The Fellowship of Life |
Jon Wynne-Tyson
Rebel with a Cause (From The Vegan (Winter 1985)
After a varied career Jon Wynne-Tyson
[JWT:] started the publishing firm
of Centaur Press in 1954 at the age of thirty, since when he has
continued to run it single-handed. Under the Centaur imprint a
number of distinguished contributions to humane thought have been
made available, including Henry Salt's Animals' Rights Considered in
Relation to Social Progress, and Esm� Wynne-Tyson's The Philosophy
of Compassion. Also a writer, his own published works include The Civilised Alternative, a study of society's values and options; Food
for the Future, an exposition of the case for vegetarianism and
veganism, and most recently, The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of
Humane Thought, the 1985 recipient of the Animal Rights Writing
Award of the Pennsylvania-based International Society for Animal
Rights, Inc. He is married with two daughters. Question: Your most recent book, The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of
Humane Thought, has met with critical acclaim, with one reviewer
going so far as to describe it as 'an instant classic'. What
prompted you to embark on this magnum opus, and at whom is it
primarily aimed? JWT: The prompting was my feeling that it was needed, and that if
I didn't get on and do it, no-one else would. It has taken seven
years of intermittent work, being my major task this past year. Those I most want to know about the book are teachers, young
people, and of course their parents. This is why the paperback has a
very low price, though it means many copies have to be sold before
costs are covered. I was pleased, though, that two of the best
reviews in the national media so far have been in The Daily
Telegraph and Punch. Their readers' life styles and values may be
said to be in greatest need of being changed! Question: You have written a number of other works touching directly or
indirectly on the issue of animal rights. The most well-known of
these is, perhaps, Food for a Future. Tell us how it came into
being. JWT: After I had finished my earlier book, The Civilised
Alternative, I knew that a book that expanded its chapters 3 and 4
was needed. The thought of getting down to it myself was so
horrifying that, in my publisher's hat, I looked around for someone
else to write it! There were sympathetic noises but no takers. Then,
out of the blue, the publisher Reg Davis-Poynter asked me to write
just such a book. What is more, being a good old pro, he gave me a
deadline. So I got on with it. It was well received, almost the best
review being in The Times - surprising, in 1975. Later, one of the
major paperback publishers took it over, and when they had finished
with it I revised it and published the new paperback myself. It was
published in the USA, but by a publisher not known in that field,
and after a sour-grapes review in a leading vegetarian magazine it
fizzled out in a vacuum of neglect. But the UK edition sells
steadily and I must try to make the time to revise it before it next
goes out of print. Question: Your books are widely admired, both within the animal rights
movement and beyond, and you have become a source of inspiration to
many. From where have you drawn your own inspiration? JWT: I suppose inspiration, in an imaginative person, comes from
one's focus of attention. If, in-bred, there is also an independence
of mind, a tendency to question rather than unthinkingly accept
established customs and values, then one is well on the way to
becoming a loner, a thorn in the flesh of the Establishment. I was
the only child of a brilliant, aware woman, whom some of her most
outstanding contemporaries regarded as one of the most exceptional
women of her era. She profoundly influenced nearly all who knew her,
not least her son! We fought like tigers, of course, but my debt to
her is enormous. She helped me to see things straight; to detect the
essentials; to identify the humbug and the irrelevancies; to have
the courage to say what is in one's own heart and mind, not what
others want you to say. Question: As a writer yourself, which books or writers have most
influenced you? JWT: Most of my serious reading has been in later life, so I have
been not so much influenced by other writers as pleased to discover
in their writings confirmation that we have been treading similar
paths. In my early years, perhaps because of the pressure engendered
by close association with my continually creative and articulate
mother, my reading was largely orthodox and escapist. Tiger Tim's
Weekly, the Greyfriars stories, E. Nesbit, the William books, The
Wind in the Willows and The Boy's Own Paper did me well for several
years! An adolescent passion for P.G. Wodehouse somehow led to such
less frivolous authorities as Shaw, Tolstoy, Gandhi and Aldous
Huxley, and a pacifism strengthened by being fifteen years old at a
minor public school in 1939 was cemented by Dick Sheppard's We Say
No and, later, by Donald Soper at Tower Hill and in Hyde Park. The
Extended Circle is the best guide to my later writing! Question: You are, I know, also a writer of fiction. Do you do this for
'light relief' or is there a deeper purpose? JWT: I wrote a number of novels some years ago under pen-names.
Now, under my own name, after 30 years mainly given over to
publishing, I hope to write several more. Some writers express
horror at fiction being used as a vehicle for ideas. I think this is
nonsense. Most of the really great novels have been novels of ideas,
of strong beliefs, of promptings for change, of exposure of human
folly and evil. But they mustn't be mere tracts. To my mind the most
satisfying novel challenges our minds and hearts through the
portrayal of real people in real situations. If it does so with
humour, well and good. It cannot be done without experience of life
and without convictions in the author. Sadly, there are many
novelists who have nothing to say, lack passion or conviction except
over their bodily appetites, and want only to conform with the
attenuated, sterile pattern of the day. At the best, such writers
say nothing beautifully. As Roy Campbell wrote: 'You have the
snaffle and the curb all right, but where's the bloody horse?' So Say Banana Bird (1984) did have a 'deeper purpose' and got a
good if small press. The Sundays (where whom you know counts for
more than what you write) ignored it. C.P. Snow said something about
the British not liking you to change categories, and not all the
orthodox media have forgiven me for surviving as a publisher for 30
years and then turning author. Though Banana Bird has a strong
environmental 'message' (only one reviewer expressed empathy for
it), my best novel, Anything Within Reason, has yet to be published. Question: I know of no more articulate, indeed eloquent champion of
veganism than you. The chapter in Food for a Future entitled 'The
Further Step' is, in my view, the most forceful presentation of the
logic of veganism ever committed to paper, and yet you are not
yourself a vegan. Can you explain this paradox? JWT: All too easily! I am a workaholic and for over 30 years have
got through what would normally be shared by 4 or 5 people. I cannot
also be in the kitchen! My wife is boss there, and although she goes
along with vegetarianism because she knows it is important to me,
she is simply not prepared to take 'The Further Step'. I have to
balance this compromise against the fact that my output of work
requires a stable background. If that background is disturbed by
constant argument, or ended because dietetic consistency comes
before marriage, my output as a writer and publisher will suffer.
Through my work, and now less frequently sailing, tennis, etc, I
meet many people outside the animal rights movement. In each case
one has to judge at what point one may damage a nascent empathy by
(as they would think) going over the top. I could give many actual
and hypothetical examples. I'll cite one. A good review in a
national paper for one of my books would not have appeared if I had
refused to lunch with a certain literary editor for fear that some
part of the meal might not be totally vegan. None of us is wholly
consistent. It is impossible. What matters is that each of us should
be going in the right direction and with the right intentions. If
you simply cannot find winter-weight non-leather shoes for awkwardly
shaped feet, the choice may be between chilblains (or worse) and
accepting a by-product of the meat industry (animals are killed for
their flesh, not for their hides). Of course consistency is
important and to be strived for, but we are not going to contribute
much to the course of Western society if we spend our days in a
hammock and muslin face mask. Each of us must make his/her choice. Question: With The Extended Circle now published, what lies ahead for
you? Your books seem to me to be designed to fill important gaps in
existing literature. Do you see any more gaps to be filled? JWT: Gaps? I'd say a yawning chasm! For myself, I want to reach
new publics, not only with fiction, but also with plays. I am
delighted that the animal rights movement approves of my books, but
it is the unconverted I most want to reach. With them it is a
question of taking them down the nursery slopes, of introducing new
ideas in conventional structures. A London theatre director has
bought an option on my first play, and a Broadway director is also
keen on it, but so far my agent had found no management to take it
on. It has only a spattering of animal rights 'messages', but the
last one comes in a powerful context. So I'm hoping. My agent wants
me to write a really committed play, and I'm trying to find the time
to do so. Plays can reach entirely new audiences. The 'gap' is
infinite. All I need is another sixty years of increasingly vegan
life! Question: It would, perhaps, be fitting if this interview ended with a favourite quote from The Extended Circle. Of the many, is there one
of which you are especially fond? JWT: I have scores of favourites. In my 'Introduction' to the book
I say that the passage that most 'speaks to my condition' is where
John Bryant dreams of a world 'where man is at peace, not only with
himself, but also with all the other creatures of Earth,' for 'it is
cruelty which dominates my every conscious moment.' Some of the most
forthright quotes were C.W. Leadbeater's; some of the wittiest,
Henry Salt's; some of the most poetic, James Stephens'. But that
still leaves me in great admiration of Victor Hugo, J. Howard Moore,
Montaigne, Ashley Montagu, Ernest Bell, Brigid Brophy, Voltaire,
John Cowper Powys, Philip Kapleau, Todd Ferrier and a host of
others. Once the breakthrough has been made into realisation of the
oneness of life and of our kinship with all creatures, there is
little difference except in language and style between the wisdom of
the famous and the little known. But, of the many candidates,
perhaps the best rounding-off quotation, in content and language
prompting thought rather than making a definitive statement, comes
from the American writer Henry Beston's The Outermost House (1928):
Reproduced with thanks. NB A revised and expanded edition of The Extended Circle was
published by Centaur Press in 2009. See also: The Wynne-Tyson Effect and Reflection: Jon Wynne-Tyson and Reviews. Return to Interviews |
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