I read The Botany of Desire years ago and since then it seems like Pollan has been popping up everywhere, both due to this book and last year’s In Defense of Food.
Like The Botany of Desire, this book looks at four representative categories, this time different food chains: industrial, organic, local, and personal. The trail of corn in the industrial section is perhaps the most compelling part of this book, though the extensive study of Joel Salatin’s method of farming in the local section is the most inspiring. Pollan’s philosophical approach to attempting to answer the question of eating meat in the personal section (during which he goes hunting for wild boar) will likely sound properly justified to meat eaters and somewhat lacking to vegans/vegetarians. While that aspect of people’s diets may always remain entirely personal, we can only hope that the industrial and “organic” chains are improved or broken entirely by a new system.
It’s been many years since I last re-read The Master and Margarita… [I believe this link is for the Michael Glenny translation — there’s some debate as to the best one… I own the Burgin/Tiernan O’Connor (though Powell’s apparently doesn’t sell it), but I’ve heard some people like the Mirra Ginsberg even though that is a translation of the censored version of the book.] … and I’d been thinking of reading a different translation for a while when I saw this little book at the library.
This one is more science fiction than magical realism, but it’s equally hilarious and allegorical. A socially cranky professor in Moscow accidentally discovers a light ray that seems to accelerate the growth of cells under its light around the same time all the chickens in the city mysteriously die in a sudden epidemic. This inspires the creation of a State Farm to use the ray to solve the sudden disappearance of chickens, but a delivery mix-up leads the whole effort astray. My favorite part is the occasional newsboy yelling out the headlines: every major news story is described as a nightmare (“Nightmare murder on Bronnaya Street!!”).
