I stopped reading after he bludgeoned the songbird to death.

But let me back up.  

I first heard about Manny Howard when he was a guest on The Colbert Report.  Howard turned his Brooklyn home and yard into a farm, with the challenge to live off it for a month.  

During the interview, Colbert nudged Howard into telling the story of the time he bludgeoned a rabbit to death when it bit him.  The punchline?  The rabbit was pregnant and protecting her babies.  (Or had she just given birth?  I was too horrified to remember specific details.)

Howard came off as a recalcitrant man with a twinkle in his eye.  The sort of guy who has few words, but a lot of great stories to tell.  I made a mental note to give the man a second chance, and pick up his book.  

I was so very wrong.  On so many counts.

Manny Howard is a former editor of Gourmet magazine and a professional freelance writer.  And yet his sentences are all but impossible to follow.  It's like he's being paid by the dependent clause.  

I gather Howard thinks of himself as a Hemingway sort of figure.  But Hemingway would have shot himself in the head before committing a sentence like,

"Determined to stick to broad strokes, I outline the project for Lisa, who is exhorting Heath Ryan, busy pantomiming a vomiting attack, to try the various artichoke parts on her plate."

This sort of rambling bolted-on sentence construction is the norm, rather than the exception.  

Howard didn't start his farm because he wanted to.  Or because he had any aptitude for it.  Or any interest in the project whatsoever.  He started it because New York Magazine pitched the idea to him, and offered to pay him a lot of money for the story.  (At least he's forthcoming on this part.)

So I'm reading the book.  I'm wading through the thicket, each sentence like a game trail that you have to keep backtracking to follow.  I made it through the introduction, which is all about his childhood dream to build a raft to sail across the East River, which doesn't have a damned thing to do with anything.

And then I get to the story about the songbirds.

It seems that Howard once decided, out of the blue, that his daughter should get a dozen songbirds for her birthday.  Her SECOND birthday.  Because she has asked for them?  No; because he thought it would be neat.

I don't even know where to begin with this.  Howard doesn't seem to realize - or care - that birds are not a set piece.  That they are living creatures, not toys.  That a pet is probably not an appropriate gift for a two year-old.  That he knows absolutely nothing about birds, and has zero interest in learning about them.  He seems surprised to learn that they poop.  He buys them BEFORE he builds their cage, and they spend an entire night stuffed into a little shoebox.  Frankly I'm surprised that the pet store sold him the birds.

Predictably, his two year-old daughter has little interest in the birds.  Predictably, they last for about a week.  Predictably, Howard neglects the birds, feeds them poorly, doesn't clean their cage, and is utterly baffled when they fail to get along.  Predictably, most of the birds die within a week.

Then Howard storms into the cage, in what he describes as a drunken rage.  Without going into detail, the three remaining birds all die, one at his own hands.

This is a man who should not be allowed to own animals.  He has no aptitude for them, no interest in them, and no empathy for them.  

And that is where I stopped reading.