Book Review : Agustina Bazterrica - Tender is the Flesh (2017)

Sep 16

Sep 16 Book Review : Agustina Bazterrica - Tender is the Flesh (2017)

Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica is vegeratian. I have nothing against the practice of not eating animals in theory, but vegetarians (and vegans) can be quite intense about their beliefs. Some will say you're a terrible person for having fried chicken once in a while or even smear cow's blood all over your grocery store. If Bazterrica's novel Tender is the Flesh convinced me of one thing by smearing metaphorical cow blood on my soul, it's that meat workers are awesome, selfless people who enable my appetite.

Tender is the Flesh tells the story of a dystopian future where all animals have contracted a virus rendering them poisonous to human consumption. Instead of turning to technology to figure a way to feed the population, some governmental instance decide to legalize industrial production of human meat. Marcos is a high-ranking local meat worker who struggles with his job since his son died and his wife left him. He's given a pure bred specimen as a gift by the breeding center and he has no idea what to do with it.

The Vegan Freak Show is One Thing

This novel is exactly what you think it is: a series of obnoxiously bleak horror scenes meant to illustrate the parallells between animal and human meat consumption, as if this kind of parallel existed anywhere outside a vegan person's mind. I understand the lives of meat workers are difficult, but Tender is the Flesh offers such a flat and monolithic shit show of a vision, it's difficult to take seriously. I believe in chapter 2, there's some dude eating a baby sandwich and fat drips from the edge of his mouth.

It's fucking disgusting and oddly delicious looking?

These gory and gratuitous scenes are well-written to a and disturbing certain extent, but Agustina Bazterrica's blunt allegory loses all credibility when Marcos…. * gulp * has sex with his pure bred specimen of woman meat and impregnates her. First of all : ew! Second of all: can a woman in distress get something else than a fucking penis to secure herself? Thirdly: So we should have sex with cows and chicken instead of eating them? Tender is the Flesh made me feel like Ben Shapiro and it’s not a good thing.

Don't get me wrong. There’s creative merit to the idea of a future where humans are unable to consume human flesh. But 1) it could've been a lot less on the nose as a vegan (vegetarian, whatever) allegory against the idea of meat consumption. 2) It's so didactic and monotone that there's no real depth to any characters. There's all just mindless drones doing some corporate bidding and those who aren't (read here Marcos) are doing fucking worse. It's hard to read without vague disgust and annoyance.

The Pledge of Meat Workers

I'm a meat eater and Tender is the Flesh did not make me think it was a bad thing. What it sensitized me to was how morally and emotionally difficult it must be to work in a slaughterhouse. If you're a meat worker and you're reading this review, thank you for your service. I appreciate your sacrifice and dedication to my enjoyment of fried chicken and bulgogi beef. I will be eating it for as long as you're willing to produce it and I'm not even a little bit sorry. But I do care about your mental health.

Seriously, I believe meat consumption is being gradually phased out for overpopulation and climate changes purpose, so it's a problem that will eventually take care of itself and if that happens of my living, I'd gladly eat vegan food for whatever time I have left to live. In the meantime, please let me eat my McChicken in peace without writing novels about how evil and soulless McChicken eaters are because it’ll only make me want to eat another. Bad faith begets bad faith and Tender is the Flesh is full of it.

This is the worst kind of reading where you gradually lose faith along the way. I'm a good audience and I'm willing to work with a novel that shows philosophical difference with my way of thinking, but each time I thought we settled into an understanding it went lower and lower. I don't think it's even that interesting on a pure aesthetic level. I mean it's not meritless, but it's all that it's been made out to be. Agustina Bazterrica just wants to freak you out, but her novel just came out as fucking miserable.