Sorry to this man...
This year's edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing is my first as series editor. What that means is I read a ton of essays and articles about science and nature last year, and sent the 100 best to the book's guest editor, Sy Montgomery. (I found probably most of those pieces from the submission form where writers—and editors, and anyone—can submit their work, btw; here's the submission info for next year's book.) I love Sy's selections—they're beautiful, fascinating, and important. I also wrote the foreword to the book. I wrote it in the fog of late pregnancy, which, I'm pleased, mostly meant that I let myself be weird without much censorship. "Weird" in this case means . . . a lot of Tony Kushner. You'll see. Here's how that essay begins:
Earlier this year, I received an email from a self-declared long-time reader of Best American Science and Nature Writing. The reader noted that the anthology had been getting more political over the last few years, and he asked me to please keep the selections for 2019 focused on science and nature.
My first thought was, “Sorry, guy. Tough luck.” My second thought was Tony Kushner. Yes, the playwright. There are many thinkers who have argued that everything is political, that an apolitical stance is inherently political, too, but Tony Kushner is the one I think of first. In his essay, “Notes about Political Theater,” Kushner writes, “In life, as in art, much energy is devoted toward blurring the political meaning of events, or even that events have a political meaning . . . When theater artists assiduously avoid politics, we deny the existence of the political and are making a political statement, committing a political act.”
You can easily swap “science” in for “events,” “readers of this book” for “theater artists.” Here:
In life… much energy is devoted toward blurring the political meaning of [science], or even that [science] has a political meaning . . . When [readers of this book] assiduously avoid politics, we deny the existence of the political and are making a political statement, committing a political act.
We may desperately want for science to not be political, because that seems simpler or more pure. But if science teaches us anything, it is that simplicity is an illusion, and that ignorance cannot be a resting place.
[. . .] I don’t know if the author of the email imploring me to “focus on science and nature” would say that the stories in this anthology aren’t political, or if he would rather not read them at all. But they’re not in this book because of political arguments, nor despite them. They’re in this book because, as some of the best science and nature writing of the year, they each tell a slice of the story of the Earth, a story that, for better or for worse, humanity is writing.
You can read the rest, plus Sy's introduction, plus 24 truly wonderful pieces of science and nature writing, in the book. You can buy it here (or from your local independent bookstore, which may very well ship things cheaply by media mail, visit their website and have a look; or request it from your library).
