Mebbe. Mebbe not. And with that, my new life mantra has been certified by Johanna Drucker’s 2018 eco-fiction, Downdrift. That’s the only bit of vocabulary the pandas of Bhutan know and utter to a lion on a quest to meet a housecat in the United States. In Drucker’s, admittedly often over-my-head, novel, where “downdrift” is occurring among the animal kingdom; they are taking up the behavioral and collectivist traits of human beings, trying to organize bureaucracies, collect their histories and languages, and end the slaughter of animals among their kind. Along with that, though, are hybridization is occurring among animals, like goat-dogs, cow-ticks, and other abominations that don’t survive the evolutionary cycle (except for the goat-dog, I believe). Drucker’s novel is like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but with more whimsy, humor, and dare I say, melancholy. Although, both share the fact that pigs remain the great orators able to bend people to their will (perhaps Drucker’s homage to Orwell or not?).
Hyenas are libertarians because of their scheming ways, dogs maintain boundaries with marking, crows enjoy their “murder” moniker, whales are trying to move onto land with no luck, elephants are deeply melancholic, which seeps down to the poor earthworms, jellyfish naturally help with electricity, and none of the animals understand the concept of privacy, given that they’re all naked, have unabashed sex in front of each other, and a sense of “home” doesn’t register. Oh, and the are rather futile efforts to bring parasites, bedbugs, lice, and other gross insects to heed in the new civilizational order. Mice, spiders, fish of all kinds, racoons, squirrels (which dogs try to build a bureaucracy around, hilariously), foxes, chickens, sloths, geese, ostriches, and more all have roles within this society, sometimes owing to what would seem their obvious and natural talents. Bats have disputes with other animals over hygiene, and owls are the language-keepers and (literally) above the fray of it all. Dogs are still loyal to humans, who I’m not sure of their place in this emerging downdrift-led ecosystem. There’s also a blue-eyed social contagion spreading among the animals: narcissism, with some ending up viral and famous on talk shows. After all, if the non-human animals get the “downdrift” of civilization from humans, then they get the negatives, too. It’s an interesting through from Drucker, too, because social contagion is a real thing, and spreads without cross-blood contamination, air, bacteria, viruses, etc. It’s a byproduct of socializing.
I also found it amusing that the hogs, for example, fomented their own revolution and formed their own Free State of Hogs (or some such) in Florida, and obviously, the other animals are trying to secure rights, equalities, and securities, but also, the subtext is that they all are going by names given to them by humans! I found that amusing. One cannot be liberated from all of their chains.
Two additional points of amusement to me: Killing is largely outlawed, although of course there are coyotes, gators, and such who don’t obey such laws, and as the lion notes, who would stop him if he wanted to eat warm flesh? But they still eat plants! I’m sure the plant life would have something to say about this new order! Also, I’m shocked octopuses didn’t make the cut! To me, primates aside (who are treated in amusing fashion by Drucker, largely showing their butts in rude gestures to other animals), octopuses have to be considered one of the smartest non-human animals on the planet. I would have loved to see how Drucker handled them. Nonetheless.
As I previously mentioned, the reason we come into contact with all of these animals is that Callie, the housecat from Boston, feels some sort of feline synergy with an old lion (who seems like a lion of the Before-Downdrift period) in Africa, and they’re both on a quest to meet each other. Toward the end of the book, the lion is caged by humans for no discernible reason other than that’s what humans do to other animals. Still, Callie finds him and liberates him. And darn if I didn’t feel some emotion at them finally meeting after a year of journeying toward each other!
All the while, the book is narrated by an Archaeon, a 3.8 billion-year-old species, the oldest on earth, and what I think is a microorganism that exists everywhere on Earth and in any conditions on Earth, seemingly the most inhospitable for other lifeforms. The Archeaon’s point and “character” arc is that it will survive because it has always survived, but because of the Downdrift, it’s developing a sense of self and placement within the wider ecosystem and that troubles and terrifies it, by my reading. Which, I think is also the overall point of the book: Everything is connected, everything has “downdrifts” on everything else, from the biggest mammals to the smallest of insects, the wisest and the stupidest (poor penguins get that billing, here).
Like I said, the book is a bit over my head, to say the least. For example, there are literally animals and words I didn’t recognize, but that’s okay because I still weirdly found Drucker’s book compelling (I did largely read it on in one day), even though it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. Not to turn my ignorance into a positive (although ignorance is a positive in that, of course we don’t know everything!), but I think that’s also the point of Drucker’s novel; we are so ignorant and unattuned to the rest of the animal kingdom, often to our and their peril, and it’s a point Drucker’s alludes to often.
That said, I’m not sure I can even recommend Downdrift to someone unless they are really into biology, ecology, climate, and so forth. Because otherwise, as a work of fiction, I’m not sure it would resonate with more readers. In other words, it doesn’t read like, here’s Act One, Act Two, and Act Three, despite there being a journey at the heart of the story, propelling the “action” (observances) forward.
But if any of what I’ve described sounds like your kind of book, then give Drucker’s eco-fiction a whirl! Just watch out for those cursing, smoking crows.
Milam's Musings 