Quick Hit: A Tale of Two Nonfiction Books

Eleventy weeks ago, I started reading The Classical World, by Robin Lane Fox. It is a history, stretching from Homer to Hadrian. I am a big fan of one-volume history books: they allow me to have a little bit of knowledge about a lot of things, and while some say this is dangerous, I do not think that that particular cliche applies to things like world history – yes, spending five minutes on Web MD will erroneously convince you that you have cancer, but spending two weeks with a history of Latin America, say, is bound to be good for you rather than bad.

The problem, here, is that I have not spent two weeks with The Classical World, I have spent eleventy, or thereabouts, and am still not half-way through. On the other hand, drained by continuing efforts to read the book, I picked up Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma last weekend and devoured it (har har) in two days. Pollan’s book details the origins of four meals: a fast-food dinner at McDonald’s, a Big Organic meal from Whole Foods, a locally, sustainably farmed meal, and a dinner that Pollan hunts and forages largely on his own. I learned about Big Corn, industrial slaughterhouses, and food “formulation”; how one has to have a device on their combine to chase away field mice before the wee organic spring mix lettuces are harvested; how pigs, alcoholic corn kernels, and wood chips can turn six months’ worth of cow shit into beautiful compost; and what sort of people go hunting for wild chanterelles, among other things. It was a fascinating, enervating, enraging, inspiring book about food.

So what’s the problem here? It’s not that Greek and Roman history aren’t interesting. It’s just that these two authors have come up against the dilemma of conveying facts to interested lay people. Sometimes nonfiction books are too concerned with the laity of their audience; they come off as more narrative fluff than factual discourse, and this is a rip-off. It’s is boring, but also condescending: I am reading your book to learn about this subject in an at least somewhat meaningful way, not just to listen to you jabber about the most superficial of supposedly “scandalous” points of interest regarding it; treat me like a curious adult, able and desirous to learn.

On the other hand, one can go too far in the other direction: nonfiction books for laypeople need also to be narratively interesting. I am not SO fascinated by this topic, dear author, that I have chosen to devote years of study to it; rather, I am willing to sit down and learn 600 or so pages of the material that will give me the best general outline of the subject. It can’t be dry – thorough, yes, but not pedantic or plodding. In other words, the book must be stylistically engaging; I’m reading for enjoyment, not to get my Ph.D.

And so there is a sweet spot: academically thorough but narratively engaging. It’s hard to pull off. Mr. Pollan has done it, and Mr. Fox has not, alas. I’m still slowly plodding through The Classical World, and I expect to finish it, but I doubt I’ll review it here when I do. It’s not fantastically dreadful like Travels in Siberia, and so ripe for a blog thrashing; its subject matter interests me or I wouldn’t have bought it in the first place, and its author, furthermore, doesn’t seem like a douchebag. It’s just dull.

By the way, if you’re looking for a good one-book history of Latin America, allow me to recommend Born in Blood and Fire by John Charles Chasteen.