The Overstory - spoilers allowed

[Clarke]

OK, this is the discussion where spoilers are allowed. Spoil away!

[Clarke]

Maggie commented, "[Powers] has developed his own genre that pairs fiction and fact so that the reader comes out of each one knowing and caring much more about some subject, in this case trees." I think this is how it works. It doesn't work like the usual novel so much. I'm really not invested in the characters' various predicaments. The 140-year sentence for [is it Adam?] at the end seems a little harsh, but he's not exactly the hero of the story, anyway. The book slowed way down for me at the end, I think because I wasn't much interested in the characters. I feel as if I learned something about plantlife, though; and then you have that recognition of what's happening now; the immediacy of the threat is much worse than it was back when Edward Abbey was producing his work about environmental "terrorists."

[Clarke]

Adam is of course Adamic, isn't he? Adam is not only cast out of the Garden, but locked up so he can't save it.

[Hugh]

This is a better place to discuss my issues with the book as a whole. I loved the first half, and the scientific content is well researched and fascinating. What worked less well for me was the final part - the neat resolution seemed too contrived and too dependent on wishful thinking - I suspect that this was the part Powers found it hardest to write, and for me it was enough for me to go down to four stars rather than five.

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

I finished this yesterday...really waffled between 2 and 3 stars. While I enjoyed the beginning (Roots), I really had a hard time staying invested in these characters. This is one of those cases I think where the author began with his ending philosophy and worked backwards. I believe it was Hugh who mentioned the word 'contrived' in an earlier post, and that's what the rest of the book felt like to me.

This is a shame, because I'm probably more in agreement with Powers in his final analysis than not. Despite their backstories, in the end, these characters seem simplistic to me, written specifically to be heroic.

I'm especially disappointed because I've heard so much praise for Powers, and this, my first book of his that I've read, did not seem to warrant it.

[Clarke]

Interesting that the novel has a riposte to these story-based objections that some of us have. Take a look at this from page 383 of the pb ed.: "Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive--character--is all that matters in the end. It's a child's creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: Life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people."

The key opposition there seems to be between "satisfying" and "meaningful." So the question becomes, how much are we willing to sacrifice one for the other? The response must be subjective.

[Sam]

Bryan--The Bee’s Knees wrote: "I finished this yesterday...really waffled between 2 and 3 stars. While I enjoyed the beginning (Roots), I really had a hard time staying invested in these characters. This is one of those cases I ..."

I stayed away from this conversation since I felt it was too early for a reread, but i can understand yout frustration. I have read all of Powers and although I have quibbles, i find much more good than bad and enjoyed him more having read more books. The Time of Our Singing is probably my favorite because I like music and because of the ambitious risk he took as an author in cultural appropiation, but another day I would have another favorite.

One thing that troubled me in this book was how factual confrontations between "tree huggers and loggers" were fictionalized in a way that suggested general ideas that were IMO not quite accurate. I wish Powers had given us more factual detail and let us judge for ourselves.

[Janet]

I too stayed away from this conversation because my IRL book group read it in 2019, which meant I ready it twice and, like Sam, wasn’t up for a re-read, however much I admired the writing. I didn’t see the characters as lacking dimension; I loved how Powers wrote about the mycorrhizal interactions that connect trees into what biologists call the “wood wide web” and turned that phenomenon into a metaphor for the way the characters were “connected” however fragmentary those connections were. I’ll stop with analysis at this point, due to hazy memory, but I recall our group nerded over the tree biology quite a bit. ( Have I mentioned I work in a plant library? Hence the nerding!)

Sam, I can’t respond to your comment about confrontations between tree huggers and loggers, but I can tell you that colleagues of mine were victimized by eco-terrorists, ( who I suppose thought of themselves as activists). The library they worked in was utterly, completely destroyed by fire when someone firebombed the facility, in order to destroy the research of a biologist they thought was creating genetically engineered trees — ironically, he wasn’t. In any case, my sense is that Powers researched this and other incidents happening in the Pacific NW and California in the 1990s and early aughts, to weave into his story.

This was the only Powers book I’ve read, but would like to explore his other works.

[Sam]

Janet wrote: "I too stayed away from this conversation because my IRL book group read it in 2019, which meant I ready it twice and, like Sam, wasn’t up for a re-read, however much I admired the writing. I didn’t..."

Janet, Powers definitely researches his material well and I think he tries to apply a fair appraisal, but I think we get a sense of an overall omniscience in Powers work that we want to trust and I have been bothered by certain choices he makes in fictionaling facts. I think he oversimplifies certain complexities sometimes. His latest book took more criticism on that account. Compare Roth's America Pastoral where Roth expends so much effort on associating the political idea with the character or Erdrich's Night Watchman where a political view is developed through many characters and their experiences. This isn't a major quibble I have with Powers and there are good points to that approach which we did not discuss. I also think his books are contemporary, cutting edge, and thus it is harder to portray events with accuracy. I just find that his choices in relating his mix of factual and fictional to be confusing at times.

[Clarke]

Clarke wrote: "Interesting that the novel has a riposte to these story-based objections that some of us have. Take a look at this from page 383 of the pb ed.: "Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and..."
It’s an interesting quotation, representing, as it does, both a self-referential comment somewhat after the fashion of Fielding, Thackeray or Trollope, but also the seeming detection of a flaw in one’s own work. Seems a bit defensive, too; the accusation of childishness is, in my view, not entirely warranted, although I suppose the point is that a concern with the first law of storytelling (Don’t Bore the Reader) is a matter of trifling importance when your purpose is to save the world. Yes, it appears we are engaged in nothing less than a “battle for the world.” The ambition is beyond even composing the dendronic Moby Dick. One has to admire this, if one is not disposed to laugh at it. Overall, I am more impressed than entertained, but being impressed is a form of entertainment; and entertainment, during a battle for the world, is, to follow the train of thought, the more trivial pursuit. Happy Holidays to all!

[Lisa Bianca]

Clarke wrote: "I suppose the point is that a concern with the first law of storytelling (Don’t Bore the Reader) is a matter of trifling importance when your purpose is to save the world......

.... Overall, I am more impressed than entertained, but being impressed is a form of entertainment; and entertainment, during a battle for the world, is, to follow the train of thought, the more trivial pursuit...."

Related to each and everyone's comments but in the end I will respond to Clarke's last comment which resonates to my overall experience of reading and finally finishing just before the month is over.
I found it a bit of a slog at times, but sometimes we have to work to gain insight. The characters were slow to grow on me, but by the end I had a certain fondness. There were masses of some very clever writing, so much information to be woven in.
Much of the tree information was not new to me, although mostly different endemic species here in Australia. Still, many of the US & European species are also grown here and so I am aware of them as individuals, but not as forests. There's been much fascinating new information published in recent years about the interconnectedness and symbiosis of the whole plant system, which Powers wove through his story.

In conclusion I am left with a feeling something along the lines of this quote from the book "Grief of hopes crushed and rising".
We can't continue in the way we are and so in the end I believe nature will one day again pull ahead. It will be different but I'm sure it will also be amazing. Was that the ending message of the book ... I think it was.

Cheers