NONFICTION - March 31, 1996

DEAD MEAT by Sue Coe, with an essay by Alexander Cockburn (Four Walls Eight Windows: $40; 136 pp.). For six years, writer-illustrator Sue Coe carried her sketchbook into meatpacking plants across the country. No easy task, for as she writes in her acknowledgments, “slaughterhouses, especially the larger ones, are guarded like military compounds.” Alone, these terrifying images would quench the bloodiest of appetites; in combination with text that describes the metallic process of killing, the unsanitary conditions and the Dickensian working conditions, they are sad beyond despair. The drawings are reminiscent of the gray art of Nazi Germany, primarily black and white with now and then an hysterical swath of red. It’s not a political manifesto; it’s not an animal rights manifesto; it’s just a not-so-gentle reminder of where your protein comes from. You are, after all, what you eat.