“Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World” by Michael Pollan is the first
non-fiction book to make my Bread and Butter Books list. As a reminder, books that make this personal
list must have an excellent foundation or plot (bread) and language and writing
style (butter) to reinforce that plot. I
never thought that a non-fiction book could have a plot, a purpose maybe, but
not really a plot to drive the reader to find out what happens next, to find
out more about a subject instead of a character. Pollan has
done a remarkable job creating this, somehow making real plants into a character that the reader can care about.
“Botany of Desire” tells a dramatic story of intrigue and the mystery surrounding botany. He begins
with a discussion and history of how the apple became an American staple, then researches the beauty and the economics of the tulip, then discusses the controversy
surrounding cannabis, and finally debates the farming methods of the potato. The story isn’t just about these plants; it’s
about people trying to control these plants for their own survival whether that
be for communication with others as in the case with Johnny Appleseed and his
magnificent stories, appreciating and capitalizing on the beauty of the tulip,
reaching a higher state of consciousness to better understand the world and our
place in it, or simply growing crops for food.
This is a book that weaves these themes in and out of the discussion of
plants while tying them all to the idea of human control: Apollo (logic) vs.
Dionysus (chaos) in the Greek world of gods.
Pollan says, “Our grammar might teach us to divide the world
into subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every
subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to
think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer
the trees.” Humans may be at the top of
the food chain, but is it possible that this was a manipulation, that humans
are only there because plants want them to be?
Maybe the world is even more complicated than we thought. Maybe even humans are both subject and object.
Pollan develops these ideas with rich imagery and questions
providing a smooth and buttery experience for the reader. For example, he asks “How astonishing is it
that we happen to inhabit a universe in which this quality of vanilla-ness-this
bean! happens also to reside? How easily it could have been otherwise, and
just where would we be (where would chocolate
be?) without that singular irreplaceable note, that middle C on the Scale of
Archetypal Flavors?...” I can practically taste the vanilla-ness as he mentions
it and then just as easily contrast it with chocolate-ness all the while
picturing it on a great piano keyboard and realizing that without this flavor,
this note, we wouldn’t have anything to compare it to. I never realized how important one flavor
might be and how it might determine how we experience other flavors. This also left me wondering and desiring to
taste those other Archetypal Flavors.
What might they be and where might I find them?
While it is non-fiction, “Botany of Desire” is definitely a
bread and butter read. It is a nontraditional story of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the plant world. If you don’t believe, me you should read it
to find out how.
