Roxanne Rapaport

Book report: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

 

I can’t even begin to imagine how many people, thinking that they’re being rather clever, have pointed out to Michael Pollan that his surname is one letter away from “pollen.” This is funny of course, due to the fact that Pollan has written several books focusing on plants, and his writing shows a clear affinity for them. In The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, Darwinian theory, Roman myth, and modern technology are blended together to create four chapters about (you guessed it) four plants. Pollan examines the role that humans have taken in the natural selection and history of the plants, as well as the opposite theory: how they (the pants) have “selected” us and furthered themselves in the competition that is evolution. The Botany of Desire was a complete surprise to me in that it was a “biology” book, and yet it was anything but boring and dry. The writing style was excellent, Pollan’s voice was entertaining and interesting, and I ended up learning more about things like the real Johnny Appleseed, tuplipomania, and even how to grow marijuana, than I ever would have dreamed of knowing.

            The chapters of Botany are dedicated to the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. I have to admit, when I started reading this book, there were certain chapters that I was looking forward to more than others. However, all four parts presented ideas that were almost equally engaging and that usually tied together, so it became pleasurable to find a symbol or something in one of the chapters that had been introduced previously; it made me feel like I was beginning to understand and learn something.

            Pollan chooses four plants whose origins are found hundreds of miles away from each other (the apple is from Kazakhstan, the potato from the Andes). Yet the reasons why these organisms have become staples in human diet and/or culture stem from the same source: desire. One of Pollan’s main points is that the reason why some plants survive better than others is that they satisfy a human craving, whether it is for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, or control. This relationship effects not only the plants (for those that get “chosen” will be sheltered by humans, and therefore able to pass on their genes easier), but also humans. In the chapter about marijuana, for example, it is suggested that we are attracted to psychoactive plants because of “human hunger for transcendence,” which ties in nicely to the idea of religion. The cannabis chapter is as much about why we have religion as about pot.

            The historical and scientific facts woven throughout The Botany of Desire are enough to warrant praise on their own. It is evident that a tremendous amount of research went into this book. For example, about three pages are spent talking about the origins of “tulipomania;” the nation-wide craze for tulips that occurred in Holland in1635. In a frenzy like this where “all of [a society’s] values are turned on their head,” everyday life for some (if not most) people is a cacophony of facts and figures, which Pollan has managed to scrape up and keep straight. He gladly tells us about the windhandel (the “wind trade”) and wijnkoopsgeld (“wine money”); and though the explanations sometimes get tangled together and confusing, they are never dull.

            The Botany of Desire is a “plant’s eye view of the world,” and it also changed my view of several plants, and the world we’ve created for them to grow in. I didn’t really know what to expect out of the chapter about marijuana, except that the very idea that I would be reading about pot seemed to echo what the actual substance does for so many people: a forbidden fruit. Each of the chapers begins with observations and questions from the author that get addressed in the pages to come. The beginning of the marijuana chapter includes these questions: “What makes these plants so irresistible to us (and to many other creatures), when the cost of using them can be so high? Just what is the knowledge held out by a plant such as cannabis- and why is it forbidden?”

As Michael Pollan points out, we (especially us teenagers, I think) are reminded quite often of the dangers of drugs and how terrible they are, why I largely have to agree with. However, the side effect of the war on drugs, of course, is desire to find out the unknown, just like the tree of knowledge in Eden (which Pollan indeed discusses in the apple chapter, pointing out the interesting fact that the bible never even mentions what kind of fruit came from that tree). Though some people might make arguments that Pollan takes on the issue of smoking marijuana very lightly –even a little fondly- I took relief in learning the actual facts about cannabis.

            Funnily enough, just as the section about marijuana relaxed how I thought about one supposedly evil plant, the chapter about the beloved potato had the opposite effect. Well, I should specify- I mean the average Burbank Russet or the like grown by non-organic farmers. Either that or genetically modified potatoes, such as the NewLeaf, which was “created” by Monsanto by inserting genetic material from a kind of bacteria into a potato. To say the least, I was really freaked out by the technology used to insert the genes into the plants: a “gene gun” (an actual gun) is used to shoot “stainless-steel projectiles dipped in a DNA solution at a stem or leaf of the target plant.” Not only the machinery is scary, but also the ideology: as Pollan, “I was struck by the uncertainty surrounding the process, how this technology is at the same time both astoundingly sophisticated yet still a shot in the genetic dark.”

            I would not recommend The Botany of Desire to a lazy reader. I had to be constantly mentally engaged in what Pollan writes about, for sometimes his personal musings (which are sometimes pretty emphatic) can verge on being a little… strange. (I found this to be the case in some of the cannabis chapter, parts of which were indeed written under the influence of his own subjects.) You may need to come up for a breath of fresh air every twenty pages or so, to absorb all of the intellectual fertilizer that is provided. The book is the diary of a man who is very in touch with what it is he has chosen to tell us about. It is easy to believe him when he speaks about how closely the stories of plants and humans are intertwined, and how much work we have ahead of us to correct all of the mistakes we’ve made. The Botany of Desire is a beautifully written and information-packed book that many people should find satisfying. The author’s secret? As one critic put it, “…Pollan really loves plants.”