Overstory

[Monte Davis]

I found The Overstory very satisfying.

On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 11:18 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Just finished Richard Powers ‘Overstory’. Deeply moving and resonant ,
> though I have to admit the ideas are much aligned with my own sense of
> trees and other life forms as part of a matrix of consciouness and
> communication in which we have isolated ourselves from friendly
> participation, casting ourselves as the “studiers”, owners and rulers of
> life forms we neither created nor understand, and on which we are utterly
> dependent. What, one wonders is the use of science and technology if it
> provides us with the power to burn down the world and fails to give us the
> common sense to address our destructive mistakes and change our habits. The
> picture of forests that is increasingly clear in current research and which
> is poetically amplified through the course of Powers's story is of a
> multilayered resilient network of interdependent relations moderated by
> active communication and response. Instead of treating the intelligence of
> nature and her communication with humans as a poetic device which is really
> about good old "me" and how important human ethical choices are, he treats
> such communication as real, complex and effective in speaking to many
> different people. The trees care enough and are wise enough to speak to us.
> Many hear the intelligent messages of nature( see Intelligence in Nature,
> by Jeremy Narby, but our entire economic and social model is predicated on
> an idea of nature as raw materials for  competivive human greed and
> exploitation.
>
>   Powers uses richly detailed human stories in which plants and
> particularly old growth forests come to center stage in each person’s
> reckoning with life. As in  his last novel, Orfeo, he crosses the boundary
> between science research and human centered storytelling to grapple with
> the dangers of power imbalance, of law and politics which fears science and
> which fails to extend respect to citizens, let alone to other living
> beings. These people are inspired by parents, by experience, by ancient
> texts like the Bible, Ovid, the Vedas, by science research, by each other
> and most f all by the the forests themselves as they try to stop ancient
> forests from being clearcut.
>
>  Overstory takes a deep look at the question of tactics for those who wish
> to save the living forests, who have come to recognize that humans and many
> other life forms are existentially threatened by current practices. He
> describes the kind of violence and legal abuse that allow greedy corporate
> enterprises  to wipe out the last remaining outposts of old growth forest
> and asks how can this be stopped when peaceful protests and legal actions
> are met with violence.  Is destruction of machinery warranted? Why are all
> the technologies of destruction only “legitimized” for governments  of open
> bribery and endless war to seize and control ?
>
> I struggle with this question as I watch the failure of dedicated
> activists to awaken the political will to confront the dangers to our
> shared living planet. I hate war and especially the twisted language that
> legitimizes invasions and colonialist domination, but I understand and
> cannot argue with those who defend their homes and communities from theft
> and destruction.  Some things are worth fighting for, some things are more
> precious than an individual life.
>
> Any other readers on the p-list? Thoughts?
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>