Tenderloin

my parents were butchers, and my life, from a very young age, revolved around meat. beef, pork, chicken, and all its variants. in a working class family, meat felt like a lifeline; without the sanctuary of our butcher shop, i'm unsure as to if we would have gotten any protein beyond tofu and fish. in the past year, the involvement of meat in my life has consumed me: books, documentaries, interviews... so, in light of this, joy sorman has accomplished for me what every book strives to do: instill a sense of being seen & understood.

the obsession over meat & where your food comes from, the yearning to go back to a day where you knew your food, the discomfort in navigating a life outside of this obsession... it felt raw! it felt good! i felt recognized!!! the way sorman describes the veneration of viscera & deploys religious allusions as pim descends more and more into his obsession was so beautiful. not to mention the prose in general was incredibly well-done, and i loved the frantic, long sentences with spiraling metaphors and varying perspectives. the interchange of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, made it feel like we were where pim envisioned himself to be: sliced open, occupying his brain, looking out from his cattle-like eyes.

not to mention the earnest look into class dynamics! pim comparing himself with the slaughterhouse workers, asserting himself as "better" (even when the narration suggests he should have solidarity) + cows as the proletariat of the animal kingdom: laboring and laboring...

this was fantastic, and its style made it lightning-fast to finish & left me wanting more to consume, consume, consume.