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When elephants weep, and sheep play sleuth

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From: The Boston Globe
Date: 20070701
Author:a writer; critic; lives in Cambridge. Her column appears on alternate Sundays. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].; Powers; Katherine A.Powers

A Reading Life

I don't suppose I'll ever lose my appetite for animal stories, though some are more to my taste than others. Fiction in which beasts are the main characters comes in two basic genera. The more venerable consists of fables or parables. I liked these when I was young - when, that is, I was in favor of ideas and lessons in life. But they are no longer really for me. Their freight of edification is too heavy, and their humor, when it exists, is usually too determinedly ironic. So goodbye to Aesop's and La Fontaine's fables, Bernard Mandeville's "The Fable of the Bees," and Anatole ...

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