university

At my university, we have a Common Book.  This is a text, selected by a committee of faculty and staff (I am on the committee), that all entering freshmen are asked to read.  It forms part of their core curriculm during their first semester and is the focus of a lot of programming during their first week.  The 2008 book is Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, written by former Peace Corps volunteer Sarah Erdman.  I hope to post my thoughts about that book and Sarah’s visit soon.  For now, though, I wanted to post some preliminary thoughts about our possibilities for next year.  We choose two books to read over the summer and will meet over the next couple of months to choose the 2009 book.  My summer reading was Farewell, My Subaru and The Omnivore’s Dilemma; we submitted a thumbnail review about a week ago.  Here are mine:

Farewell, My Subaru

While I enjoyed this work of creative nonfiction, I cannot recommend it for the 2009 Common Book.  It’s funny and vivid, with memorable metaphors and amusing images.  It’s a very quick read; it took me maybe two days to get through it.  The failing, though, is that it never really made me think about my habits, my place in the world, or any of the issues one would think a book that is supposed to be about sustainability, energy, and our carbon-centered lifestyles is supposed to make one think about.  Fine too often gets in the way of these larger issues with his own voice, which can occasionally be snarky and overly irreverent.  I became more interested in the antics of his goats and his relationship with a teacher/yoga instructor that the actual reason he was raising goats in the first place.  Interspersed throughout the narrative are grey “pop-up” boxes that contain bits of pointed information that are, I assume, supposed to draw attention to our planet’s dire straits and give some factual heft to the book.  In reality, these boxes seemed out of place and distracted from the narrative.  Farewell my Subaru is almost two books.  The first is an easily read, amusing memior of a city guy “gone country.”  The second is an argument for why a carbon-neutral, sustainable lifestyle is important.  The later book never really get’s going.  Without this second sort of book, without any sort of weight or agument, Farewell My Subaru will not make a successful common book.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

I’ll get the negative out of the way first — this book is long.  That may pose a problem for students and even some faculty.  In a similar vein, there are a few chapters (on the physiology of corn, the history of synthetic fertilizer, the mysteries of fungi) that are easy to gloss over.  The length is an obstacle, certainly, but it is a small one considering the potential transformative power of what I consider an amazing book. 
The success of The Omnivore’s Dilemma hinges on how Pollan begins with a small, basic question — what will I have for dinner? — and leads us to all the possibilites and ramifications such a simple question may have.  This basic act of choosing what we eat is wrapped up in a host of political, ecological, ethical, and economic issues, most of which are invisible to us.  Pollan, working from the premise that ignorance is never a good thing, works to make all of those issues visible.  Beginnign with a McDonalds meal eaten in his car, he takes us down the industrial food chain that ends in our supermarket/fast food eating habits.  He takes is into the world of organic farming and finds a host of contradictions.  With Pollan, we work on a sustainable farm for a week and discover the idea of interrelatedness that drives such a farm also opperates on a human scale.  Pollan shows that the consequneces of our eating habits are not just economic or environmental, but spiritual and communal.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the final meal, which Pollan hunts, gathers, and grows all himself.  As he sits at table with his family and friends, eating a meal he brought to table from it’s baisc elements, Pollan asks us to consider what we really know about where our food comes from and what such ignorance may be costing us.  Fundamentally, our choice of dinner is about relationships, both with the naural world and the other human beings within that world, so the question then becomes what sort of relationships do we want to have?
This book has already significantly influenced how I think about my family’s eating habits and how our choices resonate beyond what goes out of our checking account to put food in our mouths.  I think it would have a similar effect on students; we all eat, and few of us know anything about where it all comes from.  The books simple premise and broad scope invite a host of disciplinary perspectives and programming possibilities.  The transformative power and potential of The Omnivore’s Dilemma are reasons I believe it should be our 2009 common book.