Chapter 2 - David Garnett and Zoo Fictions

Summary

Pairing David Garnett’s A Man in the Zoo (1924) with Franz Kafka’s ‘A Report to an Academy’ (1917), this chapter demonstrates how both writers troubled species boundaries by drawing on historical shifts in the public display of human and nonhuman beings. The first part explores how Garnett’s story of a man who volunteers to be caged between a chimpanzee and an orang-utan offers an ironic transformation structured around abrupt plot turns and taxonomic confusion. Here Garnett exposes hierarchies of both gender and species and offers glimpses of more ethical creaturely relations. The second half of the chapter brings Kafka’s story of an ape who learns to behave like a human into a critique of animal capture and zoological trade, in particular concerning Carl Hagenbeck’s business. Hagenbeck is subtly alluded to in Garnett’s novella, where the historical phenomenon of animal spectatorship informs his satirical depiction of London’s zoo, even as his treatment of race and human exhibition remains ambivalent. The section brings to light material from Hagenbeck’s own writings and newspaper coverage, alongside literary connections to Samuel Butler, John Collier and Louis MacNeice.