Jonathan Safran Foer wants to go back to feeling like a novelist. The author of "Everything Is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" says he's working on a third novel — "if you bend the definition of 'work' " — but the writing isn't coming easily.

In the meantime, the 33-year-old has been more of an advocate of vegetarianism. He's promoting the paperback edition of "Eating Animals," a thoughtful nonfiction book that mixes memoir and reporting.

Called "horrible" and compassionate, the book relates both overwhelming animal cruelty and the 1 percent of farmers who strive for more humane methods. Foer writes that 'since I encountered the realities of factory farming, refusing to eat conventional meat has not been a hard decision. And it's become hard to imagine who, besides those who profit from it, would defend factory farming."

Although he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, novelist Nicole Krauss, and their two children, he talked by phone while on tour in California. He'll be at Washington University on Thursday. Here is an edited version of the conversation.

Q • You seem to be touring several universities. Why pinpoint college students?

A • I have with my other books as well. They happen to be places where people read. But they are also places where people change. It's pretty well documented that the younger you are the more able you are to make big changes. Eighteen percent of college students describe themselves as vegetarian — there are more vegetarians than Catholics at American universities. The conversation taking place there is vibrant and productive, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I also wanted to discourage the diminishment that happens when they graduate. There are something like five times as many ex-vegetarians as there are vegetarians.

Q • Of the three main arguments for becoming a vegetarian — improving your health, helping the environment, saving animals — you seem most interested in the latter.

A • I'd say I'm more interested in the second two. The health stuff .... I do an awful lot of things that aren't healthy.

We do feel the environmental question differently than we feel the animal question. The environment is something that changes very slowly and distantly. Whereas to be confronted with animal suffering is visceral and immediate. There is no environmental equivalent of a video at the slaughterhouse.

This subject is compelling from any perspective.... There is also swine flu, avian flu, what's happening to farmers. There is no way of looking at it that would encourage people to eat more factory farm meat.

Q • The recent egg recall because of salmonella didn't surprise you, I assume.

A • Eight percent of all chicken sold in America is infected with salmonella. It's totally bonkers. Forty-five percent, at least, is infected with e-coli. We've been told to cook things until they're black and bleach down your counter and wash your hands until you peel off a layer of skin. It's maddening that that's anyone's idea of food safety.

Seventy million Americans get food poisoning every year. It's almost all from animal agriculture.

Q • You don't pull any punches when describing factory farms and slaughterhouses. But isn't this a subject in which photos or a field trip to these places might be more powerful than a book?

A • I think so. But field trips, we can rule out. Even if farms made themselves available, most people can't do it. In terms of images, they can be persuasive, but a lot of people would close the book after seeing one image. My goal was to expand this conversation. Even at the risk of not being as powerful or persuasive as I could be, I wanted to expand the conversation.

Images often shrink the conversation.

Q • You found a relatively humane slaughterhouse in northern Missouri, Paradise Locker Meats. What kind of effect did it have on you?

A • I don't think anybody is indifferent to it. The people who work there aren't indifferent to it. It's bloody and violent, although that doesn't make it wrong. Childbirth is very bloody. I really respected (owner) Mario Fantasma and the efforts they were making and that they let me in in the first place.

But there's a lot about it that was difficult. It's not appetizing.

Some people would say it's just a regretful and necessary part of the process. But it's not necessary. We don't have to eat meat.

Q • But why then do people become ex-vegetarians?

A • I lot of the reason is the attitude that if you slip up, there is no use trying it anymore. Imagine applying that to anything else: truth telling or being kind to strangers. If every time we slipped up, we said, "I'm done trying," then what would we be left with?