Book Report: The Overstory

32. Richard Powers, The Overstory (2018) (12/17/2020)

The Overstory is a magisterial work and definitely deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. As the Pulitzer website characterizes it, the book is "an ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them."

It's also an exhausting book and took me way too long to finish. At the heart of the story is a certain despair for the planet—or maybe the despair is for stupid, feckless humankind. Or maybe both. There is a lot of sadness and futility as activists try to save trees, both ancient and not. 

That said, the writing is amazing. Powers manages to present a wealth of information without it seeming overly didactic (for the most part). And his way with words! Just gorgeous.

The book is divided into four parts: Roots (these ~150 pages comprise eight chapters devoted to the nine individuals who weave throughout the rest of the book), Trunk (200 pages), Crown (120), and Seeds (30). The first chapter, concerning several generations of the Hoel family, immigrants from Denmark who, back in the 1800s, settled in Iowa, planted a chestnut tree, and documented it photographically over many decades, is a gem unto itself. In part 2, very gradually, some of the people we've come to know from part 1 find one another and become Earth First–style activists. Some don't ever meet any of the others, but serve other narrative functions. In part 3, things catch up with our scattered heroes. And in part 4, perhaps, things begin anew. Most of the book is told in relatively short sections, creating a good sense of forward momentum. No one in this book emerges unscathed. Not everyone who is introduced in "Roots" makes it to the end of the book. Of those who remain, all are radically changed. 

Here are a couple of quotes, randomly chosen (my book is bristling with flags):

Watching the man [her father], hard-of-hearing, hard-of-speech Patty learns that real joy consists of knowing that human wisdom counts less than the shimmer of beeches in a breeze. As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

Patty goes on to become an acclaimed professor, Dr. Patricia Westerford, who discovers the ways in which trees communicate, protect each other, fend off assailants, relate to the world: negotiation, reciprocity, and selflessness are their hallmarks. (She is based on a University of British Columbia ecologist, Dr. Suzanne Simard.)

Here's the thing about an apple: it sticks in the throat. It's a package deal: lust and understanding. Immortality and death. Sweet pulp with cyanide seeds. It's a bang on the head that births up whole sciences. A golden delicious discord, that kind of gift chucked into a wedding feast that leads to endless war. It's the fruit that keeps the gods alive. The first, worst crime, but a fortunate windfall. Blessed be the time that apple taken was.
     And here's the thing about an apple's seeds: they're unpredictable. Offspring might be anything. Staid parents generate a wild child. Sweet can go sour, or bitter turn buttery. The only way to preserve a variety's taste is to graft a cutting onto new rootstock. It would surprise Olivia Vandergriff to learn: every apple with a name goes back to the same tree. Jonathan, McIntosh, Empire: lucky rolls in Malus's Monte Carlo game. 

Olivia goes on to heed the call of trees (literally: she hears them speaking to her in her head) and lead a movement to protect a thousand-year-old giant sequoia named Mimas. 

There is so very much more to this book, but I will leave it at that. I am glad I read it. It is complex and full of life. And now I'm ready for something less weighty, and something rather shorter.

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Today's Covid-19 case numbers for Monterey County: 22,255 active cases, 151 current hospitalizations, and 170 deaths--up 3,304, 6, and 3. Yes, that's right, 3,304: apparently there was a big backlog of data from the state prison system, and the County Health Department yesterday conducted an extensive data cleaning process that raked out a lot of cases that had gone unreported over a period of days. It's a statistical anomaly. Still: that's a lot of cases, for a county with a population of 434,000: 2 percent of total residents have been affected by Covid-19. 

Stay safe. Go hug a tree. After all, they provide us with life in their breathing.