Eva Menasse
Animals: Eight Studies for Experts

A kaleidoscopic collection of stories about modern day anxieties, helped by peculiar animal facts.

By Prathap Nair

For years, author Eva Menasse collected newspaper clippings of interesting anecdotes about animals. Butterflies drinking salty tears of crocodiles, snip. A man trying to resuscitate a dead opossum on a freeway, snip. Hedgehogs getting their head stuck in empty ice cream cups, snip. Sharks fainting in an aquarium in a water park, snip. She gathered them in a clear plastic folder. Even though they ranged from quirky to downright weird, they were all equally fascinating. She began to wonder - are there behavioural quirks animals share with humans? Her short story collection Animals: Eight Studies for Experts is a result of that quest. In the book, Menasse uses these anecdotes as a springboard to explore the animal-human interconnectedness.

The short stories feature ordinary people dealing, not necessarily with major tragedies, but minor existential crises. The collection features a wide array of themes from couples juggling uncertain futures, patchwork families, and immigrant integration anxieties. Sharply observed and darkly humorous, these stories are a result of years of research relating to animal anecdotes. These interesting animal factoids anchor each story.

Which came first, the story or the anecdote? Eva Menasse tells us more about her motivation and her method in writing this short story collection in an interview:

Each story in Animals begins with a quirky animal fact even though the stories themselves are about humans. Can you tell us about your decision to frame each story around an animal anecdote?

I was collecting these anecdotes over years because I was fascinated by them. In so many stories (in the collection), animal and human behaviour seemed to be mirrored. They made me think about the relations between animals and human beings and how they worked as metaphors. It started as some kind of weird hobby, but this is often how my creativity works. I think for many artists there is a certain detail that ignites their creativity.

In your opinion, does beginning with a weird animal-fact as your framing device help the reader to handle complex themes? Did you think this method could run the risk of diluting emotional immediacy?

I am aware that some readers were alienated - they did not understand what that was all about. At my readings, I explained that I just wanted to show my creative stimulation, that my literature is sometimes ignited by such stories. In some of the stories the pattern - structural or emotional - can be seen quite clearly. But I also had to assure the audience that there is no riddle that must be solved. It is rather an invitation for further thinking.

Do you see short stories as especially suited to capture these small but significant everyday instabilities?

This is a good observation. I personally would need more space and more complexity to unfold the major subjects as I did in my following novel “Darkenbloom”. But this does not have to apply to other writers, it is just my way of writing. 

I was quite struck by how tonally stark the stories are and yet how enigmatically they work well in a collection. How did these stories come about as a collection? Which came first - the animal facts or the stories?

I always started with the animal stories. As mentioned, I kept and collected these little stories from the newspapers or the Internet for some reasons - they attracted my attention because they obviously made me think of structures and similarities. I wanted to explore what attracted them to me while I searched for an appropriate plot, character, or just an atmosphere to set a story.

For instance, in the story called Sharks the incident in front of the Viennese Aquarium sounds rather hilarious. A fire breaks out in front of the building and toxic gases are sucked into the ventilation ducts. It takes some time before people understand why the sharks in their tanks start fainting. It is not funny though even though it appears so. There are dramatic attempts of rescue. Nonetheless some of the sharks die. The shimmering attraction for me lies in the fact that nobody feels sorry for these victims because they were only sharks. Are you familiar with Indian authors? Any favourite books?

I have read and admired immensely novels, essays and political interventions of Arundhati Roy. And I regard Pankaj Mishra an eminently influential essayist and thinker of our times. I was very much impressed by his last book “The world after Gaza”. It provides a much-needed different perspective to the sometimes quite bleak and one-sided German debate on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

Animal Studies for Experts is brilliantly translated by Simon Pare, retaining what must have been the original’s deadpan rendering. The prose ebbs and flows, preserving the surreality, whimsical prose style and surprising twists. These modern-day fables are often melancholic, yet they each reveal something about the human condition and the fragility of life itself. Menasse astutely places weird animal anecdotes as preludes to each story and spins weirdly relatable tales. They are bitingly sardonic as much as they are sympathetic – it is a stylistic kaleidoscopic work of a sharp-eyed storyteller.