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Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World: Pollan offers an intriguing thesis: What if we looked at the relationship between people and domesticated plants as something the plants did to the people? What if, in other words, the story of agriculture is the story of the wheat’s war on the trees, using people as the weapons? Not all of the promise of that formulation is realized in the book, which investigates various facets of the cultivation of apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes, but enough is to make an interesting read. For apples, Pollan focuses on the story of Johnny Appleseed, which is fun. I hadn’t known that what Chapman really brought to the territories was alcohol, since his apples were too tart to eat; that gives a different spin to his popularity than the Disneyfied version we learn about; Chapman as a character reminds me of the central figure of the documentary Grizzly Man, only he lived in a time that was a bit more forgiving of nature-loving eccentricity. Tulips and marijuana are okay stories, but I really liked the potato section, which is about the creation of a monoculture and the necessary connections between culture and agriculture, which after all share the same root (no pun intended).
David Rakoff, Don’t Get Too Comfortable: Another essay collection from the author of the hilarious Fraud. This one has the general theme of the foibles and pathologies of affluence, from luxury vacation spots to couture gowns. The opening essay, concering Rakoff’s decision to become a naturalized American citizen, is nuanced and thought-provoking. While there were fewer laugh-out-loud bits in this collection than in Fraud, Rakoff’s sharp wit, especially his ability to select just the right word to make his observations go over the top, is still in evidence. Witness this bit about the fetishization of distinctions among “simple” foods (think New York Times food section on salt or butter): “Surely when we’ve reacted the point where we’re fetishizing sodium chloride and water, and subjecting both to the kind of scrutiny we used to reserve for choosing an oncologist, it’s time to admit that the relentless questing for that next undetectable gradiation of perfection has stoped being about the thing itself and crossed over into a realm of narcissism so overwhelming as to make the act of masturbation look selfless.”
Franklin Foer: How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization: Full disclosure: I was on my high school debate team with Foer, and I remember him fondly. Now he's a writer at the New Republic and, though I never knew it, remains a passionate soccer fan. That passion takes him on a world tour, looking for what soccer teaches us about each other. As it turns out, though Foer makes grand claims, soccer's lessons seem ultimately very local, whether it's soccer as source of national, religious or racial pride in Scotland and the former Yugoslavia or soccer as fount of corruption in Italy and Brazil. The stories he tells are interesting – the lost history of the championship Jewish soccer team, or the struggles of African players imported to the Ukraine – but my favorite was the chapter on the US, because I recognized his description of the kind of soccer my parents took me to play, a very middle-class and noncompetitive kind.
Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century: This collection of essays represents a style of literary criticism I’ve forgotten how to read: a series of tangentially related observations centered on a set of objects and a theme. (The big themes here are bodies, bodies in motion, and bodies in motion through the city.) In my own writing, I struggle towards a clear through-line, and though I’m no great shakes at it my attempts have impaired my ability to enjoy all but the best or lightest of the meandering style. Bukatman’s not light; his writing is dense and full of references – at its best when he takes high theorists and applies them to sf movie special effects or superheroes, such as using De Certeau’s discussion of walking through the city to interpret Spiderman. The final essay, which is about superheroes as the ultimate city dwellers – anonymous, all-seeing but hidden from view, able to move about at a scale that gives a panoramic view of the city -- was moderately interesting, but his thoughts on Disneyworld, the special effects in 2001, and movie musicals featuring New York City left me cold.
David Rakoff, Don’t Get Too Comfortable: Another essay collection from the author of the hilarious Fraud. This one has the general theme of the foibles and pathologies of affluence, from luxury vacation spots to couture gowns. The opening essay, concering Rakoff’s decision to become a naturalized American citizen, is nuanced and thought-provoking. While there were fewer laugh-out-loud bits in this collection than in Fraud, Rakoff’s sharp wit, especially his ability to select just the right word to make his observations go over the top, is still in evidence. Witness this bit about the fetishization of distinctions among “simple” foods (think New York Times food section on salt or butter): “Surely when we’ve reacted the point where we’re fetishizing sodium chloride and water, and subjecting both to the kind of scrutiny we used to reserve for choosing an oncologist, it’s time to admit that the relentless questing for that next undetectable gradiation of perfection has stoped being about the thing itself and crossed over into a realm of narcissism so overwhelming as to make the act of masturbation look selfless.”
Franklin Foer: How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization: Full disclosure: I was on my high school debate team with Foer, and I remember him fondly. Now he's a writer at the New Republic and, though I never knew it, remains a passionate soccer fan. That passion takes him on a world tour, looking for what soccer teaches us about each other. As it turns out, though Foer makes grand claims, soccer's lessons seem ultimately very local, whether it's soccer as source of national, religious or racial pride in Scotland and the former Yugoslavia or soccer as fount of corruption in Italy and Brazil. The stories he tells are interesting – the lost history of the championship Jewish soccer team, or the struggles of African players imported to the Ukraine – but my favorite was the chapter on the US, because I recognized his description of the kind of soccer my parents took me to play, a very middle-class and noncompetitive kind.
Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity: Special Effects and Supermen in the 20th Century: This collection of essays represents a style of literary criticism I’ve forgotten how to read: a series of tangentially related observations centered on a set of objects and a theme. (The big themes here are bodies, bodies in motion, and bodies in motion through the city.) In my own writing, I struggle towards a clear through-line, and though I’m no great shakes at it my attempts have impaired my ability to enjoy all but the best or lightest of the meandering style. Bukatman’s not light; his writing is dense and full of references – at its best when he takes high theorists and applies them to sf movie special effects or superheroes, such as using De Certeau’s discussion of walking through the city to interpret Spiderman. The final essay, which is about superheroes as the ultimate city dwellers – anonymous, all-seeing but hidden from view, able to move about at a scale that gives a panoramic view of the city -- was moderately interesting, but his thoughts on Disneyworld, the special effects in 2001, and movie musicals featuring New York City left me cold.
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