Pollan, Michael. Botany of Desire. Random House, 2001.
The Botany of Desire tells the tale of humans and plants using apples and potatoes to guide us through the process. These plants are effective at telling the story because of their commonality. If Pollan were to use plants unfamiliar to the reader, it would be much harder for them to relate. We can appreciate the sweetness of an apple and the versatility of a potato which helps Pollan string us along on their journey of creation.
When introducing John Chapman, Pollan begins to describe how he sees the world in a different way than most people. Pollan describes how Chapman has “a knack for looking at the world from the plants point of view.” I find this description entertaining as we often discuss Pollan in this way in this class. Pollan, to us, is John Chapman to Pollan. Pollan talks about Chapman in a way that often paints him as an eccentric, man with a strange view of the world, that almost takes his beliefs too far, similar to how we talk about Pollan. The story of Chapman kept my attention and I felt like I was on this journey of discovery with Pollan. Pollan’s comparison of Chapman to Dionysus is one that stood out to me. As an avid reader of Percy Jackson as a child, one way to get my attention is to mention Greek gods. Also in the apple section, Pollan had a few lines that really stood out to exemplify his point. His flowery language appealed to the reader without taking it too far. When describing the nature of apple seeds Pollan says: “In the case of the apple, the fruit nearly always falls far from the tree” (pg 10). This plays on the idiom we all know to drive his point home effectively. When Pollan is in the orchard, on page 46, looking through all the varieties of apple, he goes on to list them. The listing takes almost an entire page and is a page which my eyes almost completely ignored. Pollan’s point could have been made without listing all the varieties and instead just listing the categories of names he had come up with.
Pollan was less effective when telling the story of the potato. His story of the GMO potato, while interesting, could not capture my attention like Chapman did. In this section, Pollan’s language was often over the top, confusing me more than it did clarifying. An example of this is: “Potatoes were chthonic, forming their undifferentiated brown tubers unseen beneath the ground, throwing a slovenly flop of vines above.” (pg 200). This line made me more confused than anything. I had to go look up the word chthonic and then attempt to decipher the rest of the sentence.
Overall, this piece of Pollan’s was far more digestible than some of his other works which we have read in the past. His descriptive language was used effectively and was not overdone nearly as much as we have seen previously. The characters introduced helped to progress the story and keep the reader interested.
Plants and People 