Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I am so ashamed of myself.

I avoid chick-lit like the plague. But I have some in my hands. Now, look, what I am saying here is mean and politically incorrect: I don’t like self-consciously feminine writing. (In the end, I don’t like self-consciously masculine writing, either, so no Robert Bly or Ernest Hemingway for me.) I avoid Bobbie Ann Mason, Sue Monk Kidd, Roberta Bondi, anything that might get cronish given a few years. This is an odious opinion, but there you have it. Don’t say I’m not honest and you didn’t know that about me. But I do like Carolyn Chute. You have to read The Beans of Egypt, Maine.

But a few years ago, Lyle Morton, a man’s man, was listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible on tape. As I was riding with him from Nashvegas, I listened, too. Interesting. But I don’t know. I had a feeling she could get shrill. There might even be hand-wringing in her writing. Lord, do I hate hand-wringing.

But then, my Mother Superior, Paige Williams says, “We have to stop by Barnes and Noble. The new Barbara Kingsolver book is out.” You have to be careful what you say to your D.S. I used to jokingly call Melissa “my old lady,” it really got her goat. One day I was riding with a former D.S. and he just goes off on this fellow who used to call his wife “his old lady,” and how he worked hard to get that guy saved. Melissa was in the back seat, and I could feel her eyes boring into my head. I slunk down in my seat and said, “Yes, sir. That’s right. Amen.”

So when Paige says, “Have you read her before?” All I could say was, “Lyle Morton turned me on to The Poisonwood Bible.” Paige starts telling me what the new book, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is about. Kingsolver and her family moving back to the farm in Appalachia to live off the land. I start sweating. I mean, y’all, this is my dream. When I was a little boy, I was convinced I would move in with my grandparents, plant trees all over the place and make it rain. And then I’d have a brick hut and… as I got older, it morphed into just wanting a simpler, slower pace. Hunting and fishing bring the great satisfaction of getting your own meat. And gardening is some pretty intense prayer. People say my grandfather lost his hair because he stood at the end of his bean fields rubbing his head, wondering if they’d make it! Melissa and I had a huge garden in Winchester. There was nothing like walking out there, cutting some spinach, arugula, oak leaf and buttercrunch lettuce, endive, and picking a few peas to go with it. Wash it, spin it out in a pillow case, and in 5 minutes eating a really fresh salad. Maybe Melissa had baked some bread. Maybe we’d have a baked beet. I even used to think there should be a liturgy for thinning beets and eating the greens and roots.

So I was thinking, “This Kingsolver woman might be ok.”

I kept thinking about it for a few hours. I broke down and bought the book later that day.

I am so ashamed of myself.

I read about 100 pages that night. I did not know whether to laugh or be mad. Laugh, because she was saying some outrageous, funny stuff. Or be mad because some of the outrageous funny stuff was stuff I had experienced something like, and if I knew I could write a book about the weirdness in my life… Man, she was writing my book, getting my money, and you can’t take that lightly.

I don’t know a lot about Barbara Kingsolver, but I suspect that she probably wouldn’t like me much—both for my literary opinions and because I’m the kind of minister I am. But that’s ok. The book is really interesting. A little far-fetched, but good. The point is that she and her family decided to live off of only what they could grow, or what was seasonally available locally. This a bit of a step beyond organic. That is, they were trying to cut out as much of the petroleum influence in food, such as transporting it across the country. They wanted to prove that you could do it. And also find something of a kind of discipline, a kind of deep joy in being tied to what is available.

On some level, we all resonate with this. We think we’d like to live in Tuscany or Provence and eat like colorful, nostalgic peasants. Kingsolver has the honesty to come out and say, hey y’all, you can call it what you want, but it’s still eating redneck-style. It’s grits, not polenta…

The attempts to learn how to live with what you can grow or get locally is revealing, educating, and often funny.

Josh McDonald, when he saw I was reading it, said, “has she started wailing on men yet?” I said, “I don’t think it will be like that.” “Just wait,” he said. He was right. When it came to talking about finding a rooster to take care of the hens, well, what else is a feminist evolutionary biologist going to say…

But I am telling you, I have not laughed this hard in a long time. Melissa has been giving me a hard time. “You’re always like this. There’s someone whose opinions you can’t stand, and then I know, right as rain, you’re going to love them.” It was that way with Bob Lyon, incidentally. I’d come back from class and say, “Man, he’s tough on people.” Or, “Man, I can’t believe he would say that!” Or, “Man, that guy is opinionated!” Melissa was always sweet enough to never say, “Gee honey, he sounds just like you…” She would say, “Just wait. He’ll be your favorite professor!” I don’t know if Kingsolver will be my favorite writer, but she sure can alienate you and make you laugh in almost the same sentence. That always makes you think.

One night I got a call from an old guy I worked with. He lived way out of town, and I lived within walking distance of the post office and the Physical Plant. (Now, look, it was night, but this old fellow called it morning) He calls and says the Post Office is raising heck because he ordered a rooster for Christmas dinner, it was making all kinds of noise and would I go get it and put it in the fertilizer room of the Physical Plant… That bird was in a box and I was still scared of it. Had that thing strapped on the rear pannier of my bike. I kept praying I would not pass someone I knew, with my bike crowing, flapping, and scratching… And I caught heck from the boss man for bringing it in. Anyway, this is one of my favorite stories, and Kingsolver has a situation somewhat like it. Only she gets the big bucks for her weird stories. There ain’t no justice, but Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a good book.