Springer Mountain: Meditations on Killing and Eating

by Wyatt Williams

Overview

Drawing on years of investigative reporting, Wyatt Williams offers a powerful look at why we kill and eat animals. In order to understand why we eat meat, the restaurant critic and journalist investigated factory farms, learned to hunt game, worked on a slaughterhouse kill floor, and partook in Indigenous traditions of whale eating in Alaska. In Springer Mountain, he tells about his experiences while charting the history of meat eating and vegetarianism.

Williams shows how mysteries springing up from everyday experiences can lead us into the big questions of life while examining the irreconcilable differences between humans and animals. Springer Mountain is a thought-provoking work, one that reveals how what we eat tells us who we are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469665498
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	09/13/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Wyatt Williams is a former restaurant critic. His essays have been published by The New York Times Magazine, Oxford American, The Believer, and The Paris Review. In 2018, his essay “After Oranges” was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation’s MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award and anthologized in The Best American Food Writing series.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Reading Wyatt Williams is always a pleasure.” — Ruth Reichl, author of Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir

“This book about death is alive. If you ate today, you should read it.” — J. D. Daniels, author of The Correspondence

“An instant classic.” — Kristin Dombek, author of The Selfishness of Others

Editorial Reviews

“After finishing the book, I immediately wanted to read it again. . . . [A] very pleasurable read, ripe with metaphors alluding to larger truths about what it means to be human. . . . Springer Mountain is a richly detailed and thought-provoking work with a general appeal, inviting one to dwell within the human practices of carnivorous indulgence.”—Digest

“Springer Mountain is a complicated, mysterious document, by turns poetic, problematic, perhaps even prophetic. At the end of the day, we might just call it a piece of literature, a work of art, an artifact all too rare in the world of food.”—The Rumpus

“A short fever dream of a book. . . . Springer Mountain is a masterpiece investigation into the philosophy of killing for food.”—Foreword Reviews

“Similar to Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this engaging narrative will catch readers' attention and lead them to take a deeper look at the where, how, and why behind the food they consume...Using his extensive research and firsthand visits to farms and slaughterhouses, Williams creates a narrative of the culture, history, and societal views of meat, from factory farming to game hunting. Along the way, he offers personal insight from his years as a restaurant critic and food writer. In addition to foodies and historians, this book will appeal to readers wanting a better understanding of cultures and societies surrounding food.”—Library Journal

“A thoughtful, multifaceted reflection on what it takes to produce meat for consumers...The writing is downright lyrical at times, but also wry & sobering. Williams' goal is not to dissuade readers from eating meat, but to think about what goes into producing it for their consumption. The reality is not pretty, but Williams' prose makes it go down easy.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“What are the implications of eating meat? In this release, former Atlanta restaurant critic Wyatt Williams applies years of investigative reporting to uncomfortable questions about animals and our appetites that, as factory farming proliferates, are only becoming more urgent. More profanely poetic than polemic—Williams is a kindred spirit to experimental essayists like Eula Biss— Springer Mountain gestures at the beating heart of life’s big inquiries.”—INDY Week

From the Publisher

2021-07-24
Scattered reflections on the intersections of humans, animals, and food.

This book is a prime example of an author not being precisely sure where he is going or why. The first half is a confounding, fragmented ramble, caroming in time, place, and subject matter from vegetarian philosophies of the 19th century to slaughtering chickens to arcane asides from around the globe. Presumably, this is all in aid of answering Williams’ fundamental questions: Why do we kill animals, why do we eat them, and how does it define us? Despite years of research, his only answer won’t be news to many readers: “We are predators, killers. We are good at it. We like it.” One would expect something more substantial and cohesive from a writer such as Williams, a former restaurant critic who has spent years contemplating food and eating, but much of the narrative suffers from self-indulgence. However, around the midway point, Williams jettisons his muddled meditations and employs a straightforward narrative that reveals his capabilities as a writer. The author’s vivid observations on the town of Barrow, Alaska, its people, and subsistence whaling are the highlight of the book. Along the way, he offers some telling insights on why we collect and display things: in part to make the world knowable, somehow less daunting in its immensity and diversity, in the way “maps, museums, books and farms try to do.” But Williams also knows the world “isn’t reducible in that way; it can’t be understood in a glance.” Near the end of the text, the author realizes his own intent, admitting that so many stories about the world are often about the person telling them. “The longer my inquiry went on, the less clear my intentions became,” he writes. One might say the same thing of the book.

Meandering stylistics undermine episodes of solid reportage.

Kirkus Reviews