Chekhov's Mistress
One Man’s Writing Shed…
I’ve finally given in and picked up Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals so that I can probably read his In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manfisto when it comes out in paperback. My resistance, thin as it was, came only from the idea that with non-fiction I want my beliefs challenged not merely affirmed and I figured OD would fall into the latter camp. Ah, but it’s just too fun to read about what a sorry state we’re in – what was it that Lawrence said in Lawrence of Arabia, “A fat people in a fat land” (emphasis his, verbally). So far I’ve read how we Americans are basically made of corn because it permeates all of our foodstuff in ways you would never imagine:
“It does take some imagination to recognize the ear of corn in the Coke bottle or the Big Mac. At the same time, the food industry has done a good job of persuading us that the forty-five thousand different items or SKUs (stock keeping units) in the supermarket – seventeen thousand new ones every year – represent genuine variety rather than so many clever re-arrangements of molecules extracted from the same plant.”
It was Omnivore’s Dilemma that sent me to Pollan’s Website. I knew he had written the evocatively titled Botany of Desire (I do admire writers who make an industry of themselves on a topic, seriously), but I’d never heard of A Place of My Own, which sounds like a Waldenesque story about Pollan building his own structure to write in. Wow – it looks amazing to me; a castle, no? So small, yet so so complete. There are a couple more photos on the Website.
comments
Ohhh, I do want that little house. I’m glad you found those pics, Bud.
– genevieve (01/26 at 02:12 AM)
Page 1 of 1 pages of comments
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: January 23, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
