Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet

Love in Infant Monkeys Reviews

• 
  K.D. Absolutely

  This book lost to "Tinkers" by Paul Harding in the Pulitzer Award for Fiction in 2010. As I've read both, I think I know why. This book has a more innovative concept but the jurors probably were not yet ready for it. In fact, this is my first time to read something like this. The book is composed of 10 short stories featuring celebrities and their encounters with animals, pets or otherwise. I understand that these encounters are based on real-life news. In fact, when I googled the title, I came across the story of Harry Harlow's actual documented experiment regarding infant and mother monkeys. The husband of Sharon Stone was also bitten by a Kumodo dragon during one of their visits at a zoo. Not sure if pop star Madonna really shot a pheasant (bird), David Hasselholf really had a dog pet or President Jimmy Carter really hit a swimming rabbit in a pond but Millet wrote them as if they all indeed happened.
  
  But these stories reminded me of the difference in saying "animal!" to somebody in our local language, Filipino (Tagalog). Similar to the word "ma" in Chinese, "animal!" (or hayop in the vernacular) can have a number of meanings: when you say it with an angry tone, it means you hate the person because s/he behaves like an animal; when you say it to your lover especially when you are in bed, that means you are having the time of your life; when you say it to an ugly person, you literally mean it and you can even be specific!
  
  Seriously, this Pulitzer finalist rocks. It was a bit hard to understand and there were several instances that after reading a paragraph, I asked myself "what did she say?" and I had to re-read. It was like reading Helen Cixious but even if I did not understand half of the book, the half that I understood was already great and deserved to be appreciated. I think the difficulty was not only because of the events, phrases and terms that could only be familiar to the Americans but also the innovative prose of Millet. Her writing could be playful and all of the sudden become very serious (philosophical) that the shift could be disorientating.
  
  If you love animals, please go for this book. Hands down, they stole the whole book from the celebrities. Just be prepared, however, for the meaningful phrases that could blow you off - positively if you love them or negatively if you hate profound mind-boggling phrases. For me, the line below encapsulates Millet's view of man and his pet animal:

  "People love their pets, but the love is tinged with sadness. Because the love is for a pet, they are ashamed of this. They want the love to seem as small as a hobby so no one will have to feel sorry for them."

  I am not sure whether you agree or disagree with that or if you undestand it but it blew me off.
  
  Positively.
• 
  Diane S ☔

  Love the title of this book and the cover. The stories are unusual, mixing different circumstances and people with well-known figures.
  
  The first story features Madonna and I fund it to be quite humorous and the thoughts she has match how I think of Madonna. I liked the story with Tesla, he is a fascinating man, and I find this story quite touching. I also loved the last story which was the shortest, called The Walking Bird, and though strange was quite complete for so short a story.
  
  Well written, and shows the fascination people hold for the public icons in the public's eye.
• 
  Liz

  One of the reasons that I frequently hate on contemporary fiction is that anything high-concept tends to turn me off. A clever and/or quirky conceit does not guarantee that a work of fiction will be well-written, and I frequently find the gimick being used to be a distraction if the writing is, in fact, passable. This collection of short stories by Lydia Millet is, indeed, high-concept and it inspired mixed feelings in me. The concept is particularly cloying: Each story in the collection involves a (real) famous person and an animal of some sort. The connections between celebrity and animal are a bit obvious and the idea is not even as "clever" as some other similarly concept-driven books. But Millet's writing is really quite good and there are stories here that are resonant and poignant. While the first story, "Sexing the Pheasant," about Madonna on a hunting expedition with Guy Richie, seemed utter shallow fluff to me, "Tessla and Wife," about a cleaning woman observing Tessla's destition and love of pigeons in his later years is moving and rather beautiful. What this collection really suffers from, in my opinion, is a slavish devotion to the gimick Millet chose to exploit. One story in the collection that I could have really loved, "Sir Henry," is about a dog walker to the rich and elite. He is entirely uninterested in his celebrity clients, but lives for their dogs, according them the utmost respect and treating them as friends and equals. He has a strict policy that he will not adopt a client's dog as his own should the client need to get rid of it, but when a concert violinist who is dying of cancer begs him to take her beloved poodle when she passes away he becomes conflicted and begins to explore his own humanity. The story is full of compassion and does a perfect job of creating an intense emotional landscape for an outwardly reserved character. The problem is, David Hasslehoff is thrown in in a cameo, as one of the dog walker's other clients, for no other reason I could see than staying true to the formula of the book. This is exactly what irks me about this type of fiction. Millet is a talented writer with a strong, unique voice and I could have adored this collection, as opposed to merely liking it, had she shelved the gimick in favor of just plain, honest narrative.
• 
  Faiza Sattar

  ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
  
  The universe of Lydia Millet’s “Love in Infant Monkeys” is comprised of two kinds of people: those who associate themselves with animals and extend all the warmth and compassion they can muster towards them, and those who inflict unimaginable horrors on the animals in order to assert dominance of mind and body. This collection of ten short stories feature a myriad of animals and birds through whom human beings can assess their qualities and worth. Reminiscent of a documentary “Earthlings” which narrated human’s harsh treatment of animals (in the context of food and entertainment), these short stories leave the reader with enough material to ponder upon.
  
  The illustrations at beginning of each chapter, as well as stylistic choices of narration are reminiscent of Vonnegut. Lydia Millet presents a critique of contemporary culture where celebrities are infused deep into our social fabric. Whilst we pay homage to these incorporeal beings, we forget out duty towards animals and nature and what humility towards creatures other than ourselves can bring about.
  
  Sexing the Pheasant ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
  This short story is told from first person perspective of Madonna, the singer, who is out hunting birds. Her thoughts leap from one topic to another, fame, gender, religion, nations, ideals and relationships. The smug self-centredness of her thought pattern is nauseating which likens herself to a deity all the while a pheasant sputters to death at her feet. Human arrogance runs parallel to lack of empathy for other creatures.
  
  Girl and Giraffe ★★★★☆ (4/5)
  This recounts a story of George Adamson, a wildlife conservationist, who raised two lions, calling them Girl and Boy. He witnesses a deep understanding of animal sympathy when a baby giraffe is about to be preyed upon by the lioness Girl.
  
  Sir Henry ★★★★☆ (4/5)
  This is one of my favourite stories about a dog-walker and his poignant relationship with our four-legged friends. It is a story about loneliness and attachment, the relationship dogs have with their owners and the relationship owners have amongst themselves (as humans). A dog’s qualities can never falter, their innocence epitomises all that is good about nature and the universe and is not reflective of however famous their owners are.
  
  Sir Henry is a dachschund belonging to David Hasselhoff. Whilst the famous people are least bothered about their pets, using them only to show off in public places, the dog-walker considers the pets as individuals, not associating them with their owners. He likens the value of humanity which is amiss in humans themselves, to the values shown by dogs.
  
  Thomas Edison and Vasil Golakov ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
  Thomas Edison wants to flaunt the power of his latest invention and uses an elephant as a prop, resulting in her death. Edison is haunted by the elephant’s photograph and whenever alone, he indulges in a conversation with her, trying to either apologise for his callousness or justifying human cruelty as a mere means of survival.
  
  Tesla and Wife ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
  The genius Tesla develops strong affinity with pigeons later in his life, considering one of them to be his wife. He showers limitless affection to the birds and in the process of doing so, develops a warm relationship with one of his maids who is a victim of domestic abuse. The story is from the perspective of another maid who knew both of them together and apart.
  
  Love in Infant Monkeys ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
  Harry Harlow, the psychologist, wants to prove the qualitative function of love and uses monkeys for experimentation to prove his theories. As a person, he is distant from his family and uses inebriation to keep feelings of sympathy, care and love at bay. The monkeys are put through torturous practices to prove a scientific point, but at the cost of Harry’s mental and physical health of which he is in denial of.
  
  Chomsky, Rodents ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
  A husband happens to meet Noam Chomsky, notable social critic and political philosopher, at a town dump where the latter is trying to give away a gerbilarium. The ensuing conversation between them and another woman deals with motherhood and confining gender roles.
  
  Jimmy Carter’s Rabbit ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
  President of the free world Jimmy Carter visits an old friend who now practices psychotherapy. Each misunderstands the purpose of this untimely visit, shifting reasons and guilt of an old incident on one another. Emasculation and misunderstanding between two men on the verge of reconciling their relationship provides for tension of the story.
  
  The Lady and the Dragon ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
  Sharon Stone’s husband is bitten on the toe by a komodo dragon. The reptile is transferred to a different zoo and ends up being brought by an eccentric Indonesian millionaire. The millionaire uses the dragon to lure the actress into a relationship with him.
  
  Walking Bird ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
  This is the only story without a celebrity character. A family visits the zoo and notices animals disappearing. Perhaps this story signifies the imminent threat of mass extinction and what future families will be deprived of.
  
  Animals serve as a foil to human comprehension of their immediate surroundings. At times a dying bird provides a plane for self-exploration, a dead elephant can arouse maddening guilt, whilst at other times, a bird can help humans understand the surreal and natural. In an environment of severe competition for material gains, these voice-less beings which we consider less intelligent can inculcate morals which we may have forgotten long ago. Our pitiless natures have stifled our ability to reason and animals can help reach our natural balance.
  
  This collection works as a parable of human hubris in its natural context. Lydia Millet’s exploration of the animal and human world united in form, mixed with fictive and non-fiction elements, provide us with an overall edifying read.
  
  Read full review here:
  http://wp.me/pZgHK-Iq
• 
  Michael Finocchiaro

  This book has some really interesting short stories, each of which pair an animal with a celebrity for surprising little snippets. They are funny and quirky and thought-provoking. I can see why this one was a Pulitzer runnerup!
• 
  Christopher MacMillan

  So when I had first heard of this book, I thought it was going to be a silly, light-hearted romp about celebrities and their pets, that would be a laugh-a-minute. While Lydia Millet did indeed write a book that is funny, I was stunned to find how much complexity, intelligence, depth, and - especially - melancholy are found in each one of these simple stories.
  
  
  
  Carefully composed to be concise and easy-to-read, Millet presents to us a surge of emotion, morals, and symbolism, with each one of her short-stories containing much more meaning than what appears on the surface. The whole novel is incredibly thought-provoking, and draws a lot of insight into the way we think about and treat animals -- and why it is so important to treat them well. Anyone who carries any compassion for animals will be moved by this book.
  
  
  
  Homosexuality and religion are examined via Thomas Edison's worship of an elephant he helped electrocute; Kabbalah is studied when Madonna shoots a pheasant, and is then upset with the task of having to watch it die; the harsh reality of fame is brought to us by a Komodo dragon who becomes a media sensation for attacking Sharon Stone's husband; life and death are observed by David Hasselhoff's dog-walker; Nazi death-camps are channelled in a laboratory that studies - ironically - monkeys' capability to feel love; Jimmy Carter's presidency is summed up in an interaction between him a rabbit; but my favourite story of all is when existentialism is captured by a young lioness, who allows a giraffe to enjoy the simple, lazy pleasures of one last afternoon in the sun before its inevitable death.
  
  
  
  Whether celebrities on a TV screen, or animals in a zoo, observe as we might, we will never truly have insight into what it is like to be them, and Millet draws these parallels beautifully and with tenderness, humour, and a shocking ability to make people think. Pro-animal rights, and anti-celebrity fascination, this is a stunning collection which should put Millet on the map as one of today's greatest writers.
• 
  Peacegal

  MONKEYS is a collection of short stories inspired by animal run-ins with celebrities that made the news. From the Komodo dragon who attacked Sharon Stone’s beau to the swimming rabbit who startled Jimmy Carter, the animals in these stories are as varied and unexpected as the people they interact with.
  
  However, don’t expect this to be an airy or funny collection. Far from it. The grim fact is that while a select few animals in our society are loved and cared for, the vast majority experience no such kindness. The stories in this book reflect this, and I found some of the content sad and upsetting. However, I also recognize that the author wasn’t attempting to defend the cruel actions of humans, but rather depict things as they are.
  
  The title story is perhaps the most devastating. The author imagines the inner monologue of Harry Harlow, whose infamous Cold War-era psychology experiments reignited the campaign questioning how animals are treated in laboratories. Harlow’s sadistic experiment designs, as well as the apparent contempt he expressed for the monkeys at his mercy, no doubt unintentionally created many new animal welfare activists with each public appearance he made. In Millet’s story, an unexpected dream rouses some empathy in Harlow’s mind for the monkeys, but he is too far mired in his work and the mess his life has become to make any sense of these nagging thoughts.
  
  Having similar difficulty connecting to the animals she harms is Madonna, whose story seems to be generating the most buzz surrounding this book. During her “British Aristocrat” phase, Madonna indeed went pheasant shooting on a country estate. In her chapter, the pop star has trouble focusing on the suffering she has caused a wounded bird because she keeps focusing upon successfully cultivating her latest public image. Perhaps this is a metaphor for all of us who should see the bad things happening right before us but are too distracted by everything else.
• 
  Paolo Latini

  Siamo tutti animali e qualcuno un po' di più
  
  Lyida Millet, FYI, è una scrittrice americana nota per il carattere eclettico del suo stile narrativo, che va dai pastiche grotteschi e surreali di George Bush, Dark Prince of Love (Soft Skull, 2000—dove si racconta della passione quasi-erotica di una giostraia per George Bush senior) e del picaresco Everyone’s Pretty (Soft Skull, 2005—che segue le disavventure di un ex-magnate della pornografia), a testi caratterizzati da stile e contenuti più poetici come My Happy Life (Soft Skull, 2002—la cui protagonista è una senzatetto che racconta la sua storia scrivendola sulle mura dell’ospedale abbandonato nel quale è rimasta intappolata) e How the Dead Dream (Counterpoint, 2007—che narra di come la morte di presone care ha cambiato le ambizioni del protagonista).
  Love in Infant Monkey raccoglie una serie di racconti pubblicati tra il 2006 e il 2009, e l’idea di partenza è accattivante: racconti che fotografano la (dis)avventura di una celebrità con un animale. Una forma, verrebbe da pensare, a metà strada tra le fan fiction di oggi e gli esperimenti post-moderni in cui si scriveva finzione su personaggi reali (come ha fatto Robert Coover con Richard Nixon o in casa nostra Umberto Eco con i protagonisti del Risorgimento). Ancor più accattivante leggere la lista di personaggi famosi scomodati, che vanno dal mondo della scienza (Edison, Tesla), a quello della cultura (Chomsky) alla cultura pop (Madonna, Sharon Stone, David Hasseloff).
  "Sexying the Pheasant," che apre la raccolta, è una premessa e una promessa: una Madonna in divisa militar-chic spara a e uccide per sbaglio un fagiano, e il racconto segue i capricci delle meditazioni simil-buddiste che Madonna intrattiene tra sé e sé davanti al cadavere del volatile. Ed è un racconto ben riuscito, vuoi perché Madonna svolge una funzione narrativa precisa, ponendosi come ideal-tipo di una persona resa celebrità, quasi divinità, dal processo di idolatria pagana che da sempre crea e disfa icone pop (una delle frasi che rimbombano nella mente di Madonna è “OK, granted, sometimes the mirror suggested it: not your fault if your reflection reminded you of all that was sacred, all that was divine and holy. The world would do it to you… And of course, it was not wrong to see God in yourself”), vuoi perché si esplicita una delle chiavi di lettura dei racconti che seguiranno: il rapporto tra umano e animale. Madonna rappresenta un essere umano che la sua popolarità ha in un certo modo trasformato in divino, il fagiano l’animale che come tutti gli animali, è costretto a vivere in un perenne anonimato, sullo sfondo ci sono Guy Ritchie e i campagnoli inglesi con i quali si stava allegramente sbronzando, che rappresentano l’umanità “piccola,” non poi tanto distante dall’animalità (“She felt annoyed, but then a surge of forgiving. She could not blame them for their alcoholism. They were so small! All of them. Pity warmed her, a generous blossoming. It was so hard to be small”).
  Peccato che nei racconti successivi questa vena viene completamente persa, le promesse disattese e le premesse tradite. I personaggi celebri di volta in volta utilizzati sono quando va bene un’inutile distrazione, quando va male un fastidio irritante e una presenza gratuita che non svolge nessuna funzione narrativa importante. Così il David Hasseloff che compare alla fine di "Sir Henry" è ininfluente ai fini del racconto—che sta in piedi per conto suo e riesce benissimo a descrivere la solitudine di molti uomini e di molti animali domestici—e la sua funzione di rappresentante del mondo effimero dello star-system poteva benissimo essere svolta da una qualunque altra celebrità o anche da un personaggio fittizio. Stesso discorso per il Jimmy Carter di "Jimmy Carter’s Rabbit" o per il Chomsky che incontriamo in "Chomsky, Rodents" che poteva benissimo essere rimpiazzato da un qualunque filosofo del linguaggio. Ma è proprio in questo racconto che si trova la vera chiave di lettura dei racconti qui raccolti. Durante un dialogo che Noam Chomsky intrattiene con una neo-mamma, quest’ultima dice “What you realze when you have a kid, if you’re a woman, is we’re animals and it’s hard to be animal (p. 122, corsivo mio), e continua: “but what you also realize as a mother is… that it’s great to be an animal; it’s what the core of life is, to be an animal. Not to be human. I don’t mean to be human; I don’t mean that at all, Noam. I mean to be a mammal” (ivi). E infatti i protagonisti “umani” di questi racconti sembrano spesso comportarsi in modo disumano: i già citati ubriaconi inglesi di "Sexying the Pheasant," l’eccentrico bracconiere miliardario che vuole uccidere il varano, dopo aver capito che non gli sarebbe servito al suo scopo di conquistare Sharon Stone (una sua sosia in realtà) e renderla sua schiava per il resto della vita; Harry Harlow che da una parte chiede alle madri di mostrarsi più amorevoli con i loro figli e dall’altra isola e tortura dei cuccioli di scimmia. A controbilanciare c’è la leonessa di "Girl and Giraffe" che accetta di lasciare a una giraffa un ultimo pomeriggio di libertà nella savana prima di sbranarla, e trasformarla nella sua cena, una “gentilezza” decisamente poco efferata e animalesca.
  Bello ed esplicativo il racconto finale, l’unico privo di una celebrità: qui una madre trascura la figlia durante un pomeriggio allo zoo, e alla fine della giornata si accorge che improvvisamente gli animali sono tutti scomparsi e riesce a stento a trattenere le lacrime.
  Nel complesso, si ha una manciata di racconti che invece di essere surreali sono semplicemente insensati, e invece di essere grotteschi si limitano ad essere ridicoli. Spesso, e con le eccezioni di "Sexying the Pheasant," "Sir Henry" e (parzialmente) "Chomsky, Rodents" la narrazione è troppo semplicistica, scialba, costituita da ¶ formati da una o due frasi, che se da una parte rappresentano bene il flusso di pensieri dell’io narrante (quasi sempre un testimone esterno della vicenda narrata che riporta i fatti per come li ha visti), dall’altra rende poco interessanti delle situazioni che se sviluppate diversamente e inserite in contesti più elaborati avrebbero costituito una pagina di letteratura contemporanea più incisiva.
  
  "Sexying the Pheasant" è consultabile, leggibile, apprezzabile, scaricabile e altre cose che finiscono in -bile qui
  http://www.lydiamillet.net/excerpts/l...
• 
  Zach

  Any collection that starts with a story told from the perspective of Madonna hunting pheasant ("A woman with a gun was kind of a man in girl's clothes, a transvestite with an external dildo."), I will probably love. And while that first story is probably the least like anything I've seen before which, for me, is always a pleasant discovery, the other stories step away from cleverness toward humanity, and it's there that the real rewards are found. Humanity is examined through a semi-tame lion and a giraffe, through a dog walker and his charges ("The poodle was stately, subtle and, like the dachshund, possessed of a poise that elevated it beyond its miniature stature."), through Thomas Edison's obsession with an electrocuted elephant ("This is my gift to you: I will never forgive: Now and forever, you are not forgiven."), through Nikola Tesla and his beloved pigeons, through monkeys tortured for the sake of science ("To know how love works, a scientist must study its absence."), through Noam Chomsky's sadness at the memory of gerbils lost, through Jimmy Carter's regret toward an unsaved cat ("I had no doubt that the rabbit had affected his conjugal performance.") and, in the last two stories, it is found in zoos and aviaries. I love nothing more than the lens of the absurd illuminating the everyday in surprising ways, and this book does that throughout. It is the feeling of being surprised at finding exactly what is expected.
• 
  Banu Yıldıran Genç

  bazılarını okumak çok acı verse de hayvanlarla ilgili gerçek kahramanlara sahip bu öyküler insana ne "pislik" bir tür olduğunu hatırlatıyor. gerçek kahramanlar derken Madonna, Tesla gibi pop şarkıcısından bilim insanına kadar uzanan bir liste var :)
  neyse ki Lydia Millet mizahı eksik etmiyor da hayvanlara yaptıklarımızın ağırlığından ezilip yok olma isteği az da olsa unutuluyor.
• 
  Louise Chambers

  This is a haunting, sometimes disturbing, imaginative collection of short stories; animals and people share the stage, and the animals force us to look at our own animality. We can no longer cling to our delusion that we above all of the other creatures on Earth.
• 
  k

  Everyone needs to read at least one book by Lydia Millet. How are y'all living your lives without her books in them ?
• 
  Patrick

  A really quick, surprisingly deep read. I hate celebrities and am generally indifferent to animals so was shocked to not hate this book, and instead found it rather touching. Particular favorites were Girl and Giraffe, Chomsky Rodents, and Tesla and Wife. Really delicate examination of mutuality and transcendence. Recommended, but a little unorthodox.
• 
  Celeste

  short glimpses of real life tales between celebrity (and not) and animals, loved the faux sharon stone and komodo dragon and rich billionaire obsessed with ms stone story. is it true or embellished? mostly the latter but very good.
• 
  Sarah

  As I was about to check out at the library, I saw this book on the shelf of librarians' picks. I recalled that I had just seen that my friend
  Beth rated the book on goodreads. I was pretty sure she had given it a good rating, but I realized later that I wasn't positive about that. Still, after I finished another book, I picked it and gave it a shot. At first I was a little disappointed - I hadn't realized it was short stories. I am not a big fan of short story collections. Or, I guess, of short stories in general (which makes little sense as I used to write them myself). It just seems that there are so few that are well-executed. Endings in general are hard, but I find short story endings even harder. It's as if every short story writer wants to leave the read with a vague, unsettled sense. They feel incredibly esoteric. It feels like the story takes itself too seriously and thinks it is really, really deep.
  Enough of that. That topic might need its own manifesto.
  Not only did I enjoy Lydia Millet's stories, but I generally found her endings to be far less pretentious than most. I loved her unabashed use of real celebrities as characters (though I do wonder: did she have to get their permission? It's not an important question, but I did find it popping up more than once). More often, writers will give a character the traits of a known celebrity, but give it another name or no name at all (for some reason I really hate it when authors use "______" instead of giving a character a name. boy do i hate that.). I was willing to accept the dog owner as a generic celebrity, so when his identity was casually revealed, it was funny and clever. And stories that involve Nikola Tesla? How can that be bad? And Chomsky?? If you are going to use real people in your stories, these are some good ones to use.
  I'm now curious about Millet's novels. I plan on reading one, and soon, to see how her style shifts between the different formats.
  Oh - and I loved the illustrations. When I got to the "Sir Henry" story, I felt fairly certain that I knew what Beth liked about the book.
• 
  Realini

  The fantastic, divine Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winner...
  10 out of 10
  
  
  The fabulous first short story from Love in Infant Monkeys forewarns the reader of the enchantment to come with the help of…Madonna, the megastar that shoots a bird in Sexing the Pheasant and is not able to put it out of its misery…the pretentious, pompous pop singer is married to Guy Ritchie at that stage, embracing the Kabbala and providing the media with a series of ludicrous jokes on herself…buying property like a nouveau riche, acting like the other Madonna, taking children from Africa…they call her Madge in the entourage of her husband, the ‘lager boys’ that are not really to impressed with the celebrity…
  
  Though hilarious, the short story is serious and has a spectacular take on religion…’Like Jesus if Jesus was an alien, which let's face it, he was…there was another explanation: what if Christians were basically the UFOlogists of ancient history and the Jews were the people who were the debunkers -they would say he hasn't come and if he has what's the proof, whereas the Christians were the ones who said: seriously, the aliens came down and we saw them, man you've got to believe us, except there was only one of these aliens, namely Jesus…Christians were hopeful about the past-Christ is the son of God, hopeful about the future: paradise will be ours and then they hope they personally would be saved and live happily ever after, at the right hand of God…selfish much…Jews would be like…come on, be reasonable, here we are not now, just try to be nice for five minutes, would you…can we have five minutes without a genocide…of course, The Kabbalah is something else again, with seventy two names for God’
  In another short story, the Dead Souls of Gogol are brought up – one of the one greatest works of literature, as listed by luminaries from Umberto Eco to Salman Rushdie, consulted by the Norwegian Book Clubs -
  http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/07/d... in reference to the Mormons, who have apparently engaged into the bizarre, repellent operation of ‘converting’ the Jews that have died in the Holocaust…the characters in that tale, Hasidic Jews, are more concerned with mixed marriages than this bizarre ‘operation’ of the Latter Day Saints…
  
  Tom Cruise is mentioned, with his preposterous adherence to the Scientological church – though preposterous is my choice of word – the comment in Sexing the Pheasant is more like ‘believe that the sun shone out of your sphincter’…Madonna likes the English, with their attitude towards ‘everybody is born equal’…it is enough to drive through Alabama, exit a major town and it is clear that we are not all born equal…one could take a look at one of the rallies of the cult of Trump to see that…more recently, I am baffled, amused and somewhat appalled by another ‘world leader’, a fellow from Peru, who has won the recent elections by a slim margin, as a Marxist, wearing a ludicrous hat that to me indicates his IQ, EQ levels and more importantly, those of his supporters…
  
  Another short story is Jimmy Carter’s Rabbit, which refers to an incident that had been present in the headlines at the time, in 1979, when a rabbit swam (yes, they know how to swim in Georgia, at least two species there do) toward the boat of the president and apparently scared the man…it is a reasonable reaction though, when something comes close to us, unexpectedly, we are prone to have the fight or flight reaction, and Jimmy Carter using a paddle seems reasonable…anyway, he visits a psychologist…
  
  The now former president – he had lost to Reagan, in the wake of the Iran debacle, the hostages, the failed operation in the desert, a weakness shown in the last period in office, albeit that image would be changed and Carter is now widely admired for his work, involvement in charities…I would add a note on his honesty…he had given up all interests, his peanut farm, upon taking the highest office, in contrast with the perverse Trump- visits with the psychologist, who has been close to him fifty years ago, calls him Bobby, only to be told that the man goes by Robert these days, when he has a practice near a Yoga studio, from where they can hear Ravi Shankar…
  An anecdote about the latter…in the introduction to a Beatles concert, Ravi Shankar comes on stage with his sitar, and after some minutes, the audience in enthralled and cheering, to which Shankar says…’if you liked so much the way I tune my instrument, then I think you will enjoy my music’…Robert is sure that former president Carter is here to discuss the Killer Rabbit incident, that is the way the media talked about it…in fact, Carter is here to express compassion and regret for the psychologist, who had used a bat to…kill a poor cat, which had had only two and half legs, but used them with acumen and in no way necessitated the horrible, disgusting, monstrous euthanasia thought and applied by the brutish Robert…
  
  Equally outstanding is The Lady and the Dragon, wherein we have an incident involving Sharon Stone from the beginning, when her husband of the time is bitten by a…Komodo Dragon called Komo, a ‘perfect proxy for Stone herself’ it had been said, during a private visit at the Los Angeles Zoo, where the animal had been sent to stay, during an investigation into animal trafficking…he would be sent to other places, and he is eventually purchased by Tunku Rajaputra, let us say Abramovich of the East, though that could be dangerous, were this to have a larger audience than the one individual that may reach this far, for the oligarch is suing the author of a book on the Kremlin, Putin and the superrich Russians that have been tolerated and ostensibly helped to get into these incredible fortunes, during corrupt privatizations…
  Tunku Rajaputra is an Indonesian tycoon, bisexual, with a penchant for wild animals, he has a tiger shark in a half a billion gallons tank, a tortoise, orangutans (the joke was that the Very Stable Genius comes from one orangutan, but the animals are so nice) and now Komo…just like the Chosen One. Leader of the Stupid Cult, the Indonesian suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and ‘drug enhanced megalomania’ makes him think that getting Sharon Stone to be his concubine is a mere formality…thus he instructs and assistant to get her to him and make it quick…the assistant sends them weird emails out – his English is rather poor – and the recipients, assistants of financial advisers for the star, send those messages into the folder for ‘possible stalkers’…eventually, the mad tycoon gets his wish – just like Abramovich has the Chelsea toy – but that comes in the shape of a lookalike, who is shown Komo eating a baby goat that looks just like Bambi for the dancer from Las Vegas that faints at the gruesome spectacle…The Lady and the Dragon is another superb, hilarious and terrifying story…
  
• 
  Erin

  This book has been on to read list so long I forgot what it was about and who referred to me. When I did remember, I understand why I didn't like it. It was recommended by an ex-employee that I didn't really get along with. I have no idea why she thought I would like this book. It is my fault for starting to read it without checking the back cover. From there, I would have known it wasn't really my speed. The book is a selection of short stories about celebrities and animals. The stories are inspired by small anecdotes found in new stories or gossip magazines. Tesla's fascination with pigeons, Edison killing an elephant, and Madonna hunting pheasant to name a few. The anecdotes are too small to add any substance. I wasn't sure the point of most of the stories. Nothing really happened in any of them. Or maybe I didn't get the allegory.
• 
  Anthony

  Strange, wild and risky stories. Lots and lots of magic in the white spaces between sentences. I loved “Tesla and Wife.” And the last story, my God; it is strange, gleaming, terrible, and full of a kind of quivering holiness. But I did occasionally feel (Chomsky? Madonna?) that the conceits of these stories overwhelmed their beauty.
• 
  Joan Winnek

  Peculiar little book. The cover illustration is so realistic I wondered who had left a banana on my bedside table.
• 
  Charles Finch

  One of the funniest, best books out there. Takes a day to read.
• 
  Alison Hardtmann

  Love in Infant Monkeys is a Pulizer Prize shortlisted book of short stories by Lydia Millet. The stories are all very different, yet joined together by the conceit that each story features both an animal and a famous person, with the people ranging from Noam Chomskey (gerbils) and Jimmy Carter (rabbits, of course), to Madonna (pheasants) and a Sharon Stone impersonator (komodo dragons), to Nikola Tesla (pigeons) and Thomas Edison (an elephant). There is an odd, distanced feel to many of the stories, with several being narrated by a third party or presented as a historical report.
  
  The first story in the book, Sexing the Pheasant, was, for me, the weakest of the collection and had me mildly disliking the book for the first half, before Millet finally won me over. The title story benefitted the most from the distant narrative style; without it, the story would simply have been too much to bear reading.
  
  I'm left less that impressed with Lydia Millet's writing, but when I first picked up this book someone told me that this is her weakest collection, so I'm inclined to try her again. The conceit of having each story be about someone famous and an animal is clever, but not clever enough to power an entire book. A few of the stories, such as Jimmy Carter's Rabbit, Love in Infant Monkeys and the final story in the book were very good.
• 
  Brandy

  What an interesting linchpin for a short story collection. Take an animal, or several, and a famous person, (all based on actual incidents) shake until weird and serve. Challenging and quirky. Take these samples:
  Madonna musing about Kabbala and sex while watching the pheasant she just shot die. "A woman with a gun was a kind of man in girl's clothes, a transvestite with an external dildo...a huge iron dildo designed by someone French and classy." Wow.
  Thomas Edison proclaiming "until we stop harming all other living beings, we are savages." Then executing an elephant via frying her with 6600 volts to prove his point on electric currents.
  Tesla and his pigeon wife and the abused at home hotel maid smitten with him, as powerless as the bird.
  The hardest story to read - Harry Harlow and his baby monkey experiments. Separating moms and babies. "The only thing I care about is whether a monkey will turn out a property I can publish." Then nightmaring about mother monkeys nightly.
  The gender essentialism of the story Chomsky, Rodents- "What you realize when you have a kid, if you are a woman, is we're animals and it's hard to be an animal. It's dirt and danger and bile."
  Anyway you get the idea, give it a read.
• 
  Kathy Leland

  I was inspired to read this collection of short stories because I was so amused by Millet's novel Mermaids in Paradise. These stories are very quirky, often disturbing, and immensely entertaining. Millet isn't afraid to swoop into real life and slash it up to fit into weirdly plausible fictional strips; in "Sexing the Pheasant" we are taken inside the insipid, egotistical mind of pop star Madonna during her annoying "pretending to be British" phase as she pretends to take part in a British hunting party and accidentally wounds a pheasant. Animals and how we relate to them or abuse them figure in many of these stories, as do historical figures like Tesla, Chomsky and Jimmy Carter. Millet's pop culture references are frequent and spot on, and altho that can make a story seem quickly outdated (these are from 2009), the quality of the writing more than compensates.
• 
  Zima Mythos

  As my school's classes have all had to convert to all-online instruction, I unfortunately did not have the assistance of my classmates & professor during class discussion to help me perhaps understand and appreciate this book better. I don't really feel that there's an appropriate star-rating I can really give it that wouldn't be a tad unfair, so I'm not gonna.
  
  Of the stories we were assigned, I would say my favorite is "Sir Henry" as I too am a dog person (tho not to the extent of the protagonist lol).
  
  I got 100% on the quiz we were given for this book, so at least there's that. Really trying to be a big girl adult and do all my work ASAP, given I no longer have to deal with the exhaustive factor of periodically leaving the house for now. Still a little bit emo, bc I did like going to in-person class, but I'll get over it I guess.
• 
  Chris

  A lovely and innovative little collection of stories, each focused on an actual notable person (Madonna, Thomas Edison, Noam Chomsky, etc.) and a more-or-less fictionalized encounter with an animal. I really enjoy conceptually-driven collections and fictional interpretations of real people and events. These stories worked especially well because of Millet's flowing, compulsively readable writing style. I read the book in a single day, which I don't often do. I enjoyed the sub-themes woven through--divinity, motherhood. There's a thoughtful balance of humor and philosophical musing. There were a few times when I wished for even more commitment to the concept. The Madonna story, for example, felt like it didn't take itself as seriously as it could've. But, of course, more playfulness is way better than less.
• 
  Derek Emerson

  
  Lydia Millet has received a lot of praise for her work and is seen by many as one of the best writer's in the U.S. Stepping into her world for the first time with her collection of stories, Love in Infant Monkeys, shows a writer willing to take risks in her material. The collection revolves around animals, be they pets, circus elephants, or even the lions from the movie Born Free. Millet further layers the collection with real life celebrities or historical figures so in the course of the book we see David Hasselhoff, hear the musings of Madonna, learn of the religious leanings of Thomas Edison, and witness a confession from former President Jimmy Carter — and there are more. Many of the stories are based on true stories of animals with famous people, although Millett takes artistic license and uses them as springboards.
  
  
  The result is a strong, if uneven, collection with the famous names at times proving to be a distraction and at other times an annoyance. The book opens with Madonna pondering a range of ideas as she looks over a dying pheasant she has shot in "Sexing the Pheasant." The animal here serves as a catalyst for her thoughts, but the focus is on Madonna and her musings on celebrity life, her husband's friends, and her attempts to conquer English phrases. Madonna is such an easy target to make fun of that she is hardly worth the effort; this story could be written by some talented undergrads with a sense of humor.
  
  
  Such entries are frustrating when you see Millet's skills in a story such as "Sir Henry," a moving tale of a dog walker who is forced beyond his dog world when he suddenly recognizes humanity which rises to the level of, well, dogs. Sir Henry, a dachshund, belongs to a famous performer, but this means nothing to the dogwalker. He likes the dog because of the dog itself, not any association. He walks the dog with "Blackie," who belongs to a dying violinist who asks the walker to take the dog after he dies, which by the violinist's own admission will be soon. The request goes against the walker's own protocol, but he is moved enough to consider it and begins to see the violinist and his caretaker in a new light. We do not hear the final decision, but it is the questioning which is enlightening. Toward the end of the story Millet reveals that Sir Henry's absent owner is David Hasselhoff, who bestows some glancing attention on the dog when he accidentally meets up with the walker in the park. The walker hears the excited reactions of those around him, but is clearly not moved by the connection. The question is, why throw this diversion in what is an otherwise strong story. Millet shifts the reader's attention in a way the dog walker himself escapes, and the rationale is not clear.
  
  
  Millet does better with less "celebrity" people such as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Although not as well known today, Tesla was a influential inventor who counts the radio among his creations. Millet focuses on his death as debt laden scientist living out his life in the Hotel New Yorker. Tesla develops a moving relationship with one of the maids, and the story is told from the viewpoint of another maid who knew both of them. In the story Tesla is devoted to pigeons who share his apartment, causing the maids to spend extra time with the man. Millet's building of the relationship is as light and touching as the relationship itself. That Tesla was famous does not impact the story significantly. Instead of celebrity watching we simply see humans at their best as they try to help one another. Millet has a gift for finding emphasizing the human emotion without cheapening it, in part because the animals serve as a foil to the human characters (and at times this is reversed).
  
  
  Humor is also an important part of the collection, and is best seen in "Jimmy Carter's Rabbit," which takes on Carter's famous oar defense when a rabbit swam toward his boat at one point during his presidency. As a former President, Carter pays a surprise visit on a childhood friend who is now a psychologist. As children they were involved in an incident which caused the boy and his family to leave the town, and Carter has come to offer a belated apology. The humor comes as the psychologist tries to figure out Carter's real reason for visiting in what is a clearly an attempt not to focus on the incident Carter wants to discuss. A similar sense of avoiding reality shows up in "The Lady and the Dragon" where a billionaire Indonesian businessman purchases a Komodo dragon who had bitten Sharon Stone's husband at a zoo. The businessman hopes to use the animal to meet Stone, with whom he is obsessed, and when one of his employees cannot contact the real one he instead hires a sexually willing substitute.
  
  
  The title story uses the real life experiments of Harold Harlow on monkeys as its basis. While Harlow is going against his colleagues in the 1950s and calling for mothers to be more loving, he gets his theories by isolating and thus torturing monkeys. While he claims no love for the monkeys, he pushes away his nightmares about the animals by drinking too much. With his own wife dying at home he spends all his time on his work, and the story ends with the nightmare of a mother monkey screaming for her baby. "He knew the feeling of loss that would last till she died."
  
  
  Overall we can see Millet using the animals as a way for us to see ourselves differently. She shows a respect for animals most writers do not have by showing they are worthy of our attention as they are. In addition, as Millet any pet owner knows, animals often show us more about ourselves than we are comfortable knowing.
• 
  Katy Yocom

  This collection is so smart. In each story, she pairs a celebrity of some sort with an animal, and the outcome of this perhaps non-intuitive pairing is so gratifying: always smart, and by turns moving, funny, anguished, nuanced, chilling, thought-provoking. I've read the story "Girl and Giraffe" half a dozen times now and get something new out of it every time. Millet is a true original. Something in her work reminds me of Jennifer Egan. I'm a fan.
• 
  Edward Champion

  Okay but not remarkable short story collection about the human connection to animals. The title story and the Sharon Stone story are probably the best. And the volume makes some entertaining points about how thinking and celebrity are increasingly ridiculously when compared against the wild state of Nature. Even so, many of these stories feel more like trial runs for novels. Millet is much better in the novel form. She needs more territory for her fecund imagination to truly wander.
• 
  Michael Schoeffel

  Millet's biggest triumph in "Love in Infant Monkeys" is somehow making a ridiculously niche theme work. A collection of stories about celebrities and their pets doesn't sound the least bit interesting in theory, yet Millet's execution is perfect. Her prose is humorous and thought-provoking, and the celebrities she chooses to highlight (Chomsky and his rodents, for instance) are quirky enough to make diving into each new story worthwhile.