(no subject)

[ursula]

I put my name in for The Omnivore's Dilemma on the library hold list, and read it yesterday. The high school geek part of me feels a little bit odd about reading something so unabashedly popular, straight off the New York Times best-seller list or at least the year-end round-up of Important Books (the author's initials are monogrammed on the cover), and it's easy to make the book sound quaint, centered as it is around an unabashed conceit: Michael Pollan eats four meals, beginning with a McDonald's meal (in his convertible) and ending with one he has grown, foraged and hunted himself. But an overemphasis on the quaintness obscures Pollan's basic argument, which is not in substance different from mjbarefoot's recent rant: no label can substitute for personal knowledge of the places your food came from and the people who brought it to you. And an overemphasis on the warm fuzzy personal connections obscures the degree to which this is a specific political critique of specific U.S. government policies, in particular a subsidy system which encourages the overproduction of corn.

Comments

[glassonion]

I read it and liked it a lot. As you note, the criticisms are accurate, but it's still a good book, and i felt there was a lot in there that should have been obvious to me, but that i hadn't thought about. And, if i hadn't, i hadn't, and now i have, so go Michael Pollan, i guess. This is not a very coherent argument.

[ursula]

I get the sense from your comment that I was too understated: what I should have said was, "Everyone on my friendslist who went to Swarthmore has either already read this book or hates all things remotely related to the New York Times; everybody else should read it now. And then write their senators about agriculture."