The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

[lightreads]

A brief but compelling history of four plants whose genetic destiny has been markedly altered by man – the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. Pollan’s argument is that, though we see domestication as a strictly top-down, subject-to-object process, there really may also be some co-evolutionary force at work. Johnny Appleseed’s efforts were to the overwhelming advantage of apple genetic proliferation, and the science of mass potato farming means more seeds are planted every year. But we’ll get to the argument bit in a minute.

As quirky, offbeat history, this is fabulous. It turns out botany is an incredibly versatile vehicle in which to travel from social psychology to religion to bioethics. Pollan makes fascinating detours through early American advertising schemes, pauses briefly to describe the hallucinogenic mixture of mushrooms and opium European witches would administer via dildo, and then hops blithely on to the cost-benefit economics of potato plants engineered to make their own pesticide. It’s a wonderfully engaging trip, made all the more so by Pollan’s lucid, thoughtful, frankly lovely writing. I haven’t enjoyed a spot of nonfiction prose on a purely esthetic level in a long time, and for that pleasure alone I could recommend this book.

As for the argument – how best to put this – it’s not so much one. This whole co-evolution idea occurred to Pollan one day as he was gardening, and it never really leaves the realm of warm afternoon, busy hands, strange and intriguing thought. The whole thing comes out interesting, undeniably pretty, but ultimately nothing more than an intellectual exercise. An exercise I enjoyed, mind you, but I’m really not after musings over the Apollonian and Dionysian paradigms in my discussions of anything related to evolution: I’m after, you know, scientifically sound genotypic mechanisms. But like I said, I was perfectly happy to go along. I just fervently hope no one came away from this book believing this is what is meant by “theory of evolution.”

Eclectic, engaging subject matter. A bit of pleasant but deeply fluffy intellectual masturbation tacked around the edges for an excuse. Wonderful writing. A good time, all around.

Comments

You might like Margaret Visser.

[(Anonymous)]

She is a food writer with a background in the classics, which results in obsessive and exhaustive discussions of the history and anthropology of commonplace and everyday things. My favorite of her books is "Much Depends on Dinner", in which she dissects an apparently ordinary meal (corn with butter & salt, chicken, lettuce with lemon juice and olive oil, ice cream) and traces each course to its cultural origins.

She has other books, one on etiquette and other dinner rituals, and another collection of Andy Rooney-like observations on everyday items, but I didn't like them as much -- too much jumping from topic to topic. In the Dinner book, at least the digressions eventually came back to the food being discussed in that chapter.

Her prose is also occasionally clunky, but I found that her enthusiasm made up for it.

--R. Barr

Re: You might like Margaret Visser.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendation. That definitely sounds like my sort of thing.