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Page 14 Book review by stephen a. haines BOOK REVIEW Captivity by Debbie Lee Wesselmann John F. Blair Publishing, 2008 ISBN-10: 0895873532 Born to a middle-class academic family, Dana Armstrong might have expected to lead a sedate life. She had loving parents, a younger brother, Zack, and a “sister” - Annie. Interacting with loving care toward each other, they seemed the ideal The OSCAR - OUR 36 th YEAR Family Problems family. But there was a discontinuity - Annie was a chimpanzee. The trio was part of an experiment by Dana’s father Reginald. Primate researchers in the 1970s were eager to learn if human-chimp communications could be achieved. Living with a human family continuously instead of in a labatory facility seemed the best opportunity. Wesselmann, in a finely wrought tale of the experiment and its consequences has provided us with a stirring, yet sensitive tale. She opens with Dana well along in her life. She’s gained a PhD in Primatology, following her father’s path, and operates a sanctuary for chimps that have been subjected to a range of medical experiments, including being given AIDS. Her <strong>South</strong> Carolina site seems ideal, isolated, well protected to reduce outsider concerns, and funded by caring donors. She’s on the local university staff, keeping her academic foundation firm. Yet, somebody has gained access to the site, releasing the chimps. In the course of recovering them, one of the chimps is struck by Debbie Lee Wesselmann author of Captivity a car and killed. The facility is hardly a secret, but the community rises in protest. It also garners the attention of somebody Dana had been trying to forget - Prof. Richard Lamier. Complicating her circumstances yet further, a new element enters her life in the person of Sam Wendt. Just what she doesn’t need now is a critical journalist writing to an already hostile community. But Sam says magic words about her childhood with Annie. He’s not to be summarily dismissed. Wesselmann builds her story and her characters with seemingly effortless grace. It is only as event progress and interaction builds that the power of her prose emerges. The pace is swift and furious - this is not a book easily set aside - but nothing is forced or contrived. Dana is beset by many foils - Lamier emerges with increasing presence from the background, but it’s her own brother Zack on whom much of this story hinges. He’s a wastrel, an emotional nomad, and a constant pressure on her goodwill and energy. There’s a hint that he may have had something to do with releasing the astonished at the “humanness” of chimpanzees. Others have written to thank me for bringing the issues to public awareness. Still others are fascinated with the background I provided for Dana, her family, and the chimp-sister she grew up with. Most want to know where the line lies between fact and fiction. O: How does a human learn to interact with these powerful animals? DLW: Ideally, humans shouldn’t interact with them at all, but, of course, that’s not possible with captive animals. Some people believe that chimpanzees only understand power and dominance, which equates to cattle prods and punishment, but fortunately most people now believe that the best way is on the chimpanzees’ own terms. A person must gain a chimpanzee’s trust through kind interaction and by learning the use of chimpanzee communication grunts, hoots, gestures, and facial JUL/AUG 2008 chimps, although motivation seems lacking. The chimp release leads to widespread implications with the future of the sanctuary and Dana’s own career hanging over an abyss. She has little but her own resources of strength and cunning to draw on. Can that possibly be enough with all that’s arrayed against her? The author’s account goes beyond just prose skills. Clearly this work rests on a solid research base. It’s easy to believe Wesselmann was at the side of more than one primatologist, likely in a refuge such as the one depicted here. Chimp behaviours - including one young one obviously brought up among humans, who insists on clothes and a potty, are too vividly depicted and explained to be fabricated. Her research points up the underlying importance of the subjects in this tale - can we justify what we do in experimenting on animals. Especially our closest living cousins [stephen a. haines - <strong>Ottawa</strong>, Canada] Interview ... Cont’d from next page expressions. Social bonds are cemented through mutual grooming. Someone who is intimately familiar with chimpanzee behavior stands a better chance at peaceful interaction than someone whose knowledge is only superficial; however, anyone who works with chimpanzees, particularly male ones, risks serious injury on a daily basis. O: What’s the value of teaching chimpanzees ASL? DLW: Right now? None. Washoe, Nim, Lucy, Ally, and the other chimps who learned American Sign Language during the linguistic studies of the 1970s disproved the previously held notion that language separated humans from all other species. We could have learned this same truth through close observation since naturalists and biologists have observed communication in several species -- and ASL had nothing to do with it. I will say that the chimpanzees’ acquisition of ASL sped up our understanding of their emotional lives and intelligence because it was the first time that we communicated back and forth with another species, albeit in a very limited way. O: Is it a good thing to train chimpanzees to live with humans in a household? DLW: It cannot be done. Chimpanzees can be successfully integrated in a human household until the age of five or so when their chimpanzee nature begins asserting itself in earnest. Until then, they seem like cute, furry humans. However, as adolescents, they become extremely destructive and dangerous. They assert themselves by hurling objects, screaming, and biting. And they are fantastic escape artists -- much more adept than the humans who try to contain them. I don’t know of a single adult chimp able to live peacefully in a human household. Even animal trainers don’t use their chimpanzee actors past the age of six. Don’t get me started about what happens to chimpanzees once they outlive their usefulness as entertainment animals.
JUL/AUG 2008 BOOK REVIEW INTERVIEW The OSCAR - OUR 36 th YEAR Debbie Lee Wesselmann, Author of Captivity OSCAR senior writer stephen a. haines caught up with “Captivity” author Debbie Lee Wesselmann between book signings and reading sessions. OSCAR: What prompted you to take up writing? Debbie Lee Wesselmann: I can’t remember a time when I didn’t write or make up stories, so I can’t point to a specific reason. I actually tried writing before I could read by making tight squiggles with a crayon and then asking my mother to read me the story I had written. I was heartbroken to learn that stories didn’t create themselves out of random loops and lines. I’ve always loved books–– not just the words and the stories but also the physical heft of them. My mother read to me every day, and I loved those quiet, intimate moments when I became so engrossed that it seemed as though I was living in this other world and yet was still cuddled next to my mother, safe at home. Literature, then, became a huge part of my happiness. I learned about other people, other times, other experiences. Because I also had an active imagination, creating my own stories, this time with real words and ideas, seemed like a natural extension. O: How does “Captivity” compare with your previous writing? DLW: I rarely create stories that deal with the same topic, so, in this way, Captivity is radically different from anything else I’ve written. Although I wrote a novella, Vibrissa, about a clash between science and animal welfare, that story was about finding one’s way past difficulties in a relationship, while Captivity deals with larger ethical and social issues that we have to face as a society. From a writer’s standpoint, perhaps the biggest difference between Captivity and my other writing is the creation of non-human characters with complex, individual personalities. At first, I thought it would be difficult to imagine believable chimpanzees characters, but once I knew what chimpanzees were capable of and how they behaved, I could then translate what was possible into new actions and reactions that defined each chimp. I suppose a critic or a reader of all my fiction would be a better judge of how this novel compares to my other work. Certainly there is a consistency of style, although I like to think that my writing gets more sophisticated with every new book. O: Why did you take up the topic of “Captivity”? DLW: I found a short article in a back issue of The Smithsonian Magazine about female primatologists who were teaching juvenile chimps how to better act like chimps so they could be integrated into a larger chimpanzee social group. I sat there for several minutes, thinking about how strange it was. How could a human teach a chimp to be more like a chimp? And why would that be necessary? Once I started to research these questions, I was hooked. O: What kind of research did you do for the subject matter? DLW: At first I was indiscriminate. I read anything I could find about chimpanzees, even some materials that I found out later were questionable. Then, as my characters started to come to life in my head, I began to focus on the issues likely to arise out of their circumstances. I have no idea how many books I read. Twenty, maybe more, and that doesn’t include all the articles I also read. I watched DVDs and video tapes of chimpanzees so I could see their behavior for myself. I visited zoos, and emailed primatologists with my questions. I contacted the directors of a few chimpanzee sanctuaries, including The Fauna Foundation located outside of Montréal. O: What do you see as the challenges and opportunities for “cause promoting fiction”? DLW: I absolutely did not want facts and issues to bog down the pace of the story or to make the characters wooden and static. First, I had to tell a good, complex, exciting story. And since my fiction tends to be characterdriven, I had to imagine interesting people who could bring the story alive. I’ve read issues novels before that have ground to a halt as some character lectures the reader, more or less telling the reader what he should believe. I’d rather that my readers make up their own minds. To me, an issues novel should promote discussion instead of being the discussion. Fiction personalizes the issues. For however long it takes to read a book, readers live inside the story, caring about the characters, making judgments about their situations, rooting for them. They care about the outcome, which invests them more fully in the ideas than if they had attended a factual lecture. O: Have you any experience with chimpanzees? Have you seen or worked in any of the sort of sanctuaries you describe? DLW: My “experience” is purely vicarious. I held a young chimp for about three minutes at the Singapore Zoo while a photographer snapped our picture, and that’s the extent of my interaction. I should add that I had mixed feelings about the Singapore experience since I was contributing to the exploitation of chimps by paying for the opportunity; however, I felt that I had to know what a chimp felt like. As for visiting primate sanctuaries, the public is generally not allowed inside such places because those facilities are meant to protect the animals from people. I’m sure they also have to be very careful about who they let on the property. O: What sort of people provided models for your characters? Dana? Mary or Sam? DLW: I don’t model my characters after specific people; I imagine them. My friends get frustrated because they always try to “cast” the film for my books, and they’ll run by their suggestions to see if I agree. I never agree. I envision distinct faces and characteristics that don’t match up with anyone in the real world. That said, my characters must come from my own perceptions about people and how they behave. They are probably a collage of my interactions. For instance, Dick Lamier is a real jerk, which means that I probably gave him characteristics that I find distasteful. Dana embodies more of what I admire, although I gave her enough flaws to humanize her. Sam has qualities that I imagine a character like Dana would find attractive. Mary is the type of person to put up with someone like Dana. And so on. O: What is your view of animal testing generally? Why should people be concerned about the animals involved? DLW: When I first started my research, I believed that animals should be used in limited numbers for biomedical research so we could cure people of horrible diseases. I quickly changed my mind as I learned more about non-human primates and biomedical testing. Now I believe that no non-human primate should be used; they are simply too intelligent and sensitive, too complex, to be subjected to a life in the laboratory. I don’t care whether they are given treats or larger cages or are now allowed to live in groups, they still are at the mercy of human curiosity. We are learning daily about instances of sentience, intelligence, and emotions in other species, including fish, so it reasons that we have no right to use “lower” animals, either. Animals feel pain; they get lonely; they yearn for freedom. If you would not subject your dog or cat to the inside of a biomedical facility, then why would it be okay to use another animal? I know this practice won’t stop overnight –– it’s too ingrained in contemporary scientific practice –– but I hope that we are moving in that direction. Computers have the possibility to overturn animal use, both in science and in entertainment. People say that computers cannot simulate the complexity of the human body, then again, neither can rats. As the dominant and most Page 15 intelligent species on this planet, we must act responsibly. If we apply the same kind of thinking that many have recently directed toward the environment, we have a chance of eradicating animal testing. O: Is there a way people can learn to see other animals, chimps or anything else, in a more empathic manner? What has been the reaction of your readers? DLW: We cannot put ourselves in a mental position that divides us from the animal world. Jane Goodall made remarkable observations about wild chimpanzees precisely because she did not shy from comparing their behavior to humans. At the time, many scientists decried her work as sloppy and amateur because of this, even though her contributions to primatology are monumental. Anthropomorphizing remains close to a cardinal sin in science, but I see no reason why we cannot use our and another species’ behavior as a means of better understanding a third. I think once a person realizes that animals are individuals with distinctive personalities––and again, this is not much of a leap for pet owners––it’s easier to empathize. For instance, I used to think birds were all alike within their species until I had a pet budgie. My first budgie can be best described as an obsessive-compulsive, high-strung, adventurous bird. He had a series of rituals he had to perform before he left his cage. The one I have now is much more laid back and more of a homebody. He performs none of the rituals that the previous budgie did, but he is studious, willing to listen and learn new words for long stretches of time. Now that I see how different two birds of the same species can be, I know that the goldfinches eating at my feeder are individuals, too. The reaction of my readers depends highly on their previous interest in chimpanzees or animal welfare. Some readers have been Cont’d on previous page
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