> I'd also be curious to investigate why this pastoral genre (inevitably
> featuring books with pictures of rolling hills or country roads,
> blanketed with rust colored fall leaves on their covers) is so popular
> with middle and upper middle classerians who're very unlikely to do
> much more than shop at a farmer's market or Whole Foods.
This is a longstanding phenomenon. No doubt David Brooks or somesuch has written about it at length.
To be honest I remember taking the parts that shag quotes about the salad and all that as being a kind of critique of semiotics of it all (Christ, did I just write that?): the "pastoral overtones" of the Whole Foods experience vs. the more complicated reality that supports it. You might not think that way about your salad, shag, with your bacon bits and Pepperidge Farm croutons and hot sauce*, but then you're not the target market.
* Relax. It's a joke.
> The books seem to serve as totems, indicators of membership in class
> within a class: the group of Concerned Lovers of the Earth. There is
> a curiously earnest sort of narcissism at work here I think.
Ok, but: I'm left wondering how one is supposed to come to Pollan's conclusions sensibly and honestly (as I think he does) without being thought guilty by association with Julie Andrews.
You see this game being played out with any legitimate environmental issue you could ask for.
Scientists: Well, we seem to have this global warming problem looming.
Somebody: Doomsdayers! Religeonists!
Scientists: Uh, ok, but here's the data. It's not the end of the world, but it'll probably make things difficult, and we can probably do something about it, since most of it seems to be from industrial and agricultural practices.
Somebody: See, you hate progress! You want us to go back to being nude foragers in a Romantic Eden!
And to be sure, the matter attracts plenty of bearded juice-drinkers, sandal-wearers and vegetarians. People who think the presence of a wasp nest near their house is a subtle sign of their harmony with each other and Nature. I just don't think it's fair to judge these things by their hangers-on.
-- Andy