Jennifer Price is no Michael Pollan

Usually I like the writing in Grist, but this piece by Jenny Price strikes me as just plain silly (even worse, it’s the featured article of the day). She sends out a clarion call for nature writers to start moving to, and writing about cities:

Nature writing generally has not moved on [from what I'm not clear--Thoreau-like contemplation of the serenity of wilderness?]. It has remained, on the whole, a refuge for personal meditations on the soul-saving power of wildness in our modern urban lives [since when does 'nature writing' talk about the soul-saving power of wildness in our modern urban lives? What writing is she referring to exactly? Talk about a straw man...]. As a consequence, nature writing has lost its essential relevance as well as much of its audience, and environmentalism has lost its muse [another bold claim with no evidence whatsoever]. Here in L.A., I’ve taken my own informal opinion survey, which is far from scientific. [Yep. It is completely meaningless.] I just ask colleagues, friends, and family what they think of nature writing. When the most passionate environmental activists I know say “yeechh” and the college students say “huh?” then I suspect we have a problem. [Yes, the problem is that her activist friends are idiots, and the college students obviously can't understand you for some reason. I don't see how their reactions have anything to do with the relevance or health of 'nature writing' as a genre.]

So what would a literature of nature look like that roots around seriously in cities — and that does justice to environmentalists’ wildly proliferating progressive efforts to figure out how to live in nature? [I am utterly confused by the juxtaposition here. Why would a literature of nature root around seriously in cities? Perhaps a literature of urban ecology might be more suited for that? And why would it have to 'do justice' (again, not sure what that means) to efforts to live 'in nature'? What is living 'in nature'? And what, exactly, are "wildly proliferating progressive efforts? There's a lot of words there, all of them multisyllabic, but I don't think that phrase actually means anything at all.]

Before Jenny Price goes on to offer her suggestions on how her revolution in ‘nature writing’ might be accomplished, I’d like to offer her one helpful writing tip: define your terms.

She begins by talking about ‘nature writing’ as being supremely suitable for exploring urban environments. But then a paragraph later she talks about living ‘in nature’. Now, if living in ‘nature’ different from living in a city, then, by definition, ‘nature writing’ is different from ‘city writing’. But if ‘nature’ is the same as the city, then environmentalists are really trying to save cities, not nature, since there’s no difference between them. Obviously this is nonsensical, but it’s her wording, not mine. But let me allow Ms. Price to continue:

I think that the literature should tell stories that ask at least five questions.

One, what and where are the wild things? Thoreauvians have been good at asking this question, which is an indispensable one. What is this wondrous and insanely complex earth we inhabit, and how exactly does it work?

Er, that’s two questions. No, it’s actually three. No, wait, it’s four questions. And that last question could actually be the basis for pretty much every genre of literature, not to mention the inter-related disciplines of philosophy, religion, scientific inquiry, anthropology, psychology, biology, etc. etc. So while this is a great question, it’s hardly the sole province of ‘nature writing’.

Two, how do people use nature as resources? Consider, as a close-at-hand example, my coconut hair conditioner, manufactured in a factory in southeast L.A. with coconuts from … well, where? How (and where in the world) do people grow, ship, transform, buy, and sell the coconuts that keep my hair shiny? And how sustainably? We need natural histories of iMacs, bicycles, refrigerators, baseball caps, paper, Slinkys, Pringles, Manolo Blahniks, and, it goes without saying, Fords and Toyotas

Another good question. I feel like there’s only been, oh, about a bazillion books written about this very issue. A second pointer to Ms. Price: it’s great to offer up your opinions, but doing a little bit of research is helpful in making a persuasive point. I’ll list fifteen books here that do pretty much exactly what she’s asking (though I could easily list 50). One other thing to think about, though: by requesting ‘natural histories’ of consumer products in isolation, she is unnecessarily limiting the scope of such a natural history, which must, by definition, expand to include much larger issues than just iMacs or Blahniks. Which I think is why you’ll find most of the books below tackle bigger issues rather than try to isolate the Slinky’s place in ecological/environmental/economic history–though, if done well, even that could be a fascinating tale.

These movies do almost exactly what she asks, looking at how economies impact ecologies:

1. Mardi Gras: Made in China
2. Life and Debt (2001)
3. Darwin’s Nightmare (2004)

These books seems to cover similar territory:

1. Pietra Rivoli wrote a book called The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. Find an NPR story here and the book on Amazon here.
2. A book about the history of cotton (which makes its way into your baseball caps and Toyotas, perhaps): Big Cotton: How A Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map
3. Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese
4. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky
5. The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World by Larry Zuckerman
6. Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner
7. Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance by Patricia Rain
8. The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen
9. Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Iain Gately

10. The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (Paperback) by Peter L. Bernstein

11. One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski
12. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski
13. The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are by Henry Petroski
14. The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky
15. The Devil’s Cloth : A History of Stripes Paperback by Michel Pastoureau

Okay, I think that’s enough. Maybe not exactly what you were looking for, but close enough. Hey — you want something else, write your own damn book! (Shit, now I know you already have!)

Three, how do people transform the landscapes they live in, and how does the nature — the particular climate, ecology, geology, vegetation, and wildlife — act back? In L.A., if you load nitrogen oxides into the air, the area’s climate and topography famously combine to deliver up heavy smog. When you introduce Chihuahuas to the mountains that L.A. is built into, the native coyotes will treat the dogs as snack food. How do we transform airsheds, manage rivers, pave, build, plant, manage fires, keep pets, and create lawns, parks, and gardens? And how could we do it all better?

Again, no offense, but done and done–there are whole sub-disciplines in academia devoted to just this kind of stuff. Of course there’s more to do (is any topic of human inquiry ever to be finished? Except perhaps how to win at tic-tac-toe…), but her tone implies that historians and ecologists haven’t thought about these issues yet. And though Price sneaks in a nice use of the word ‘airshed’, that doesn’t make up for the naivete, arrogance, and ignorance displayed here. (Which reminds me, a friend of mine told me about another new coinage: ‘viewshed’. Which, much as you might guess, means ‘the view’ from a particular place. But in fancy ecology-speak. Nice, I like.) Here’s a few books that have investigated just these kinds of questions:

1. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis
2. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster by Mike Davis
3. Planet of Slums by Mike Davis [Clearly I'm suggesting Price take a look at the work of Mike Davis, if she's really interested in these issues; I've only read through City of Quartz, which was dense, but well-written and researched.]
4. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson
5. Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness by Omer C. Stewart
6. Biodiversity and Native America by Paul E. Minnis
7. The Natural World of the California Indians by Robert Fleming
8. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History by Ted Steinberg
9. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature by William Cronon
10. Wilderness and the American Mind, Fourth Edition by Roderick Nash
11. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Studies in Environment and History) by Donald Worster
12. The Social Creation of Nature by Neil Evernden
13. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
14. The Great New Wilderness Debate by J. Baird Callicott

Okay, I think that’s enough. Just look up any one book on Amazon and it is easy to find many more. Research: it’s what non-fiction writers do. And I’m assuming that Price was not writing a satirical piece here.

The fourth question, and the one that nature writing has ignored most completely: How do different people encounter nature differently? And especially, who benefits and who suffers the worst consequences as we turn coconuts into hair conditioner and transform airsheds? I live on Venice Beach, one of the safest places to breathe in L.A. County. The most toxic air blows through southeast L.A., where the predominantly low-income, mostly Latino residents live near and work in L.A.’s abundant factories. These neighborhoods are also remarkably poor in green park space. How equitably — not just sustainably — do we inhabit nature?

This question is so similar to the previous one, though it has a social justice focus. Great. But again, a long-running topic of debate and discussion among many writers. Wait a second — I just found Jennifer Price’s book Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America on Amazon.com (in the midst of doing my ‘research’). Wow. And guess what? Right under the reviews of her book there is the following list informing us that “Customers who bought this item also bought”:

1. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History by Ted Steinberg
2. American Environmental History (Blackwell Readers in American and Cultural History) by Louis S. Warren
3. Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature by William Cronon
4. Major Problems in American Environmental History Documents and Essays (Major Problems in American History) by Carolyn Merchant
5. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Studies in Environment and History) by Adam Rome

Wow. So Ms. Price is a published author. And perhaps her book is good. But–shit. Now I’ve gotten started on this dialogue with her Grist article, and I learn there’s a longer piece in the Believer. Shit. So now I’ve got to go and deal with that. Maybe tomorrow. For now I’ll just finish up with this piece. (Yes, I know it’s probably bad form to decide you are going to critique something before you’ve even finished reading it, but from the opening sentence of this piece I just knew there was something askew about it. So perhaps I’m just suffering from confirmation bias–again.) What’s even harder for me to understand is that she cites several of the works that I’ve listed above, so clearly she knows about them. So what is she saying: simply that we need more, and she’s exaggerating the dearth of urban ‘nature’ writers to inspire action? Does she really believe her work is going to lure these hypothetical ‘nature writers’ to the big city? (Just now “You Be Illin’” by Run DMC came on my iTunes. How appropriate.)

And the fifth question: How do people imagine and understand nature? In L.A., perhaps the single most enduring myth about the city is that this semiarid spot on earth is a desert. It’s not, but ideas can be powerful: whenever it rains here, most of us promptly seem to forget that it might happen again. And ideas have real consequences: L.A. could actually supply the better part of its water through local supplies, but Angelenos tend to believe that we have to import most of it. Of course, perhaps the most consequential way of imagining nature is the popular American delusion, which nature writers have encouraged, that nature is where cities are not.

Well, now that I know she’s an author, and should know her stuff (she has a PhD in history from Yale, for chrissakes), I’m not going to try to educate her anymore. Obviously she knows how to do research. But her arguments are simply weak: is there an enduring myth that LA is a desert? That I don’t know, but to think that ‘nature writing’, whether about cities or not, would have any effect on that particular gap in our local and national knowledge is pretty ludicrous. After all, Americans are horrendously misinformed about all manner of ‘facts’ (both local and global) about which plenty of informative and accurate books have been written. And is she really suggesting that if Angelenos ‘believed’ that they could get most of their water locally, then they would? Perhaps there are other historical, economic, political, psychological and–yes–ecological issues at play here? Ideas have real consequences, but any scholar of history should know that the world didn’t get to be the way it is through a well-considered and thoughtful evaluation of all available knowledge at any given point in time. Ideas as ideology: now there’s a powerful driver of action (and maybe that’s the point she’s making? Then ideas aren’t the issue–facts are). And ideas about whether a place is a desert (or not) are likely to have had little impact on whether or not LA imports its water. What I imagine is more likely to illuminate this issue is following the money–who stood to gain by setting up LA’s water system the way it is?

Finally, Price is using a straw man argument here (the definition of which I looked up earlier today, in reference to my dissection of Foer’s NYT op-ed, so I’m pretty sure I’m using the term appropriately). She has yet to provide a single example of a nature writer claiming that ‘nature is where cities are not’. And even if she did cite one example, she could also cite numerous other examples (see all the books above) opposing that idea (or refining it, elaborating on it, etc.). So instead of writing an article that deepens our understanding in the evolution of academic and ‘mainstream’ thinking about nature and culture, city and country, Price chooses to resort to false dichotomies: nature writers must embrace the city as nature, or promote popular delusions. There is no in between, it seems. Not only is that lazy thinking, it is simply wrong on its face.

With these five questions, nature writers can tell stories that urge us to see and reimagine our crucially abundant connections to nature in cities: the nature stories that could be told about any one house in L.A. could marshal a small nouveau-Thoreauvian army. Nature scribes should exploit the considerable imaginative power of literature to show how the quality and equality of life in any city depends in great measure on how people use, change, and understand nature.

Wow. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Ms. Price implies that up until now, ‘nature scribes’ have not exploited the considerable imaginative power of literature to show…etc. They basically missed this huge story about people in cities and their relation to ‘nature’ (which still hasn’t been adequately defined), and should offer up gratitude to Ms. Price for showing them the error of their ways.

Above all, a vital body of nature writing should track the connections between cities and wildness, and between the nature we turn into streets and cars and the nature we leave alone. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” runs Thoreau’s cherished line. And certainly, to inhabit nature sustainably requires a whole lot of wildness, both within cities and without.

Again, seems like Price implies that nature writing to this point has not been ‘vital’ since it has entirely missed these rather obvious connections (thanks for the italics, btw, that really makes things clear) that Price has pointed out to us. Ouch. And I have absolutely no idea what she means by ‘inhabiting nature sustainably’. Does that just mean, perhaps, ‘living’? For if we are inhabiting nature both within cities and without, that doesn’t leave a lot of other options for habitation.

But the reverse is also true.

Yeah, the reverse is also true. Sounds great. Wait–what the hell? The preservation of wildness is in the city? No, that’s not the opposite. It would be something like: “In cities is the preservation of the world.” How exactly? With bated breath, let’s read on:

In the city is the preservation of wildness — since how we use and move nature around in L.A. and other global centers of population and economic power now largely determines the fate and health of ecosystems everywhere, from L.A. to my friend’s farm in Missouri to the Indonesian rainforests to the most inaccessible ice fields of Antarctica.

Er, right. So what Price is really saying is that if cities and their insatiatiable lust for resources and growth don’t figure out how to become more sustainable (i.e., stop the exploitation and plunder), then wild nature is screwed. That’s kind of like saying that in the health and happiness of children lies the future of humankind.  But, according to Price, that doesn’t mean we should focus on doing everything possible to encourage the health and happiness of children, such as stopping any and all abuse. Because the reverse is also true (even though it’s not the reverse at all, but bear with me): In the unhealthy and abusive behavior of the parents lies the future of humankind. Because, you see, if these ‘centers of power’ over the children don’t learn to stop abusing and messing with the kids’ heads, the kids will grow up all fucked-up and do the same old shit. So we should encourage the parents to abuse a little bit less, or maybe abuse in different ways, or fuck up the kids over longer periods of time. But that’s not even what Price is suggesting, it seems–in this example, she would propose that writers about children’s issues instead focus solely on the world of the parents, because it is parents that have power over the children. And, in her formulation, the children aren’t really worthy of much attention anymore, and have nothing to offer us as adults (i.e., city-dwellers).

So come write about Los Angeles. Because to figure out how to inhabit nature in L.A. equitably and sustainably is to figure out how to build the cities we want and to preserve the wilderness we need. Write about Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, London, Athens, Nairobi, Beijing — because in the city, you could say, is now the preservation, as well as the great power, of nature writing.

I guess this is why being preachy is a bad thing. I’ll have to make a note of this in my future writings. Does she make any case that it is possible to live in LA (or any other city) sustainably and equitably? Ten thousand years of history tell us the exact opposite. I’m not saying it is impossible, and I’m all for making extraordinary efforts to move towards sustainability wherever humans live on the land, but let’s not live in la-la land, Ms. Price.

Jenny Price is a freelance writer in Los Angeles, a recent Gristmill interviewee, and author of Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America. This piece is adapted from her long Believer article, “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.“

Shit. Do I have to read this interview and article? I’m definitely not reading the book, not unless Jennifer Price herself sends it to me. I imagine since there’s actually footnotes and research involved I might actually learn something from it.