Revisiting Michael Pollan, "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

I recently re-read The Omnivore's Dilemma, almost two years after the first time I read it.  It's amazing how much has changed since that first reading, and how different the book seems now.

I was first struck by how non-strident the book is.  Pollan sets out to untangle some of the issues of the eponymous omnivore's dilemma.  And he does so.  He draws some unavoidable conclusions, but he completely fails to berate the reader for the choices they have made.  

Is it possible for a book to be both revolutionary AND non-strident?  Honestly, you wouldn't think so.  But there Pollan is, chugging along, stating the facts about the production of corn and the relationship between governmental agricultural subsidies and the inclusion of high fructose corn syrup into every processed food product under the sun.  And all without a drop of finger wagging or loaded language.  Just the facts, narrated in a sandwich between the first person accounts that Pollan uses to illustrate each food story.

In truth, I found those fact-y bits to be exceptionally dry the second time around.  I remember being gripped by them when I first read the book.  But now, perhaps because they seem so patently obvious, I pretty much skimmed everything that wasn't written in the first person.  Pollan is a passable science writer, but his writing really shines when he slips into these extended anecdotes.  I laughed a lot while reading about his time at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm.  Polyface is the platonic ideal of "a good farm," even better than organic.  But as Pollan points out, it's a lot of work to stay there, and just because you love the business that doesn't mean you're going to love the guy.

The final thing that that I noticed was that Pollan actually constructed his book around three themes, titled "Industrial: Corn," "Pastoral: Grass," and "Personal: Forest."  The corn section focuses a lot on factory farming, as you might expect.  The grass section is where we find Polyface Farms.  Both of these sections ended up holding a lot of mindshare with the public.

But we have collectively forgotten about the forest section.  I had forgotten that it existed entirely, until I went back.  This is partly because it is the least well-structured section, it seems almost as if Pollan had written his outline and was determined to stick to it, even though it turned out he didn't have an entire section's worth of things to say about foraging.  

It also suffers from having to be both about foraging, and as a wrap up to the rest of the book.  Which is why the section on foraging talks a lot about what it means to kill an animal, with answers that reflect upon the previous two sections.

Pollan's original conceit for the book was that he would make a dinner structured around each of the three sections.  (This, too, has been forgotten, and rightfully so.  It's a silly gimmick.)  For the final section, he goes boar hunting.  It doesn't go well.  The telling seems somehow rushed and forced, as if he didn't want to do it in the first place, but felt compelled to include it for some reason.  The next bit, where he goes hunting for chanterelles, is even more cursory and less interesting.  

Pollan has since gone on to write a book with the word "Manifesto" in its title, which takes more liberties with emotional language and bold assertions.  But I still feel that The Omnivore's Dilemma is the better book, despite that lackluster final section.