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.

Ross Gay, poet

I have just finished listening to a wonderful conversation between Pam Houston and Ross Gay, after he read a nice chunk of his new book, Be Holding. (Here is an excerpt from that work, which constitutes a single 88-page poem written in couplets, sort of about Dr. J's mind-blowing scoop shot in the 1980 NBA finals, 76ers vs. Lakers. Even so [I do not do sports], I am eager to read the poem--basketball or not. Because of course, it's about so very much more. But heck, I'm open to appreciating basketball perfection as metaphor. Maybe I'll learn something.) 

The event reminded me how much I enjoy Ross's poetry and prose. And spirit and generosity: he's full of joy and depth, and looks at life straight on. I offered up one of his poems back four years ago (find it here), but it's been a while, so here's another one, from his first book of poetry, Against Which (2006):

Thank You

If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

And here is Ross in conversation with Krista Tippett of On Being in July 2019. She introduces him thus: "The ephemeral nature of our being allows him to find delight in all sorts of places (especially his community garden [or as he refers to it, orchard]). To be with Gay is to train your gaze to see the wonderful alongside the terrible; to attend to and meditate on what you love, even in the midst of difficult realities and as part of working for justice."

Here is a link to today's reading and conversation. I will be going back to it. He is such a delight, and Pam asked some really good questions. (Indeed, I have just now scanned the entire archive of Readings x Writers, all of which I missed--and I'll be checking out a bunch of them. What a gift!)

Finally, why not, although I supplied a link to Ross reading this poem in that earlier post, here is a different one, easily clickable: "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude."

 

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Today's Covid-19 stats (they're not getting rosier yet, but the first shipment of vaccines just arrived in county, so here's hoping): 18,951 total cases, 145 current hospitalizations, 167 deaths--up 444, down 3 (yay!), and no change (yay), respectively, since yesterday.

Stay safe. Stay connected. Keep reaching out.

My Books of 2019

Apparently I never made a master list of the books I read in 2019, so . . . here it is. The challenge began on February 19, and I finished up having read only 30 books--as opposed to 50 the year before, and 61 the year before that. But that year (like this one) I didn't set myself a goal. I figured I'd just read, and see what happened. So, this is what happened. It was not an especially highbrow year. But 19 of the 30 were by women, which I'm happy about.

1. Stephen King, The Stand 💙
2. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of Craft
3. Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen 💙
4. C. J. Sansom, Dissolution
5. Emily Bernard, Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine
6. Sigrid Nuñez, The Friend
7. Donna Leon, Death in a Strange Country
8. Louise Penny, The Cruelest Month
9. Astrid Lindgren, Pippi går om bord
10. Michael Connelly, The Black Echo
11. Laura Marx Fitzgerald, Under the Egg
12. Pema Chödrön, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears
13. Michael Connelly, The Black Ice
14. Kate Atkinson, Life after Life
15. Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See 💙
16. Cynthia Newberry Martin, Tidal Flats
17. Louise Penny, A Rule against Murder
18. Brian Fies, A Fire Story: A Graphic Memoir 💙
19. Jacqueline Woodson, Each Kindness
20. Joan Silber, Improvement
21. James Lasdun, Afternoon of a Faun
22. Hannah Hinchman, Little Things in a Big Country: An Artist and Her Dog on the Rocky Mountain Front 💙
23. Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead 💙
24. Donna Leon, The Anonymous Venetian
25. Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention
Economy 💙
26. Martin Walker, Bruno, Chief of Police
27. Susie Steiner, Missing, Presumed
28. Michael Connelly, The Concrete Blonde
29. Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling
30. Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

It occurs to me that I could add the various books that I proofread and edit during the year. But I wouldn't exactly call that "reading." So, no. But I have actually enjoyed some of the jobs I've worked on lately. Which keeps me focused, and keeps a little money flowing in. So that's a good thing.

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Monterey County's Covid-19 stats for today: 18,221 confirmed cases, 133 current hospitalizations, 165 deaths--up, respectively, 295, 6, and 7 since yesterday. 

Stay safe. Reading shlock is just fine.

Creative Process / Elizabeth Bishop, poet and artist

I attended a webinar today on the creative process. As part of it, the presenter, Brad Kessler, included some images of Proust's and Elizabeth Bishop's first drafts of Remembrance of Things Past and "One Art":

He also talked about kintsugi and wabi-sabi; pentimento; walking in the wilderness; Michelangelo's non-finitos; Tibetan mandala sand paintings; and the artists Mark Rothko, Frida Kahlo, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Among other things. Including a rock tumbler as the perfect metaphor for the creative process: take raw material—a piece of malachite, say; add grit, time, intention, wildness, energy, intention. Put them in the tumbler and turn it on. And you end up with a crafted piece. Most of the presentation centered on imagery (the Rothko sequence of paintings was mind-boggling: such variety, until he finally shed enough skins to find his signature mode of expression), but I enjoyed seeing, again (I keep encountering her, it, lately), Bishop's struggle with her now-iconic poem, or ars lachrymosa. Here is the final product:

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

And she also did watercolors. Here are a few:

Cabin with Porthole

County Courthouse

Interior with Extension Cord

Tombstone for Sale

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Today in Monterey County, 17,926 confirmed cases of Covid-19, 127 current hospitalizations, 158 deaths—up, respectively, 547, 8, and 5 since the day before yesterday. This evening I heard that the daughter and son-in-law of a friend I was going to meet tomorrow for a walk have come down with the virus. My niece and great-nephew are still down with it, though I hope recovering (I haven't had news lately). No one in my immediate small circle of loved ones has died, thank goodness. But I know plenty of people who cannot say the same thing. I'm glad the vaccine is on the way, even if I'm not optimistic that I'll get one anytime soon. But still: normal life may be on the distant horizon.

Stay safe. Please.

Jane Hirshfield, poet

I am reading Richard Powers's The Overstory. It is long, and slow. There will be a book report one of these days. But in the interim, here is a poem, one that relates to that book.

Today, Another Universe

by Jane Hirshfield

The arborist has determined:
senescence        beetles        canker
quickened by drought
                                   but in any case
not prunable    not treatable     not to be propped.

And so.

The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-
cries.

The trunk where the ant.

The red squirrels' eighty-foot playground.

The bark    cambium    pine-sap    cluster of needles.

The Japanese patterns        the ink-net.

The dapple on certain fish.

Today, for some, a universe will vanish.
First noisily,
then just another silence.

The silence of after, once the theater has emptied.

Of bewilderment after the glacier,
the species, the star.

Something else, in the scale of quickening things,
will replace it,

this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

The tree pictured above is Luna, a 1,000-to-1,500-year-old tree which Julia Butterfly Hill occupied for 738 days between December 10, 1997, and December 18, 1999, ultimately saving her from loggers. The patched scar in the base of the tree was caused by a vandal in 2000, but the repairs were successful and Luna remains healthy and protected today, her location on private land undisclosed to the public.

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Monterey County Covid-19 stats for yesterday: 17,379 confirmed cases, 119 current hospitalizations, and 153 deaths--up 222, 5, and 5 since the day before; up 1,180, 29, and 13 since I last posted a week ago. The daily average number of cases over the last 14 days is 241, which translates to 55 per 100,000 residents; over the duration of the pandemic, 1 in 24 residents have been infected (if I'm understanding the NYT maps correctly). Today we go into another Shelter-in-Place period, with all but essential services severely limited.

Stay healthy. Appreciate the trees and the length of time, for some beings at least.

 

Stephen McMillan, artist

We went to our friend Lynn's today to play some Rummikub (I lost). I've only been to her house a couple of times, and had not really  taken a good look. Today, a photograph--which turned out to be an aquatint--hanging on her wall caught my attention. It was of oak trees, maybe in fog--though she says that when it's a bright sunny day outside, the trees also seem to be bathed in light. A trick of the eye. 

The artist is Stephen McMillan. He was raised in Berkeley, studied art at UC Santa Cruz, lived many years in Petaluma, and a few years ago moved to Bellingham,Washington. His work certainly captures the western landscape. Here are a few of his prints:

Forest Walk, 2012

Marina Reflections, 2019

Winter Oaks, 2001

Red Sky, 2013

Solstice, 2015

Wild Mustard #2, 2002

Haiku, 2013

Pelicans, 2014

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Today's statistics, as case numbers rise dramatically statewide, and Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley are ordered to shut down (the following numbers are for Monterey County only): 16,190 confirmed cases, 90 current hospitalizations, and 140 deaths--up, respectively, 425, 5, and 12 (12!) since Thursday, yikes. 

Stay safe. Wear a mask when you go out in public. Find beauty to soothe your soul.

Spencer Reece, poet

I was introduced to this beautiful, sad poem in the workshop I'm participating in with Mark Doty and seven talented poets. It's been such a treat—though it's also taught me that I have a lot of work to do, not so much to "be a poet" (that will never happen), but to experience this life more fully (a poetic task if ever there was one). 

The poet here, Spencer Reece, is an Episcopalian priest who lives in Madrid. He also worked for many years at Brooks Brothers in the Mall of America, an experience that he captured in his poem "The Clerk's Tale," which in turn was translated into a short film by James Franco. From what little I've seen, Reece is a wonderful poet. I will be reading more of him.

ICU

  For A. J. Verdelle

Those mornings I traveled north on I91,
passing below the basalt cliff of East Rock
where the elms discussed their genealogies.
I was a chaplain at Hartford Hospital,
took the Myers-Briggs with Sister Margaret,
learned I was an I drawn to Es.
In small group I said, "I do not like it—
the way so many young black men die here
unrecognized, their gurneys stripped,
their belongings catalogued and unclaimed."
On the neonatal ICU, newborns breathed,
blue, spider-delicate in a nest of tubes.
A Sunday of themselves, their tissue purpled,
their eyelids the film on old water in a well,
their faces resigned in their see-through attics,
their skin mottled mildewed wallpaper.
It is correct to love even at the wrong time.
On rounds, the newborns eyed me, each one
like Orpheus in his dark hallway, saying:
I knew I would find you, I knew I would lose you.

Image is a microphotograph of dried tears by Maurice Mikkers. 

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Covid-19 numbers are on the rise in Monterey County, as shown in this graph ☛

Today's numbers are 15,765 confirmed cases (up 974 since November 28), 85 current hospitalizations (a new statistic, and a more meaningful one than "total" hospitalizations), and 128 deaths (up 7).