He is, apparently, a food writer. A gentle nod or two, something, to the significance of the human labor involved in the production of food (since he *was* actually involved in that production whenever possible) would seem the inevitable result of such an immersion in these various food *webs*, interconnections, interdependencies, relations.
sure, I get that he's a food writer -- actually seems to have started out mostly writing about gardening -- but are gardeners, gourmands and food connoisseurs *that* narrow-minded that their only concern is with produce and chickens -- and not the people?
At the end of _The Omnivore's Dilemma_ he writes about inviting all the people who had a hand in helping him hunt, gather, and forage the meal. Obviously, he is not immune to the idea that other people's labor is involved in filling his gut. The total was ten diners -- including himself, wife, child and minus someone who was out of the country.
He also tells the reader that the meal cost nothing.
*blink*
*blink*
One of the first things I wondered, for a fellah who thinks of himself as a clutz, is why he wanted to shoot an animal. Why not go fishing or trapping? Shit. He probably could have snagged rabbit right from his backyard.
I'm not being snarky.
You're going to wonder something like that if you used to get up every other morning at 5 a.m., walk to a river, hop in a canoe and paddle the river following the trap lines that had been set. In the afternoon, depending on the season, we'd either fetch rabbit, weasels, fox, and minks from traps set in the hills that rose above the river valley. Else, we'd hunt whatever was in season such as pheasants, geese, ducks, deer, turkeys. (In my neck of the woods, btw, turkeys struck me as so stupid as to be easily turned into dinner by throwing stones at them.) Other times, we'd just nap. :)
The rest of the time, there was the skinning shed where we carefully removed the skins to sell them. Muskrat Susie and Muskrat Sam are by far the most wretched smelling animals -- when skinning, which is probably the muskrat oil that is most bothersome to the shag nostrils.
Given this background, it also made me keenly aware of all the labor involved in the making and selling of traps, canoes, paddles, guns, ammo, fishing poles, warm socks, boots, etc.
When I read the opening of the last section of TOD, where he discusses his ambivalence about hunting, all I could think was: Just trap or fish for the dang food then! What was the point of hunting -- when you can fish -- which was probably the most often eaten staple of a hunting and gathering diet. I kind of assumed he chose not to fish for fear of being accused of being a wimp and chose not to trap because it never would have occurred to him or, if it had, because he didn't want to deal with the recriminations from the save bambi crowd, from whom he was going to get a reaming about the gun hunting anyway.
But given my background, I was struck by the choice of a gun to kill an animal. And then he described acquiring said gun. And then I thought about how he borrowed stuff in stead of buying (e.g., borrowed a diving suit) -- which you can understand since the adventures were so one-off. But my point was that the _cost_ occurred to me, since he wanted to *avoid* the costs by borrowing. I was attentive, at first, because I'm a like-minded tightwad. But then later, when he told the reader the meal cost nothing, I thought: He wouldn't have thought so had he not borrowed other people's stuff quite so much!
There was an entire web of social relations bound up in the production of the objects he borrowed -- not to mention the wealth of knowledge gleaned from books, human networks, restaurant labor, etc. about edible fungi.
It is not so much that I wanted him to detail that entire web of connections. All I *really* wanted was that it was acknowledged as something he couldn't pursue.
That would have been a fine way to address the issue. But I get the sense Pollan doesn't address it b/c it's never really occurred to him to think about the human labor involved in producing food -- or anything for that matter.
Which, fine, he's not a labor person. No one has asked him to become one. But if you're going to talk endlessly about food webs, interdependency, "it's all connected," interconnectedness, "eat your view" or even just human health, then I don't think it's too much trouble to ask a writer to actually take the metaphor seriously at some point -- particularly when they conclude very same book with a tribute to the group labor involved in the production of "the perfect meal." A moment's thought would have revealed that the guests at that dinner table should have numbered in the many dozens, at least.
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)