This isn’t my actual review of Eating Animals. I’m going to try to write that within the next couple of weeks. This is just a minor linguistic quibble that I have with the book.

It’s hard to miss Jonathan Safran Foer’s theme of storytelling in Eating Animals. But “[Something profound] is a story we tell ourselves” isn’t the only trope overused here.

Did anyone notice how often Foer recycles some variation of the phrase “[Something about meat or animals] matters”? Or “[Blank] is a [blank] that matters”? He really likes the word “matters.”

Yet the more he proclaims that this or that “matters,” the more empty the assertions seem and the less inclined I am to believe him. If eating animals so obviously matters, why does Foer have to keep insisting?

He’s like the hero of Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart, who repeatedly contends that he’s not insane, until our only possible conclusion is that he clearly is insane.

In Foer’s case, though, this repetition could work to his advantage, almost as a subliminal message. If we think that eating animals, lowercase, matters, maybe we’ll get discombobulated and think that Eating Animals matters too.

Here are a few instances of excessive mattering that I caught in Eating Animals:

“Feeding my child is not like feeding myself: it matters more. It matters because food matters (his physical health matters, the pleasure of eating matters), and because the stories that are served with food matter.” (11)

“How are animals treated, and to what extent does that matter?” (12)

“I will spend much of the rest of the book explaining what this means and why it matters.” (12)

“These opposing positions… converge in suggesting that eating animals matters.” (32)

“[A cheetah’s] uncanny ability to map space… is a kind of mental work that matters.” (64)

“Virtually everyone agrees that animals can suffer in ways that matter.” (73)

“Another thing most people agree on is that the environment matters.” (73)

“Virtually all of us agree that it matters how we treat animals and the environment.” (74)

“Should we grant that animals might not really suffer—not in the ways that matter most?” (77)

“In some ways factory systems may differ considerably… These are differences that matter.” (136)

“In other ways, though, chicken factory farms… are basically the same… These similarities matter more than the differences.” (136)

“It looks like the fight against the gestation crate is being won. This is a victory that matters.” (184)

“The stories of animal abuse and pollution I’ve related in the context of pig farming are, in most of the ways that matter, representative of factory farming as a whole.” (189)

“So are wild-caught fish a more humane alternative? They certainly have better lives before they are caught… That is a difference that matters.” (190)

“Does all this matter—matter enough that we should change what we eat?” (193)

[Note: If you don’t realize that “all this matters” by page 193, you must have started reading Eating Animals on page 191.]

“These occasions simply aren’t the same without those foods – and that matters.” (194)

“Life overflows with imperfections, but some matter more than others.” (197)

“And while the difference between these two positions matter, they are minor compared to their common ground.” (221)

“From one angle of vision, meat is just another thing we consume, and matters in the same way as the consumption of paper napkins or SUVs…” (264)

But that’s not Foer’s “angle of vision.” Because in a dramatic climax joining all the book’s matterings together into one sentence literally boiling over with meaning and significance, he writes:

“Food matters and animals matter and eating animals matters even more.” (264)

After all these reiterations of mattering, it’s pretty safe for Foer conclude:

“We know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power.” (266)

And if you don’t know that, then you started reading Eating Animals on page 265.

How does this guy sign his emails? “Yours in mattering, J-Fo”?

Okay, okay, it matters, it matters! God.

But wait. Even if it does all matter… does it matter that it matters?

You’ll have to wait until my actual review of Eating Animals to find out. Until next time, Safran.