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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Eating
Mammals: Three Novellas by John Barlow |
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Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Hunger If you find
yourself tired of the usual books you read, and hunger for an unusual or odd
book, you can’t do much better than John Barlow’s Eating
Mammals. The three novellas in this book can be witty and are by all
means unusual. Take a small taste with one of the novellas, and you’re likely
to become hooked on the others, provided you can stomach the macabre. Here’s an excerpt from the first
novella, “Eating Mammals,” pp. 34-43: Inside my baggy dinner
suit I prickled with sweat, desperate to get my part right, and at the same
time feeling a certain complicity with Mulligan, who even now was tweaking
and poking at the audience’s disbelief and mercilessly burlesquing the pity
directed towards him only moments before. ‘Gentlemen,’ he shouted,
twirling the chair effortlessly in one hand like a toy, ‘although I am twice
the man of anyone here today, my teeth are my weakness. Once, in Torquay, I no more than nibbled on a hatstand,
and got a cracked molar for my troubles. ‘But,’ and here he swept
away the red velvet, revealing what on first sight perhaps most resembled a
pygmy combine harvester, ‘I will swallow this chair tonight. . .‘ (chuntering
and some giggles from the floor), ‘. .. wood . ..‘ at
which he snapped a leg off with his hands and tossed it to me, ‘... seat . ..‘ ripping a little of its fine gold braid
from the edge of the chair’s cushion, ‘. . . and
screws!’ flicking with his fingernails the tacks which held the seat’s
ancient cloth in place (only brass, quite thin). Gasps from the floor at the
word screws. Many
hands dropped down to feel the girth of chair legs; half a dozen men
scrambled to put on their glasses and, having done so, stared all the more
urgently at Mulligan, and then at the chair they were sitting on. The short,
fat man, utterly mesmerised by Mulligan, slipped
down from the table, never taking his eyes off the stage, and procured
himself a vacant chair from the side of the hall. He retook his place at the
table, lit himself a cigar, and settled back for the entertainment,
apparently believing that his own ordeal was over — in this he was correct, for Mulligan
was no bully — and in addition
feeling perhaps just a touch proud of himself. ‘You will, I trust, allow
me a little light refreshment?’ Mulligan asked, pouring himself a pint of
orange liquid from the Egyptian jug and taking a sip. With that he gave me a
nod. I dropped the chair leg into the funnel and cranked the long iron
handle. At first nothing happened. The series of gears transposed my efforts
into a slow, menacing rotation at the bottom of the funnel, but as fast as I
might wind the handle, nothing happened. Then, little by little, the leg in
the funnel began to move, turning and twisting, slowly at first but then with
more animation, bobbing and dancing in the teeth of the grinder. The handle
stiffened as the sound of cracking, splintering wood filled the hail, and the
chair leg began its long, painfully slow journey through the mechanism. I
worked frantically at the cranking handle, and even from the stage I could
sense that there was not a single movement anywhere else in the place, all
eyes on the top of the chair leg, which poked up above the rim of the funnel,
but was gradually disappearing from view. Wood moved steadily
through the various crushers and grinders, but with more wood always entering
from the top the job became harder, and soon I was lunging at the crank
handle twice, once to wrench it up towards me, and again to push it back over
for another revolution, throwing my body halfway back round with it. Mulligan laughed out
loud. ‘Some day,’ he said,
turning to the dumbfounded men before him, ‘this young man here will be as
strong as an ox. But it will require work, oh yes, and a very special diet.’ Then he was off again,
regaling his audience with more stories: of the time he had eaten a beehive,
comb, honey, bees (fried), the lot; and the occasion on which, purely as a
party trick in Was all this true? Was
any of this in the least possible? You may well wonder, and from time
to time, as I recall the great man’s orations, those most expansive, most
outrageous, most boastful claims, I too sometimes wonder. But there, in front
of forty-odd men of sound mind, with Mulligan’s
sweet, hypnotic voice, and the low grinding of The Machine as it crunched, splintered
and powdered solid wood, ready to assuage the gargantuan appetite which this
extraordinary man proclaimed of himself, in those circumstances, in that
hail, no one doubted a single word he said. And I ground and I
ground. At last it arrived, the slightest trickle of powder, although really
it was more a dry, gritty pâté, which dropped from the pert sphincter of the
big, iron digestive tract like pale, crumbly mouse droppings. Only then did
I notice where it dropped: on to a large platter, a gleaming oval of
fiery, crimson-hued gold, which was positioned directly beneath the grinder’s
nozzle. (A present from an ecstatic maharaja after he had witnessed one of Mulligan’s regular appearances in Shrieks and hoots greeted
the announcement. Mulligan held up his hand for silence. ‘Compliments to the
chef,’ he said, turning and giving a solemn bow in my direction. More howls,
and great applause. I returned to the crank handle, and Mulligan set to breaking
up the rest of the chair. By the time he had got down to the seat, I had
ground a tolerable amount, perhaps something more than a whole legful, and the pile of sawdust had grown to a dusty
pyramid which covered half the platter. He indicated that I stop
grinding. With plate in one hand and spoon in the other, he shovelled the stuff into his mouth. He made as if to
masticate for a moment, then put down the spoon and took a long draught from
his glass of liquid. And swallowed. The audience chuckled, as if to say, Yes,
yes, that was funny, you really did swallow a mouthful of the stuff. But
he followed it with another mouthful, and then another, eating greedily,
swilling it down with the sickly orange liquid, until nothing remained on the
golden surface but a powdery film, turning the warm glow of the metal dull. I recommenced grinding,
and he, after refilling his glass, strolled amongst the tables in the hail,
exaggerating, boasting, joking, until the next course was ready. By the time he came to
his fourth plateful, both his eating speed and the enthusiasm of his audience
were on the point of waning. A true master eater, though, is not simply one
who can swallow, but one who can make that swallowing an entertainment. So,
he descended with his golden platter into the audience and offered some of
the fare to a tall, elegant-looking gentleman near to hand. The man declined,
but the one next to him dipped his tongue in, and through his expression
alone confirmed that it was indeed no more nor less
than sawdust. Another gallant offered to eat a whole spoonful and, attempting
to follow the example of Mulligan, poured a full glass of port into his mouth
to accompany the dust. He chewed and chomped, and with great industry tried
to swallow the mixture, but to no avail; the whole lot came back out and was
deposited into a large, white handkerchief which, curiously, he stuffed
straight into his jacket pocket. Another, less sober individual thought he
might upstage Mulligan’s comic performance, and
took a pinch as if it were snuff, but succeeded only in half choking himself. Then we had the evening’s
tough. Permit me here to indulge in a little amateur psychology. I have, over
the years, observed many gatherings of men (women, for some reason, are
seldom to be found in great numbers at these events), and it is
unquestionably the case that whenever groups of men congregate there is a
tendency for one man to emerge as the tough, the hard type. Unlike the
playground tough-boy, the adult version is seldom the leader of the group,
and never at the centre of things. He may in fact say and do very little.
Often he is neither the richest nor the most powerful;
neither the most respected nor the most heroic; he is in fact more
often than not the dullest, and his presence is only ever really valued if
trouble erupts and reliable fists are needed. Anyway, in the company of
Mulligan, even in sight of him, the local tough would often disappear from
view completely, receding further than normal into the anonymity of the
group. However, over the course of an evening, these types invariably sought
some means of proving themselves in face of a seemingly harder, bigger,
greater man. Let us say that in this respect Mulligan, quite without wishing
it, constituted an unfortunate stimulus-to-act for these men. On this occasion the
fellow in question was a tall, grim-looking thug in his mid-fifties, not
unlike Mulligan in build, but a degree or two smaller in all departments. A
scowl had adorned his face all evening and now, just as Mulligan made to
return to the stage, this man stood up, ‘to a variety of rumblings,
mutterings, and not a few sit down!s. But he
stood firm, a pudding spoon at the ready, held down at his thigh,
inadvertently, I believe, although it looked for all the
world like a deholstered pistol. He stared straight
at the platter. Mulligan was not one for
humiliating people, no matter how disagreeable they were, but this chap had
certainly set himself up for a rather large slice of humble pie, although in
this case of a rather unusual recipe. Mulligan had no desire to crush the
poor man’s infamy, yet what could be done? He marched over with the golden
plate and, rather obviously half filling his spoon, offered it to the
new challenger. Not to be put off with insults, the man brushed Mulligan’s spoon aside and grabbed the platter, spilling
a good deal of dust down his suit in the process. He dug his own spoon into
the pile and brought it up to his mouth, spilling about half its load. Having
tipped what remained into his mouth, he repeated the operation two more
times, both times resulting in significant spillage, although at least
proving beyond doubt that his mouth was indeed full. After returning the gold
plate to Mulligan, he strode over to the stage, slowly and with his chest out
in front, and took a long draught from the Egyptian jug. The liquid ran down
his chin, staining his collar a salmon pink. When he could absorb no more
liquid, he returned to his table, stood face to face with Mulligan and
swallowed. Three times. After a period in which his hard face turned red, and
then white, he took up his glass of port and drank that too. Mulligan led the
tumultuous applause. With the platter held out in front of him, he shook the
man’s hand vigorously, managing to spill a good cupful more dust down the
front of the chap’s jacket without anyone noticing. Then, more as a joke than
anything, he offered the plate again. Somewhat gingerly, Tough then helped himself to a more modest spoonful. To cheers all around,
he slugged down someone else’s wine greedily and, after another long and
protracted swallowing, sat down, bringing his diverting cameo to a close.
However, his contribution to the evening’s entertainment really only ended
some twenty minutes later as he was dragged out of the hail, groaning the
word mother. Then we were down to the
seat. Somehow I didn’t expect him to eat it, horsehair, brass tacks and all.
But in it went, Mulligan tearing bits of cloth and stuffing from the main
structure and dropping them into the funnel. The grinding became easier, and even the brass tacks, which were the very final items to
go in, seemed to cause no problems. As soon as the last
remains of the seat had disappeared down the funnel, Mulligan made a furtive
adjustment to The Machine and whispered: ‘Carry on turning!’ He had cut off the
supply, with a good deal of the chair still inside the grinder. Within
seconds no more of the fine, wispy grounds of horsehair and velvet
accumulated on the gold plate. Nevertheless, I continued cranking, and he made
an elaborate pretence of ensuring that everything had been minced up, and
that the last crumbs of chair were ready to eat. Whilst munching them down
he delivered some amusing observations on the nature of horsehair, it being
but inches away from real meat etc., and once or twice, in great pain,
removed a mangled brass tack from his mouth, holding his jaw in agony, and
then offering it to a nearby member of the audience. Of course, the tacks
from the chair were all by now ground down to a fine powder, or, indeed, were
still inside The Machine. The mangled ones were from a supply of such items
secreted in his jacket. As the last spoonfuls of
chair went in and, with much apparent effort, went down, I became alarmed at
the great man’s obvious discomfort; he walked ponderously, and held very
still whilst, with a slow, tense concentration, he attempted to swallow. One
felt that he was bunged up solid with sodden dust, and that each new mouthful
found its way no further down than the back of the throat, where it lodged
itself, tickling the uvula and impeding the flow of his breath. By this point
his stomach was so distended that he appeared to be in constant danger of
toppling forward; I am convinced that, for one horrific moment, every person
watching believed that Mulligan was about to perish there on the stage, as
his huge bulk ground to a final halt. The sawdust, it seemed, had set firm
inside him.. And there he remained,
utterly still, his eyelids drooping heavily like those of a man passing
quietly from drunkenness to unconsciousness. Finally, his head turning
painfully slowly towards the silent ranks of dinner suits, he said, in a
quite unconcerned manner: ‘I think I need a drink.’ After innumerable pats on
the back, and calls of Bravo! and Good
show! he finally opted for a place next to the
small, tubby man, who grinned like a delighted child. He accepted a glass of
brandy, and nibbled at the few petits fours which
were left, in evident high spirits and answering the questions thrown at him
with the best humour he could: Have you ever
eaten a horse? (‘Yes, but I made sure it was a filly!’) What about an
umbrella? (‘The spokes get in one’s teeth!’) Snakes? (‘By the sackful, my man! Nothing better!’)A window? (‘Let’s
draw the curtains on that question. . .‘) The complete works of Dickens? (‘Not to my literary taste, but I did
sample the pulped score of The Pirates of Penzance,
and found it rather toothsome!’). Et cetera, et cetera. Thus, my introduction to
the art of eating had been, by preposterous good fortune, the very best
possible. Mulligan stayed at the table with the Freemasons just as long as it
took for everyone to realise, with incredulity
still framing their thoughts, that this man really had ingested, had dined
on a chair. Just long enough also to confound the widespread suspicion
that he would dash straight off and expel the contents of his stomach down
the lavatory. Indeed, he was eating again, and accepted at least three
glasses of port from the excited company around him. If you haven’t lost your appetite from
this excerpt, then rush out and read the rest of Eating
Mammals. Steve Hopkins,
January 25, 2005 |
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ă 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the February 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Eating
Mammals.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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