Paul Bryant's Reviews > Cows

Scene : A pleasant summer day in the English Peak District. A guy is walking through the breathtaking Derbyshire countryside. The pathway takes him through a field. In the field, a herd of cows.

First cow : I don’t believe it - it’s him, Gloria – it’s him!

Second cow (Gloria) : Oh Roxanne, now what?

Roxanne: I’m telling you – look, it’s that God-damned Matthew Stokoe!

Gloria : Oh, come on now, you’re obsessed. How would you know? There’s no pictures of Matthew Stokoe anywhere – remember we were googling on Clara’s laptop the other day, after milking time? Not one picture, and there’s none on any of his books like most human authors do. And when you actually read this filth, you can quite see why. Moo.

Roxanne : Well, I didn’t tell you, but I got this faxed to me. (She produces a dog-eared photocopied page from her handbag and holds it up. It’s a blurry photo of a 30-something white guy taken with a telephoto lens in bad light. It could be anybody.) This is him.

Gloria : Where’d you get that?

Roxanne: It’s going round all the herds. Some cow from Buxton sent it to me. Concentrate – it’s him – it’s that guy there.

Roxanne (unconvinced) : Well, maybe. But you know, all humans kind of look alike to me. It’s hard to tell the men from the women even. I think you’re talking to the wrong cow.

Gloria (exasperated) : Moo!

Deirdre (having overheard) : Hey Roxanne, I agree with you. I really think it’s him.

Roxanne : Finally, a cow with sense. Quick, tell the others to cut the bastard off before he gets to the gate.

(The word spreads like wildfire through the herd. They move purposefully across the field and completely block the gate. The man comes to a quizzical halt.)

Man: Hey, shoo. beat it. Go back over there.

Roxanne (stepping out of the herd) : Well well, we got you now, didn’t we, you bastard.

Man: Huh? What?

Roxanne: You can cut the crap Matthew Stokoe, we know it’s you.

Man (paling visibly) : Ah, heh, who’s that? Stokoe? Huh?

Roxanne: Don’t come the innocent with us, sunshine. You’re Matthew stokoe, author of the notorious novel Cows. Which we have read. And we’re cows, as you may have noticed.

Man : How would you know what I – Matthew Stokoe looks like? There’s no pictures of me – him – anywhere! Not on the internet, not anywhere!

Roxanne : Yeah? And how would you know so much about an obscure avant-garde novelist as all that? Your bluster butters no parsnips with us, buddy boy. We have this! (Five cows simultaneously hold up the photocopied picture.)

Man : That’s not Matthew Stokoe!

Cows : Moo! Moo!

Roxanne : Stokoe, you’re busted.

Stokoe : I can’t believe this is happening, what a nightmare – (he scrabbles for his cellphone, which is roughly knocked out of his hand and then stepped on by Helen, a particularly stroppy cow.) Oh oh – I can’t believe you cows have even heard of me anyway!

Simone (svelte, but nobody’s fool) : You got to be joking, pal. In our world you’re famous. Can’t write a book like Cows and not get noticed by us actual cows. We’re not cultural ignoramuses like sheep – they just watch daytime TV. But we like our Andy Warhol wallpaper and we appreciate the cover art on Pink Floyd’s under-appreciated Atom heart Mother album. Although side two is very self-indulgent, it’s true. I have a vinyl copy.

Roxanne : I think we’re wandering from the point. This situation we have here is like Bret Easton Ellis finding himself alone in a room full of women in 1991 just after you know what was published.

Ophelia (a cow who has not spoken before) : Come on, cut the crap, let’s trample the bastard now.

Stokoe : Hey, what – slow down, what’s your problem anyway – it’s just a novel . A novel.

Roxanne : Just - er – (she’s lost for words) Moo! Moo!

Stokoe : Okay, okay – look – in Cows, cows are completely symbolic. I mean look, I have them talking – in Cows, cows can talk! Which as you know, in real life, they can’t.

Deirdre : Yes, well, that’s true.

Stokoe : I could have used kangaroos – or pigs…

Ophelia : Kangaroos? Do humans eat kangaroos? What the heck are kangaroos anyway? Look, you peddler of small-press filth, you can symbolise that and symbolise this but what we see is a whole lot of appalling violence against cows! That’s very clear!

Christine (a bespectacled cow with a chic French look) : You know, I hate to say this, but he’s not entirely wrong. It’s pretty simplistic to see this guy’s novel either as a cry of protest against modern urban debovinisation or on the other hand as an Eating Animals Safran Foer- style polemic. In fact, it’s neither.

Stokoe : Thank you, thank you. What did you say your name was?

Christine : Christine.

Stokoe : Christine gets it! She gets it! Tell ‘em Christine!

Christine : Well, hold on there human boy, I’m not saying I subscribe to your scatological taboo-busting testosterone-fuelled steampunk gorefest. In many ways it seems puerile.

Daisy (a left-leaning cow) : I believe it neatly encapsulates the human male infantile mindset, the fear and loathing of the mother, the horror of the female power of birth, of creation if you will, and the homo-erotic desire to be a man amongst men and to take charge of your manly destiny, all of which it appears has to be achieved by killing the mother figures. It’s all too lamely Freudian for me. Moo! Moo! I say trample him on aesthetic grounds, not on moral grounds.

Christine : That’s right, you tell him! Listen, soon-to-be-trampled author-boy, in the first part of your opus you have your extreme-horror slaughterhouse fun with us cows, and then in the second part, you turn us into a fatuous allegory about fascism, where once again we play the mindless puppets. At every turn you debovinise us! We’re just your fodder!

Cows : Moo! Moo!

Daisy : Well, then again, I can’t ignore the fact that this guy, writing from whatever weird perspective he undoubtedly has, and needing undoubtedly many hundred hours of counselling to figure out his problems, which he clearly has in abundance, actually has talent. Allow me to quote from page 132:

The decision to allow the tangling of their lives had provided a veneer of distraction with which she could lightly cover the knowledge that all the systems of her soul and body, progressively corrupted since birth, were still degenerating unstoppably. Before, when she was alone, the dripping accretion of neuroses in the deep pools of her guts was a rain sound across all of life. Steven did not bring the sun, a clearing away of this daily torment – his own goals consumed him too entirely – but he was a separate flow of life, a flow into which she could jump and be carried away from her own, thudding back to shore only when she was too tired to stay away from herself.

That’s pretty good, I think.

Lulubelle (a decisive cow): Okay, let’s take a vote. Everyone, moo if you want to trample Matthew Stokoe!

Cows : Moo! Moo!

Lulubelle ; Now, moo if you think his modicum of talent and his shall I say unusual aesthetic justifies him continuing to live!

Cows : Moo! Moo!

Lulubelle : The moos have it! He lives to write another day! (To Stokoe) Beat it fast, kid. And don’t come back.