Why did people ask Dear Abby how to behave, or take Johnny Midgeon's word on which men in D.C. were crooks? It was the same on all sides, the yuppies watched smart-mouthed comedians who mocked people living in double-wides who listened to country music. The very word Tennessee made those audiences burst into laughter, she'd heard it. They would never come to see what Tennessee was like, any more than she would get a degree in science and figure out the climate things Dr. Byron described. Nobody truly decided for themselves. There was too much information. What they actually did was scope around, decide who was looking out for their clan, and sign on for the memos on a wide array of topics.
I'm guessing that the people who rate this book highly are those in Barbara Kingsolver's clan as Flight Behavior is one long memo to the people who agree with her. If I could remember how to diagram an argument (the Logic I studied at university was a hundred years ago) then I could expose this book as the straw man polemic that it is, but the reading has left me weary and the effort is beyond me.
Eco Fiction must be really hard to pull off -- the author knows that there is a portion of readers who agree with her before page one, a portion who will never be convinced (who would likely never read the book anyway), and a portion who are open and willing to be swayed. I'd put myself in the third category -- I'm no climate change denier but I don't blindly accept anyone's position as impartial; I think David Suzuki and Al Gore are self-serving millionaire hypocrites, Michael Mann is a total fraud, and who can find the truth about the IPCC or the "Climategate" email scandal? -- and as open as I am to information, a fictionalised scientist who lectures nonstop doesn't make for good fiction, or good science.
Our straw man is Dellarobia Turnbow: a too-smart-for-her-housewife-status young woman, mother of 2, serial adulteress in her own mind, who climbs the mountain and discovers the burning bush (honestly-- but what she mistook for smokeless fire was actually tens of millions of Monarch butterflies, blown off course by unknown, but definitely climate related, forces).
Enter our man of reason, the equally oddly named Ovid Byron (and what is the purpose of introducing characters who need to constantly be explaining their names?): The world's foremost expert on Monarch butterflies, a man who stresses that as a scientist his job is to gather facts, not to court public opinion (but since his facts are facts, you'd be a fool to not agree with his conclusions).
As Dellarobia sets up all the arguments against accepting Global Warming as fact and taking drastic and immediate measures to confront it, Dr. Byron patiently knocks them down and awakens the young woman to the greater purpose of her own life. Along the way, this book also confronts: consumerism (and the evils of Chinese slave labour filling the shelves in dollar stores and Walmart); the growing cultural divide in America between liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, the coastal elites and the flyover states; the poor education in rural communities and its ability to keep the downtrodden down; how media shapes the message that reaches the gullible consumer; and even the disparity within the environmental movement itself, from the ridiculous (a Tilly-hatted elitist trying to get the hillbillies to sign his pledge -- to take Tupperware for leftovers at restaurants, when no one can afford to eat out, or to lower their thermostats, when no one can afford to keep their houses comfortably warm anyway) to the righteous (the hard-working and good-humoured environmental group, 350.org, who Kingsolver mentions in her end notes, thanking them for "the most important work in the world, and the most unending").
Recognising early on that Flight Behavior was a work of Eco Fiction, I was prepared for the lectures and know that they can seem stilted and inorganic to the story (I thought Franzen did a much better job in Freedom, even if my takeaway from that book was a concern for the billions of dead songbirds instead of the fracking that was its real focus). But if the story that the information is grafted onto isn't strong, then the whole thing doesn't work, and I didn't find this story to be strong. Dellarobia wasn't very likeable and her story arc didn't work for me -- I didn't believe her actions from beginning to end. Likewise, her inlaws were unbelievable, from the weak husband, Cubby, who had no idea his wife was unhappy, to his mother, Hester, and her indifference to her grandchildren and "bombshell" revelation near the end.
As for the plight of the butterflies -- I found this to be a bit of clever sophistry; the kind of story that makes me impatient with the environmental movement in general. It is undeniably true that there was catastrophic flooding in Angangueo, Mexico -- the mountain village near where the Monarchs actually overwinter -- but in real life the butterflies returned to, and continue to thrive in, their habitual territory. To change the actual perseverance of this species into a fictional catastrophe -- where it's not clear until the very end whether or not the entire species would be wiped out -- confuses the actual with the possible; the scientist speaks as though the extinction of the Monarchs is imminent and therefore proof that Global Warming is an undeniable fact. This would be a more compelling argument if its foundation was, I don't know, actually factual. I understand that Kingsolver is a biologist and a novelist and that is a marvelous combination for spreading her message -- but if she was trying to sway someone like me who spends a lot of time trying to sort out the truth from the white noise that is the agenda-biased arguments for and against the cause of/existence of/cure for Global Warming, then she has missed her mark; I'll reiterate that she has simply written a memo to her own clan.
And as for the ending of Flight Behavior: I can believe that Dellarobia had gained enough confidence in herself to decide to leave a loveless marriage and go back to college -- the book opens with her wanting to commit adultery and even her mother-in-law always assumed that she had one foot out the door. But why would she decide to become a veterinarian, to start being "the one who charges $60 just to step out of her truck"? After spending 400 pages setting Dellarobia up as anti-consumerism, Kingsolver has her buy a smartphone and join the ranks of those who work for money above all else (and yes, there might be a nod to a love of animals in there, too, but she's not planning on following in Dr. Byron's pure-science and selfless footsteps). I have a friend who has a degree in Environmental Science, someone who is working hard to find the truths, and her ideal is to have more people living the life Dellarobia leaves -- a hands-on farmer, working close with the land and not using more resources than her family actually needs. It blew my mind that Kingsolver set her on the opposing path that the most of us are on; the one that she proposes leads to the end of the world.
And a further note on my friend the Environmentalist:
Delight earned her degree ten years ago and then moved with her husband to the way way remote Northern reaches of Newfoundland. Not only was she unable to use her degree, but she found her lifestyle to not be aligned with her beliefs: there was no recycling program where she lived and all shopping required driving for hours -- even the airport was a six hour drive and she would have gotten cabin fever if she hadn't been able to leave home every now and then. Happily, a year ago they moved to a good-sized community in Nova Scotia; a province with full recycling and composting facilities; a community that provides for all of her needs.
Just a few months ago, she had her own burning bush moment: with her husband away (*cough* working on the oil fields in Yemen *cough*) for a month at a time, she had the time to look hard at Global Warming and other environmental issues that face the planet, with a view to maybe writing a no-nonsense book. I totally encouraged her in this -- there is nothing I would like better than reading something that goes beyond partisan politics and presents facts instead of opinions. But...
Delight seems to have become stuck in her own rabbit hole. She loves to post her findings on facebook and then becomes upset when no one comments on them; she takes this as proof that she's the only one anywhere that cares. However, when I post a contrary opinion or just ask for more facts, she says that I'm in denial. Also, she has become very alarmed by GMOs -- this is probably more important to her than climate change at this point -- and she posts opinion pieces (from obviously environmentalist websites) as though they were peer-reviewed journal articles. I have tried to have conversations with Delight about GMOs (I totally buy that Monsanto is an evil corporation -- and it's so shady the way that official US trade missions, including those attended by President Obama, force poor countries to buy Monsanto's Roundup-Ready seeds), and in particular I asked if she has found any information as to why we shouldn't support Golden Rice. She replied, "I don't need any more information about GMOs. As far as I'm concerned, that's settled. It's just common sense". What I wanted to say, but chickened out from, was, "For millennia everyone believed the sun went around the Earth -- that was just common sense, too, just not good science".
So here I am, making myself sound like the rational one, because I guess that's what we all do in the end. I wish it wasn't so hard to find the truth -- whatever that is. What I don't want is a novel like Flight Behavior telling me that Global Warming is settled science, when it isn't -- we are in a "warming pause" that the Chicken Littles can't explain, and if a model isn't predictive, it's not a good model -- but if someone wants to talk about Climate Change, I'll listen. I have kids, hope to have grandkids, and I don't want this Earth to be a cesspool for them. I am willing to accept that mankind has contributed to pollution and the extinction of various species, and I understand that we can't know the longterm effects of these things. But I'm not willing to let anyone mix all the issues together and tell me that facts are settled and that what we need to do is some Kyoto-Accord-era carbon taxes that pay India and China to continue being the worst polluters.
And on the other hand, I personally do every reasonable thing that I can to not be amongst the worst of the offenders myself; I'm honestly not some kind of a denier; I just wish the facts, the facts, could be revealed; a situation that this book (and perhaps even Delight's efforts) doesn't aid.
