The One-Straw Revolution, by Masanobu Fukuoka

"We can never know the answers to great spiritual questions, but it's all right not to understand. We have been born and are living on the earth to face directly the reality of living."
-- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution (112)

This 1978 book is another one that crossed my path by the most random of happenstance, and I'm not sure why I picked it up. Agriculture, alternative or otherwise, is not really one of my areas of interest or expertise, but within that field, this book is definitely a classic, and I pretty much agreed with every word, despite the number of DVDs and bags of potato chips in my house.

Fukuoka was a young scientist studying plant diseases, when an existential crisis led him to a liberating epiphany about the futility of human endeavors: "Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and every action is a futile, meaningless effort" (4). Thought an eccentric by everyone, and after the interruption of the Second World War, Fukuoka begins to practically apply his philosophy to his chosen field of agriculture, pioneering what he calls "do-nothing" farming (15).

He jokes about how others always think that means there's no work involved, which isn't true, but his techniques are all about working with one's specific environment, and interfering as little as possible with the natural growth of crops, which, as he had realized, can flourish in the wild without any human intervention. He is constantly thinking "How about not doing this?" (ibid)

The introduction, by noted author Wendell Berry, points out that the book's specific farming techniques are designed for Fukuoka's land in Japan, and aren't directly applicable to other conditions. I won't spend much time on those, although that was more interesting than I expected. But I was most interested in the underlying framework, which was surprisingly profound. He points out that a small compromise for convenience can send one down the road to complete complicity in an unhealthy system, and commiserates with the city dwellers whose options for "natural" food are almost as unnatural as just eating the Doritos (okay, that's my example).

At heart, his message is this: "The more people do, the more society develops, the more problems arise. The increasing desolation of nature, the exhaustion of resources, the uneasiness and disintegration of the human spirit, all have been brought about by humanity's trying to accomplish something" (159). And he warns, "Human beings can destroy natural forms, but they cannot create them" (154).

Of course, we're in a modern industrial age, when generations of tampering in the name of progress can't really be unraveled. Fukuoka's vision is entirely impractical, and the vast majority of people wouldn't want to live that way even if they could. As it says in Good Omens (by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman), instead of a desire to go Back to Nature, "almost the entire drive of human history has been an attempt to get as far away from Nature as possible." Still, it's kind of hard to argue against the idea that the world is a mess, and many efforts to fix it are making more of a mess. Or that the human urge for "fast rather than slow, more rather than less" (110) has led to big problems, so maybe we could try slow over fast, and less over more.

On a less pensive note, this was a clearly-written and thought-provoking read, worth putting on anybody's book lists about food, farming, or modern industrial problems.

Fukuoka, Masanobu. The One-Straw Revolution. New York: New York Review Books, 2009.

Books for Hogswatch

My recommendation for your Hogswatch/Yule/Christmas reading this year, The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories. Sooooo good!

I'm assuming that you've already read the all-time classic, Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, and watched the equally classic movie (starring Lady Mary herself, Michelle Dockery), along with the Brom's Krampus: The Yule Lord. If not, get on that, too.

But about the new Valancourt book: I've been waiting for years for someone to put out a collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories, and better people couldn't have done the job. The stories are all good, and perfect for reading on cold winter nights, which I know, since I was in the middle of this the night our furnace went out (getting down to 53 degrees before we got it fixed). If I could buy you all stocking stuffers, this is what you'd get. And you'd like it!

Dune, by Frank Herbert

"Thufir, old friend," Paul said, "as you can see, my back is toward no door."
"The universe is full of doors," Howat said.

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. but the real universe is always one step beyond logic."

-- from Dune (770, 604)

Dune (1965) is one of those classics I always resisted, even back when I was mainly reading science fiction. It seemed kind of heavy and message-y, and its fans came across as cultish. It went onto the list after a viewing of the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune, which is fantastic, and you should watch it -- who knew such an inspiring film could be made out of a creative failure? I finally picked it up to read in those oddball off times at a science fiction convention, and I took to it immediately. I'm a sucker for faux nonfiction, so I ate up all the excerpts from histories-within-the-book, and the sayings and lore interspersed throughout. I also appreciated that the novel's far futuristic society and alien planets are significantly alien. The royal houses, the Bene Gesserit order, Arrakis: none of them are the half-hearted extensions of modern life one so often sees (even in things I love, like Star Trek), but have evolved in ways that are truly different and strange.

For most of this book's "running time," I kept having the same nagging thought in the back of my head: "I do not see Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides one little bit!" The more I read, the stranger that casting seemed. Nothing against Kyle, who's a fine actor, but, geez. I don't know who I would have expected to play the young nobleman gone native as a Messiah figure on an unforgiving desert planet.

I'm also not sure what to make of Herbert's ecological concerns. There's a whole theme about the ecosystem of Arrakis, and how its elements are more interconnected than people realize, and along with that, it seems like he's saying the desert-living Fremen are more in harmony, adapted to the planet's environment. But they're still manipulating it, working to reform it, making it more comfortable for human life. They're just doing it in a slow and systematic way, rather than the usual lumbering one.

My other main thought is that I felt like Dune was really a complete book. I know there's a whole of slew of sequels, by Herbert and his son, but while I enjoyed reading this a lot, I don't feel any need to continue. It didn't pose many unanswered questions, and in fact has a lot of foreshadowing about what the end results are going to be for the universe (hint: not good).

This is one of those books that was worth avoiding, just so I had it to read fresh now.

Herbert, Frank. Dune. Ace premium edition. New York: Berkley, 2010.

Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

"My sole desire to to proceed straight through this history with all convenient despatch." 

"Don't be afraid; we won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to."
-- from Oliver Twist (p. 135, 108)

It's funny that Oliver Twist is the Dickens novel that got the full-on musical treatment, with 1968's Oliver!, although the young Oliver Reed was dead-on casting for the brutal Bill Sikes. It's the grimmest of all the Dickens that I've read (so far). Unrelieved by comedic side trips, it sticks closely to Oliver's life and experience, only straying to relate what's going on with characters who pretty directly affect him, so it lacks the broad panorama-of-society effect of, say, Bleak House. Many of Dickens' novels depict squalor, poverty, and misery, in large doses, and also expose the corruption of society that allows them to exist, but in Oliver Twist, the darkness seems particularly unrelieved. Even the boy's brief escape to the home of kindly Mr. Brownlow comes off like a twist of the knife (oh, sorry about the pun), snatching away a glimmer of hope.

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf annoyed me by saying of Charlotte Bronte's writings that " if one reads them over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation, one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. Her books will be deformed and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly." Well, it's pretty obvious that if Jane Eyre was written in a rage, so was Oliver Twist, and then some.

I'm not the only one to notice this: G. K. Chesterton wrote that even the humorous parts of Oliver Twist "amuse, but they cannot be enjoyed ... Dickens makes game of Mr. Bumble because he wants to kill Mr. Bumble" (25). The famous Fagin is described as "like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness" (Dickens 153), but even he's better than the heartless authorities who profit off human misery.

Eventually -- and sure, spoilers, why not? -- Oliver has to get shot before things in his life take a turn for the better, and he finally meets some people who don't view him as a number in a ledger column or a resource to be exploited, but as a little boy alone in the world, who needs some help.

The machinations of melodrama, with some fantastic but fully anticipated coincidences that connect various characters, seem a little balder here than in some of his other novels, although that leads to a refreshing, uh, twist, when Oliver's background is revealed. He was the son of a miserably married gentleman and a young lady he loved, making him the heir to a fortune, and bitterly resented by his dissipated half-brother. When the latter calls him a "bastard child," kindly Mr. Brownlow "sternly" says "that term ... reflects true disgrace on no one living, except you who use it" (431, 432). Right on!

Similarly, the most sympathetic character in the book is Nancy, whose position as a prostitute is only slightly obscured. She's clearly not responsible for the options she met with in life, and while there are some speeches on the subject, and her ultimate acts of nobility, I liked that her character was sketched so well in one early line: "There was no flinching about the girl" (161).

So, Dickens. Please, sir, may I have some more? I still have at least five full novels to go, and just don't know what's next. I'm still resistant to David Copperfield and Great Expectations, so I'm guessing those will be the last. Leaning toward Hard Times, or maybe Martin Chuzzlewit. I hear so much about his attacks on America that it sounds pretty entertaining.

Chesterton, G.K. Criticisms and Appreciations of the Works of Charles Dickens. Kelly Bray, Cornwall: House of Stratus, 2008.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. London: Penguin, 2003.