Just a quick post to say that Michael Pollan’s cover story is one of the best things I have ever read. Period. The subject matter, his insights into it and the philosophical context for it, combined with the sheer technical brilliance of the writing struck me profoundly. I re-read passages for the sheer joy of the insight shared and how he articulated it.
I am sure that if anyone does choose to contribute to this thread, they are likely to have substantive comments on the subject matter of the article - Pollan’s determination to hunt in order to collapse the food chain and connect with a fundamental objective of carnivorous Man: to get food. The topic is rich and Pollan covers many dimensions of the pros and cons, my point is that he does so in a way that is beautifully written and at once personally introspective while also functioning as a broad commentary on Man’s relationship with Nature.
No, on Sunday morning I get up, put on my pants, and go out and purchase the Late Edition from the friendly neighborhood newsdealer at the end of the block. Then I brew some coffee, make my breakfast, and settle down with it.
(Okay, I’m lying. First I read the New York Daily News, starting with the funny pages. After I’ve slaked my thirst for sensationalism with the tabloid, I read the Times.)
I’ll get back to you with my take on the piece sometime tomorrow afternoon. And perhaps weigh in with my views on “Little Orphan Annie.”
You’re not getting special treatment. The Times distributes part of the Sunday paper on Saturday, including the magazine and other sections that aren’t time-sensitive. Presumably this is to reduce the amount of stuff that needs to be distributed on Sunday.
Yep - I knew that. My statement was an attempt to: a) be cute (which never seems to work for me); and b) name-drop that the editor lived up the street from me (again, a maneuver that never seems to go the way I would like it to…)
I read it. Jeez, life’s a lot easier when you don’t believe in karma. I feel fine going down to the Chinese restaurant for takeout, I have no compulsion to go all the way to China and hunt down General Tso with my bare hands.
“Oh, General Tso, you were a blood-thirsty foe, but your chicken is delicious!”
C. Montgomery Burns.
As far as the OP goes, I remember reading once that one of the best aspects of our modern society is that the average person doesn’t have to kill and butcher their own food.
Who said THAT? Even without reading the Times article (Hey, WordMan, I’m up to the Styles section. Another hour or so), I have serious difficulties with that statement.
Positive, progressive trends in modern eating (Slow Food movement, organic farming, buy local, etc.) tend towards getting people CLOSER to their food. Rather than ordering a Big McSlop and a jumbo sugarwater and eating in your car, You buy a fresh apple from a local farmer at the Greenmarket. Rather than buying expensive pre-chopped vegetables and pre-grated cheese at the Superette, get a piece of grass-finished beef and some organic onions and simmer up a stifado.
In the best of all possible worlds I’d have my own vine and fig tree, living in peace and unafraid. And a few chickens scratching up the yard, ready to be throttled, cleaned, plucked, and stewed come dinnertime.
I might read this, but his Botany of Desire was so poorly researched that it kind of permanently ruined his credibility for me. In it he took several horticultural wives’ tales as received fact and built subsequent conclusions on them. He’s a decent stylist, as a writer, but he should stick to fiction.
Ugh. Sorry, I couldn’t get through it. The purple prose of the first several paragraphs glazed my eyeballs right over.
…and are they dumbing down the Sunday crossword or what? I swear I buzzed through this one in fifteen minutes. “-----'s Ark,” come on! Eugene Maleska must be spinning in his grave.
Ditto. I mean, I tried … but the writing was terrible. I cannot seriously believe that you re-read parts for the sheer joy of it. Are you Michael Pollan in real life? No wait, you must be his mother?
Thought the subject matter was interesting, but he really lost me in the telling.
OK. I tried. I take back what I said about him being a decent stylist as a writer. From the first paragraph, beyond which I find a cannot wend:
I notice how the day’s first breezes comb the needles in the pines, producing a sotto voce whistle and an undulation in the pattern of light and shadow tattooing the tree trunks and the ground. I notice the specific density of the air. But this is not a passive or aesthetic attention; it is a hungry attention, reaching out into its surroundings like fingers, or nerves. My eyes venture deep into thickets my body could never penetrate, picking their way among the tangled branches, sliding over rocks and around stumps to bring back the slenderest hint of movement. In the places too deeply shadowed to admit my eyes, my ears roam at will, returning with the report of a branch cracking at the bottom of a ravine, or the snuffling of a. . .wait: what was that? Just a bird.
Now I remember why I gave away The Botany of Desire about a third of the way through.
I don’t have access to the magazine here, but it’s occurred to me that surely the karmic price for a meal that one hunts for, is to be hunted down and eaten oneself?
I don’t have the article in front of me, but I think the next line, which lissener cut out, was something like, “God, did I actually just write that paragraph?” and then went on to describe the feeling of the hunt putting him in the moment.
I found the article engrossing. . .his description of the hunt, his half-baked theorizing on hunting and cannabinoids, and the point of the article about getting closer to the food one eats. But, as with the OP, I connected with it, and I thought the author did a great job of really pulling one into the moment and the sensations associated with the thrill of the kill.
I suppose the story didn’t really come out of nowhere for me. I never hunted for real, but grew up in a hunting culture (small town Maine). And, I was no stranger to taking out birds and squirrels with pump-action bb and pellet guns. Also, I’m friends with – and agree with – people who are into the slow food movement. I’ve often thought I’d go hunting myself for a similar reason to the author if afforded the opportunity.
Great article.
(also, I thought the Xword was ridiculously easy. When they’re that easy, I make it a challenge to not make a single typo, and to not make a single “side note” – a little set of dashes, like a game of hangman, next to the grid that I use as a jump start.)
