Author Spotlight: Michael Pollan

I was browsing through the Netflix video library a few years ago when I chanced upon a PBS documentary called The Botany of Desire, based on Michael Pollan’s book of the same name. The documentary was exquisite, and it left me hungry for more. When I bought myself a copy of the book, I couldn’t put it down. Pollan is a gifted essayist: he weaves seamlessly between a rare sort of novel investigative journalism and deep philosophical speculation. His research and writing are driven by a genuine curiosity, which shines through his prose and infects his readers with a similar enthusiasm.

Lately, I’ve become much more familiar with Pollan’s work, and I’d like to recommend a few of his books to my fellow foodies.  These books build on one another, following Pollan’s discovery of the natural world—the source from which we humans obtain all sustenance—from his first experiences in the garden to his grand-scale examination of the trip that our nourishment makes from the sun to our dinner plate.

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Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (1991)

“What I’m making here is a middle ground between nature and culture, a place that is at once of nature and unapologetically set against it; what I’m making is a garden.” –Michael Pollan

In Pollan’s first book, he explores the way in which we interact with the natural landscape within the frame of several stories about his personal gardening experiences. He wavers between Naturalist perspectives which value the wild, unaltered landscape over the artificial environment that we create in the garden and more humanized views of our relationship with our environment, chronicling his battles with the woodchucks, weeds, and insects that seek to disturb the sanctity of his garden.

He infuses his narratives not only with practical advice and instruction on gardening, but also with his philosophical reflections on the morality of human intervention upon nature’s designs. He seeks to straddle the border between the forces of nature and the forces of humanity, attempting to create a space in which we can manipulate our environment and reap its rewards without disturbing the balance of life in the natural world. The book is a fun read, brimming with colorful anecdotes and interesting observations about the practice of gardening. I highly recommend this book to any horticulturist interested in solidifying their bond with the plants they grow and the land they grow them on.

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (2001)

“We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests.” –Michael Pollan

Eventually Pollan makes his way back to the garden as he conducts a more expansive examination of the symbiotic relationship between mankind and specific domesticated plants. He conducts an in-depth exploration into the natural history of four different plants which are cultivated by humans across the globe, describing the natural history and domestication of each plant and offering insight into how they make themselves valuable to us by fulfilling different human desires: apples by satisfying our desire for sweetness, tulips by satisfying our desire for beauty, marijuana by satisfying our desire for intoxication, and potatoes by satisfying our desire for power.

In this book, Pollan once again returns to study the complex balance between nature and humanity. He finds evidence that the domestication of several plants has, in reality, been a process of coevolution between those plants and mankind. He explains that some plants, under domestic pressures, can expedite the process of natural selection and reproduction due to their ability to stimulate and feed our most basic human desires. With this in mind, he reexamines his views on the balance of power in the garden, attempting to determine the extent to which our decisions to cultivate certain crops are due to our own conscious decisions and the extent to which we are subject to the unconscious will of those plants.  

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006)

“Daily our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds”—Michael Polan

In Pollan’s most recent book, he continues his research on agriculture, tracing the foods that we find at the grocery store to their origins in the industrial agribusiness, in small organic farms, and in the wild. He criticizes Americans for our lack of concern about the nature of the food we consume and, at the same time, for our overwhelming concern about the health risks of simple foods such as bread, both of which behaviors he attributes to our lack of culinary traditions and our subscription to the dietary advice of trendy nutritionists and industrial food processors. Pollan does Americans a favor by ripping a hole in the curtain which obscures the process of manufacturing food from those who eat it.

Pollan actively takes part in the three main processes through which the nutrients in the soil are reprocessed into the steak and potatoes on our plates: industrial food manufacturing, small-scale organic farming, and hunting and foraging and offers rare insight into how the use of each of them defines our relationship with the natural world, and therefore defines us. He expresses dismay at the way the American agribusiness pushes nature past its limits and attempts to defy its laws, reminding us that as predators at the top of the food chain, what we eat affects what every other creature eats and therefore has a profound effect on the order of the world we inhabit.

As always with his work, Pollan’s scrupulous attention to detail makes The Omnivore’s Dilemma vastly informative while his outlandish sense of humor and engaging storytelling keeps the pages turning.

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Of all of Pollan’s works, I find these three books the most compelling because of the similar theme they share: the reconciliation of man’s relationship with the rest of the natural world.  For some time, when confronted with the madness of the natural world I’ve been reminded of the words of prodigious screenwriter and narrator Werner Herzog, who said, “I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder.”

I’ve tried to accept nature’s chaos, but somehow my own human nature compels me to try and shape the world around me. Perhaps from now on I’ll remind myself of Pollan’s philosophy and attempt to ride the boundary between nature’s designs and human logic, not quite submitting the rule of Mother Nature and not quite twisting her arm.

There is truly profound wisdom in Pollan’s meditations on the character of humanity and of nature. Amongst today’s food writers, he offers a refreshing change in perspective by asking not only the how the food we eat influences us personally, but also how we interact with all of the organisms in our natural environment to obtain the nutrition that fuels our existence. 

I hope that you'll all find his work as illuminating as I have. Happy reading!