COWS

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I can't help but find allegory here for our modern life. We in Western society are so numb to violence, so used to being lied to in our media, so used to extremes in our entertainment, that we behave as those living in war-torn nations. There is an apathy and numbness in even the most privileged of us that drives us to further instant dopamine hits from our social media and from our fentanyl-laced heroin. That part is disgusting, yes. But that's just the beginning. It gets so much worse from then on. And then, Steven learns how to communicate with cows, for some reason. I guess, because they want him to kill their tormentor, Cripps. Because Cripps rapes them before and after killing them, at the factory.

A purer version of COWS could be imagined, for example, in which nothing violent, immoral, psychotic, or perverse takes place, but the world is full of stench, slime, and opportunities for nausea. In that simpler version of COWS, it might be easier to see what kinds of narrative work would need to be done to bring the nauseating elements into dialogue with the rest of the book. I don't really have an idea how to perform such an analysis, partly because I can see how the ingredients work together to produce the book's effects, and partly because I can't enumerate the kinds of extreme subjects, acts, and descriptions. Are there more than three? Is visceral repulsion separable from moral repugnance? Is there a sexual perversity different from moral perversity? Think whatever made it move is happy now in the fields of the hereafter? You believe in that kind of thing? Forget it. Meat doesn't have the brains.It just works till it dies or until someone cuts it up." Another way to put this would be to say that COWS makes a rum mixture of a large number of important provocations: morality, ethics, sexuality, perversity, nihilism, sadism… nearly every concept I have mentioned in this review, including beauty and harmony, is contested. But that observation is just another form of the puzzle I mentioned at the beginning: why, if a book manages to combine all these, is it not more or less automatically an important book? Just a white wall and, down near the floor, the ventilation grille. Then movement behind the grille and Steven was on his knees, peering through it, pressing his face against the mesh. In there, in the shadows beyond the spill of light from the hall, the outline of an anvil-shaped head swayed gently. Her comment is practically unprovoked and one could imagine this scene playing out awkwardly in an uncomfortable amateur art film or an endless Godard monologue. It wasn't until well into the novel that I decided that Stokoe meant for much of the dialogue to be read more as a philosophical lesson than as actual conversation between two people. He places his characters in such unbearable situations that the only way to cope, the only way to process what they are going through is to do it out loud and in the most complex was possible. Viewed in this context the dialogue begins to work and adds a lot to the general feeling of the novel even if it is jarring to go from an extremely violent scene to a staid discussion of the transformative powers of violence.I’m going to do my best to stay spoiler free, but I wanted to just say – this is a book that if you need any sort of trigger warning, you’ll not make it very far into it. Have you watched 2 Girls 1 Cup? What was your response? If it was anything other than ‘what is the art behind this’ you’ll be best to pass. Things that occur – animal abuse and torture, self mutilation, matricide, infanticide, beastiality, scat play and ingestion and homicide just to name a few. Roxanne (unconvinced) : Well, maybe. But you know, all humans kind of look alike to me. It’s hard to tell the men from the women even. I think you’re talking to the wrong cow. I was recommended this book and thought "What the Hell?" and then it was pointed out to me that it was in a genre called "Bizzaro Fiction"....so my nosey mind just had to look up what it meant and all the other books which fell into this. So picture me on a Friday at work...just adding book after book to my TBR shelf! Unfortunately, I didn't see it. Perhaps I should have gone into it more blind. But I don't think it would have made any difference. First of all, I could not pinpoint any messages or themes in this novel that said anything that hadn't been said by 1997 less crudely and graphically but with more emotional impact. I felt like I was treading in familiar territory. Perhaps that is because I also have been a lifelong listener of some of the darker subgenres of industrial music, such as power electronics, which highlights sensory experiences otherwise abrasive and repellent and uses them in a way that somehow captures a bleak psychological concept or story, while also managing to capture the beauty behind the noise.

I have to stop here or I will end up writing a novel - buy this book - follow the life of Steven and Lucy along with the herd of cows living under the city.Christine : That’s right, you tell him! Listen, soon-to-be-trampled author-boy, in the first part of your opus you have your extreme-horror slaughterhouse fun with us cows, and then in the second part, you turn us into a fatuous allegory about fascism, where once again we play the mindless puppets. At every turn you debovinise us! We’re just your fodder! Simone (svelte, but nobody’s fool) : You got to be joking, pal. In our world you’re famous. Can’t write a book like Cows and not get noticed by us actual cows. We’re not cultural ignoramuses like sheep – they just watch daytime TV. But we like our Andy Warhol wallpaper and we appreciate the cover art on Pink Floyd’s under-appreciated Atom heart Mother album. Although side two is very self-indulgent, it’s true. I have a vinyl copy.