on the same track, in that of course we are highly visual animals, humans are at least, wolves less so I suppose, but they still use their vision a heck of a lot. So eyesight was used dramatically to build the character arc, as they say. He had to go from supremacy, to crisis, to sort of downfall; so in order to do that I had to show that when he’s hunting he uses his eyesight. This was directly lifted from Barry Lopez, hence the acknowledgement in the back because he talks directly about ‘the conversation of death’ between the animals so I made it a direct quote. I haven’t received a lawsuit as of yet so I think I’m OK! To begin this line of where he is supreme, then of course he loses half his sight which is meant to take him down a few notches and then at the end (where he does this sort of altruistic act, or is it?), he is fully blind so perhaps if he could see more clearly and if people could observe more clearly they would behave differently. I think that’s probably the best answer I can give to that.

Following on from this focus on the eyes, but more on the decision to display a telepathic connection between the animals in The Wolf––we were wondering what inspired you to show this type of intense bond through animals’ eyes? Perhaps this allowed readers to see the wolf’s conscience, a depth to the nature of the predator as the wolf forms a connection with his prey through their memories. Is this what you intended?

Originally in its early life there were speech marks and the animals were talking to each other. So this was when, I didn’t know­––is this a children’s story? It was third person but I didn’t really know what it was. So as part of going first person, it was probably another bright moment when I remembered Lopez mentioning how eerie the intense bond is between them and that’s just a gold mine. To be able to develop that and propel certain bits of the story which otherwise would be pretty difficult to explain without speech marks. It was a definite bonus, so that was probably one of the final pieces that went into place, so that they could communicate telepathically as it were. Does it add to the characters? To the wolf? I guess it does. I guess it gives them the chance to have a normal discourse even if it is mostly with himself. I suppose it does have a dual effect to promote the plot and develop his nature also.

After reading Of Wolves and Men, like you have said, Lopez describes the connection between the eyes of wolves as ‘the conversation of death.’ I just wanted to ask you a bit more about your beliefs about anthroposemiotics as I didn’t feel that you agreed totally with it being a ‘conversation of death’. I thought that was a bit too strong based on my reading of The Wolf.

OK, I read it a long time ago and I cannot purport to have an in depth knowledge of it. I remember it being a very, very fine book indeed and it had a profound effect on me at the time but it was more general big-hits rather than little details. To be quite straight I cannot remember his exact arguments concerning his ‘conversation of death’, but being somewhat of an opportunist I gladly take ‘the conversation of death’ which I directly quote in the book and to which I doff my cap to Mr. Lopez. But beyond just the initial idea, I’m not going to get too involved in knowing about words that end in –semiotics. I had to look that one up actually. It’s a dramatic device that helps to propel the story. I would caution against trying to detail too finely, what me as author was thinking at the time.

More generally, again referring to Lopez, there is a part in the text where he describes the Bella Coola Indians and their belief that ‘someone once tried to change all the animals into men, but succeeded in making human only the eyes of the wolf’ which again goes back to eyesight. I ask as having read The Wolf and Taurus, these both centre on a theriocentric reading that the animals’ life exists seriously in its own right, but the connection between the eyes is very important. Have you chosen to do this and exclude human perspectives from the text? What for you is more powerful an influence for wild animals: nature or man? In The Wolf he only meets the man vaguely and yet he is very intimidated and fearful of him.

I like that thing about the American Indians (I assume they are American Indians) because yes, wolves do have amazing eyes. I can remember catching the eye of one, admittedly in a zoo, and thinking, 'Wow, there’s something going on behind there'. But again if Lopez is developing this theory that there is some sort of connection available to permit conversation between animals, perhaps that’s because he was impressed himself with what he saw: the physiology of the animal. So beyond that, I’m not going to say that I can have a connection looking an animal in the eye, I’ve not done it. I suppose they say with the great apes it’s different, but I haven’t been that far.

In terms of whether we or nature has the greatest influence upon animals, that’s a tricky one. I don’t know, I suppose it would depend on the context but I would say: should we really remove ourselves so far from nature to say that man is this incredibly isolated alien and is separate from nature? I think what the books perhaps do have a desire to do is to the bring the readers eyes down as it were; down closer to the ground where we used to be and perhaps still are in many ways. But I think we deny the animal side of us too much. So, combined with that, I think we still are a part of nature and if we accept that, perhaps better things would come in terms of conservation and sustainability etc., but again, it’s not my role to cast judgment or policy but more to provoke questions and argument.

The ending of the novel calls into question the basic predator-prey argument. The inherent predator instinct sharply comes into focus when the wolf chooses to attempt a suicide mission in attacking the younger fox; he knows it will lead to his destruction. However, he seems to feel that there is greater respect and pride in being destroyed by another animal, albeit a lower animal than himself, rather than the weapons of man. Why did you choose a fox, the wolf’s prey, to be his destroyer rather than a far more powerful animal? Or indeed, why did you not portray the wolf dying in peace in the woods and instead show him becoming another animal’s prey?

Firstly, in terms of the engineering of the plot, it felt right that the animals who had, sort of, enslaved the swan, would be at the end of the tunnel to bring the wolf down. You’ve got to remember also that the swan is behind him. I’m not sure how many people pick up on the very last few elements of the novel which, OK, I confess, was pretty vague, but there are a host of plot reasons why he is slain by the foxes. One of my favourite passages in the book is the description of the Vixen, for some reason, I don’t know, whenever I read that I think, ‘Oh, I did quite a good job there, I’m quite happy with that.’ So, where it comes from, it’s sometimes very difficult to pick out the thread and give you the precise reason. But again, the fact that the foxes are smaller models of the wolf and he is somehow destroyed by a copy of himself, a smaller copy and the fact that the story is being told by a human in the voice of a wolf––without saying... 'here we have a sort of reverse metaphorical Russian dolls set-up'... but I think that that works quite well for me. To be destroyed by his own paradigm, perhaps, his own sort of biological system, that was fitting. I think that the quiet ending in the forest perhaps would have been nice, but again, with the final elements of the plot, it wouldn’t have been possible.

The cover of The Wolf shows two creatures, the bigger in red and the smaller in black. In other editions this colour combination has been reversed. We found ourselves bemused by which was meant to be the fox and which was meant to be the wolf and ultimately understood this as a clever way of blurring the line between predator and prey. Is the differing of colours for different copies, deliberate? And if so, by doing this what effect did it hope to achieve?

I think they probably just thought it looked better, because the hardback sleeve is white and the paperback is sort of that cream colour. At the publishers, the head of design actually took these books under her wing. They’re quite into their beautiful productions, certainly at Cape, so they make a big thing of making it look good, which is their prerogative I suppose. So, yeah, you’d have to ask Miss Suzanne Dean about that.

It was interesting because the bigger creature did look more like a wolf as it had the sharper teeth, but because it was red it did make me consider which animal it represented and why the smaller one was actually black.

Yeah, again, it’s not an unhappy coincidence; it’s just one of those things. If it’s open, there’s room for discussion. When I first heard that it was going to be published, I had visions a bit like Of Wolves and Men where you just have on the cover this really beautiful lupine face, with the eyes just staring out at you and they had, thankfully, a very different vision. So those designers, plus the illustrator, they’re artists––they’re all working together––so, it’s their realm and I can’t really, beyond saying what I have, give you more insight into that I’m afraid.

Continuing this focus on the aesthetics of the book, the beautiful woodcuts throughout The Wolf and Taurus were interesting and unusual additions to the texts, which give the novels an even closer relationship with nature. What element did you think they added to your novels?

Well originally they added pages because The Wolf was so short they had to find some way of padding it out, because you’ll notice that the text is triple spaced or whatever; it’s made to fill out the book because it’s such a tiny book. Then, of course, Taurus followed after it in the same plane. They very quickly knew that they would combine them in a paperback, so it made sense to get the same illustrator to, sort of, continue the set as it were; so, aesthetic decisions. I like the ones in The Wolf, I’m not so hot on the ones in Taurus for some reason. It’s just personal, but I’m often wrong when it comes to things like that. I particularly like the one of the swan which is slightly abstract, with the foliage spreading around the swan––I do like that one. I would like a copy made of that one actually, framed somewhere. But yeah, sure they add to it. In some countries they have chosen not to include the woodcuts. Sometimes they use a woodcut as the front cover so the theme carries through, but they don’t seem integral to the survival of the text.

Finally what are your plans for future projects? You have clearly defined yourself as an ‘animal writer,’ with your two published novels giving expression to the life and mind of animals. Would you like to continue to explore this genre or could you envisage writing a novel that moves away from this style of narrative?

It scares me that you think I define myself as an ‘animal writer’ because I never intended that. The Wolf was the number one idea I had at the time; I knew that I had to put it down otherwise it would––as I think Asimov said––just eat its own head off in a draw. Then Taurus was pretty much written in my head while I was writing The Wolf because there are lots of elements that it balances out for me. So it was never my intention to be an ‘animal writer’. I think it’s quite fitting that I started there because I used to love animal literature as a kid. That said it has been three years since I’ve worked on a novel and I have been experiencing a few problems shifting gears from animals to humans. I’ve got a collection of short stories coming out next year; I think there’s only one animal among them, but finding the true voice and narrowing it has been trickier. So again, that’s why I found animals a good place to start; for me at least, a simple, formative experience. But no, I have no intentions of being an ‘animal writer’. I think if you hear of, or in fact read, my third novel when it finally gets written and comes out, you may find it hard to recognise parallels.

[1] Thomas Nagel, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, The Philosophical Review, 83.4 (1974)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914 (accessed 10 April 2012) p. 439.

[2] The Wolf, p. 103.