Don LePan, author of Animals, highlights the links between fiction and empathy in this exclusive interview with Evadne Macedo, author of The 29th Day.

1. In your November 24th blog posting, you refer to an article by Keith Oatley, “The Science of Fiction,” New Scientist (June 25 2008), reporting that people who read fiction show an increased tendency towards empathy. But you also note, based on your personal experience, the potential for readers to empathize with protagonists who demonstrate characteristics one would not want to emulate. While you remain skeptical of the extent to which science can prove the positive impacts of literature, you end by indicating that there are novels that do effect concrete change. Can you elaborate?

I think there are at least two or three ways in which literature may exert positive effects. One is the focus of the Oatley research. As you say, it has to do with empathy — and I think the claim that fiction can lead one to be more empathetic is, broadly speaking, quite true. The main mechanism through which this happens, it seems to me, is a narrative one — the forward pull of narrative whereby we are led to share the expectations of one or more characters, usually through the mechanism of being made privy to their intentions before they act on them. As I argued many years ago in a scholarly monograph, when we are led to share a character’s sense of the future, we can also be led to share many of that character’s feelings. It’s a mechanism that can operate while we are watching a play or a movie just as much as when we are reading a novel. And it probably does on balance help to make us better humans. I used the example of empathizing for Frank Chambers as one reads The Postman Always Rings Twice to suggest that we may be led through this mechanism to empathize with evil. But more often than not I would agree with Oatley (as he has expressed it to me in a subsequent exchange of emails) that because many points of view are represented in the wide variety that characterizes fictional literature, the overall effect is to make us better able to think of the perspectives of others. And that surely is a good thing.

It’s the sort of good thing, though, that in itself has little to do with directly effecting concrete change. The novels that have a strong track record of effecting such change are ones that have a strong focus on one particular issue. Oliver Twist and Mary Barton on the plight of the poor in early Victorian Britain; Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the evils of slavery; Black Beauty on the mistreatment of horses in the late nineteenth century; Ramona on the mistreatment of native Americans around the same time; The Jungle on the ill-treatment of workers in slaughterhouses in the early twentieth century—all those novels helped to effect concrete change in a particular area in which humans had been doing horrific things. They also—and this is an important connection to the sort of thing Oatley is talking about—enlisted empathy on the part of the reader in support of change. In each case readers are led (through the plotting as much as the characterization, I would argue) to feel for characters who are either victims of or crusaders against the horrific practice that needs to be changed.

2. Many authors, including Joy Fielding and Terry Fallis, write outlines before writing a novel. Others like Miriam Toews think about the story and jot down notes, until the characters take over. My approach in writing my first novel, The 29th Day, was much like that. I thought about it for four years and then wrote the first draft of 110,000 words over 3 months in the spring of 2009 – that was fun, but now I am doing the hard work of revising and trying to cut it down. Can you describe your approach to writing, and how long it takes from when you have an idea to when you see it come together in a novel? Do you normally have people other than your editor or agent read drafts? If so, how do you incorporate their feedback?

This is my first published work of fiction, so I guess it’s a bit early to generalize about what works for me. The core storyline of Animals and the drive (from an ethical perspective) to write it came to me all at once—within about 30 seconds. From there it was no more than three or four months of writing in my spare time until I had a first draft. After that I was fortunate enough to get advice from lots of people—more than a dozen people read the manuscript at different stages, and offered extremely helpful advice. I write in one entry on my blog about the degree to which fiction writing can be collaborative; certainly with Animals I was lucky enough to have many helpers.

The novel I’ve just started to work on now is something that’s been percolating in the back of my mind for several years. I hope that eventually I’ll have a lot of people offer helpful advice with this one too, but certainly this time the core of the story didn’t come to me ready-made in 30 seconds.

3. Your writings have indicated that Animals emerged from concern about the treatment of animals on factory farms. You note the idea of channelling – rage or other feelings from real-life situations – into fiction writing. Can you describe the research you did on the treatment of animals on factory farms, what you learned, and how you used this in writing the novel. Would you say that you have diffused your anger over factory farming through writing Animals? If not, do you have further ideas you intend to explore?

I had known the basic facts about factory farming since I’d read Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation around 1990 or ’91, but at first I did not respond as strongly as I now think I should have. As I learnt more over the years about factory farming, my feelings became more and more engaged — though it continued to be a slow process.

I still feel real outrage about factory farming — in that sense writing the novel wasn’t cathartic, I guess. And outrage about lots of other things too; if I could I would certainly write a novel that aimed to improve conditions for the billion people who are still forced to get by on a dollar a day or less. If I can find the right story material — that’s more than half the battle.

Maybe I should change that verb construction and say “If I can, I will.”

4. In my novel, The 29th Day, I have tried to introduce readers to a provoking – but largely unknown – scientific theory on ecological resource utilization. The book reads like plot-driven entertainment but ultimately draws readers into a hidden mystery of environmental significance that is revealed at the end. My hope is that readers will then be inclined to find out more about homelessness and climate change, even though they might not normally be interested in these topics. In the afterword, you challenge readers to carry on where the novel left of and to create a happier ending for factory farmed animals. To what extent do you think readers of Animals will be likely to look further into factory farming and avenues for direct action on the issue? Have you heard of any direct impacts your book has had on readers?

Yes. Even before publication it had a direct impact; three or four of the dozen or more people who read the novel pre-publication have told me it has had a real effect on their actions—that they now eat less meat or no meat as a result of reading the book. The book came out only a couple of months ago, so I don’t yet have any clear sense of how many readers overall may have been influenced by the published book. But already several have told me they have been.

One thing that helps with this issue — Jonathan Safran Foer pointed this out in a very good interview he did on November 29, 2009 for CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition — is that in order to effect change in this area you don’t have to ask people to give up a lot of their time to promoting a cause, or even to change their principles. You’re only asking them to make different choices when they shop for groceries — and in most cases these are choices that really are in harmony with the principles people have in any case. The way we have come (without really thinking about it) to accept factory farming is an out-rider when it comes to our ethical principles; how many of us have been taught by our parents that condemning animals to lives of horrible suffering is OK? How many believe that it’s OK? No one, surely. We continue to support it through our buying and eating habits only because we’ve been trained not to think about it much — and, I would argue, not to feel or to imagine about it much.

5. In reading Animals, the reader may feel off-balance or uncomfortable around the discourse of “mongrels,” and their place in the family, or in society at large. This forces the reader to consider fundamental questions about dignity, power-dynamics, what it means to be human and how we relate to other sentient beings. What were your goals in writing this book and what kinds of discussions were you hoping to provoke?

There’s little direct comment in the novel as to category issues such as “what it means to be human,” but certainly such things are in the background throughout the novel. How close are human animals to non-human animals? Can categories of this sort be meaningful? Do they inhere in something biological? Or are they merely cultural constructs? I do think that such categories can be mapped at least roughly onto a limited set of identifiable biological realities; I don’t think you can say that a human is a human and a bird is a bird purely on the basis of cultural constructs. But it also seems clear that cultural constructs do play a role in how we perceive such things. The generally-accepted answer to a question such as “what constitutes a person?” is far from self-evident, and it’s changed a lot over time. Americans living as chattel slaves in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had the status of less-than-fully-human animals, as did slaves in the colonies of Britain, France, Spain, and other European nations, in ancient Greece and Rome, in the Mayan and Aztec empires—the list goes on and on. The lower castes in India and in Japan did not attain full legal status as humans until the latter part of the twentieth century, and even through much of the twenty-first century continued to be treated as lower-order beings. Women have in many cultures and many eras been regarded as less than fully human by their male rulers, and in many jurisdictions battles have been waged over whether a foetus is a human or a less-than-human being.

All this should I think raise some real doubts about whatever assumptions we may have as to being able to clearly draw a line between human animals and non-human animals—and in particular raise doubts when we are forming policies and basing a good deal of our behavior on such assumptions. If we are consciously condemning cows or pigs or birds to utterly horrific lives, are we doing so on the grounds, say, that they are less rational than humans? Even if human animals are on the whole more rational than other animals, how much more deserving does that make us? Particularly if we often use our rational abilities not to make the world a better place but to rationalize to ourselves behavior that is fundamentally unconscionable, how can we claim to be superior?

I’d suggest, then, that it may be appropriate to place a good deal less emphasis on worrying about where the human begins and ends, or about what it means to be human, and a good deal more on whether or not what we are doing improves or worsens life on our planet. In particular, we need to think more of what improves or worsens the lives of other sentient animals on our planet. We will no doubt always be arguing about exactly where there may be a line between human and non-human animals, and about how well or poorly non-human animals can think. But we surely know they can feel—they can feel good, and they can feel pain and hardship. In a lot of ways non-human animals are very much animals like us.

7. I have started a novel called Viral Hatred about a society reinventing itself in the aftermath of a virus that strikes at the heart of empathy. I am intending it to have dystopian elements, but still be  entertaining and hopeful – I anticipate that this will be a tough blend to achieve. In writing Animals, how did you resolve the inherent challenge in presenting bleak subject-matter without alienating the reader?

I don’t know if I did resolve it, or resolve it in the right way. If the book had a different ending—a more uplifting one—I think it would be a worse novel, but it might well be a much more popular one. I’ve thought of trying to convince the publishers to issue an alternative-ending version; I do have a draft alternative ending written.

8. You seem to have many identities: writer, artist and publisher. Which of these identities do you find most fulfilling and why? How do you balance your time and energy between these?

At different times they are all fulfilling; I don’t think I could single out one. Since I came back to the role of running a publishing company last year (after a couple of years of working only 8 months per year for Broadview), I absolutely don’t have enough time. At the moment it’s the painting that’s been forced to one side. But one day that will come back.

9. I just attended an excellent publishing workshop at Humber, run by Cynthia Good and Jennifer Murray, who were formerly with Penguin Canada. There was some talk about the conditions being right for individuals with the expertise and interest to set up small publishing companies. From your experience at Broadview Press (an independent academic publisher), what advice would you give someone who wants to start a small independent press? Are there any good resources that you could mention?

What advice? Do it! Please, please, anyone thinking of starting a small press, go ahead and do it; we need new entrepreneurial spirits in the industry! There are lots of people out there who will give helpful advice, but there are very few these days taking the plunge and risking a start-up.

10. Do you have any final words of advice or encouragement for aspiring writers?

Keep at it; be determined, be confident. And think of your primary identity as a human being, not as a writer—especially not as a Writer. Too often I think people assume they need lots of uninterrupted time to write, when more often than not what we need to become good writers is to practice writing even when we can only snatch little bits of time in which to do so. And we need to experience life, which doesn’t much happen in creative writing classes. And we need to empathize with others, including others very different from ourselves. There; now we’ve come full circle!

For more information about Don LePan and about Animals: A Novel, visit: http://www.donlepan.com/ and http://donlepan.blogspot.com

This interview was originally posted on December 2, 2009 at http://books.macedo.ca