Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals
by Joy Williams
The Lyons Press

After reading Joy Williams' essay "The Case Against Babies," an indignant freshman at the University of Massachusetts asked: "Who does this woman think she is?"

Many people may have such a reaction when they read "Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals," Williams' first book of essays. Such reactions are amusing, though, because they underline a lack of understanding of the author's style and intention.

"The Case Against Babies" is a fine example of both her writing style and her intention, which are inextricably linked throughout "Ill Nature." In the essay, Williams writes such things as: "When you see twins or triplets, do you think, aw or ooh or that's sort of cool, that's unusual, or do you think, That woman dropped a wad on in-vitro fertilization, twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars, at least."

This mocking, sarcastic tone pervades "Ill Nature." It will turn some readers off. But mockery and irony are key to Williams' message. These essays are brave, uncompromising and angry takes on contemporary American culture. She skewers hunters, developers, fishers, consumerists, tourists, yuppies, omnivores, animal researchers — in short, just about everyone who lives in America, including the Makah Indian Tribe, which won the legal right to kill whales off the coast of Washington.

While Williams, who is best known for her fiction, chooses to write about some of the same subject matter as essayists such as Annie Dillard, John McPhee, David Quammen and Edward Hoagland, it is her in-your-face, scathing style that sets her apart.

"You like grass — that is, lawns," she writes in "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp." "The ultimate lawn is the golf course, which you've been told has 'some ecological value.' You believe this! Not that it really matters — you just like to play golf."

Yes, Williams is talking directly to you, and she's holding you responsible for the slow, steady destruction of Earth. Through our consumerist economy, Williams is saying, we have lost our connection with nature, and the further we move away from this connection, the more shallow we become as a society, and the more superficial we become the more ruinous we are. Her essay "Neverglades" on the follies we have made trying to restore the Florida Everglades is at once fascinating and frightening.

Williams' second-person attacks may lend her a hardcore "holier-than-thou" attitude, but she brilliantly undercuts this perception with a deeply moving personal essay about her dog. After her German shepherd, Hawk, suddenly attacks her and mauls her left hand, Williams is forced to put the dog to sleep. This essay immediately follows "The Animal People," in which she makes a scorching argument for animal rights. The decision to kill her dog comes as a complete surprise, which makes the essay all the more powerful, and turns her into a person rather than some eco-intellectual robot.

If there is anything critics could accuse Williams of, it may be her tendency to make statements as fact without backing them up. Do we believe her when she says a disposable diaper will take four centuries to degrade? And where did she get such information? One could argue, however, that such statements are part of her system. These are personal essays, after all. And it is their brutally opinionated nature that makes them so fun to read.

Not all of the essays in "Ill Nature" are eco-rants, though. One of the best pieces, "Sharks and Suicides," concerns the life and death of Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of the punk-metal band the Plasmatics. The final essay, "Why I Write," is a quaint, lyrical reflection on the writing life.

Even if you do not care for Joy Williams well-wrought opinions, though, "Ill Nature" is still a series of superbly written commentaries on contemporary American culture, commentaries that the average reader will find funny at least. Williams' mockery of self-righteous hunters in "The Killing Game" is downright hilarious. Except, perhaps, if you are a self-righteous hunter. In that case, you may want to stick to shooting harlequin ducks with your .22. Just don't let Joy Williams see you doing it.

— Ben Welch (bwelch@english.umass.edu)