Aside perhaps from the various films of David Attenborough, no television programme preached the inherent beauty of the natural world more than Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting. Indeed, where Attenborough balanced the wonder with a cruel Darwinian counterweight—where the selfish gene drives a kill-or-be-killed mentality—Ross put out an altogether more bucolic view of the wilderness. Narrated by his pacifying tones, he painted semi-fictional landscapes in a step-by-step way, building near mythic vistas of mountains and waterfalls, unmarked by man beyond the occasional (uninhabited) cabin. Save for spectral sunsets, the skies were exclusively blue. The lakes were crystal clear, flat mirrors from which hazy twins of the looming mountains emerged. In essence, this was the America of the pilgrims’ dreams, a tame wilderness that could be shaped into any variation of utopia. A place where all mistakes become happy accidents.
However, there came a time, in the closing minutes of almost every episode, where Ross took stock of the landscape before him and picked up the ol’ Filbert brush. “This is going to be your bravery test,” he would say, loading the bristles with the darkest paint before dropping a huge tree trunk in the foreground of his painting. Often, this tree would obscure fine details behind, pushing ahead of waterfalls and snow-capped peaks to draw all eyes to its bold, brash branches. Whether intended as such or not, the effect was one of plants fighting back, refusing to be shaped into the picaresque vista, as if to remind us that nature is not a pleasant background but rather the entirety of our home, and something of which we are only a small part.
The latest novel from Richard Powers, The Overstory is a novel operating according to such aims. Powers has carved a long and successful career marrying scientific detail and character study, using subjects such as artificial intelligence (Galatea 2.2), virtual reality (Plowing the Dark), and DNA and music (The Gold Bug Variations, Orfeo) as novel-wide allegories to explore the lives of his characters. The Overstory could be said to represent something of an inversion of this pattern. Instead of the science being used to illuminate the lives of his characters, here the primary function of the protagonists is to illuminate the critical importance of the environment. Or, more specifically, trees.
So, while the cast of characters is varied, each individual has an overt aboreal connection. Artist Nicholas Hoel is the last in a line of men dedicated to photographing the same chestnut tree each month, watching it grow from sapling to landmark. Mimi Ma is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant depressed by his dying mulberry. Neelay Mehta a computer whizz bound to a wheelchair after falling from a tree, and Douglas Pavlicek a Vietnam vet only alive after an even higher fall was broken by a miraculously placed banyan. Both Patricia Weatherford and Adam Appich grow up obsessed by nature and become successful scientists, though the former is tortured by the constant scepticism of his field, and the latter made a pariah for her pioneering view that trees could communicate with one another. Party animal Olivia Vandergriff grows convinced trees are communicating with her after a near death experience, and even Dorothy and Ray Brinkman, “two people for whom trees mean almost nothing,” find their lives shaped by a far quieter manifestation of nature’s power.
As you would expect from Powers, each individual is drawn with nuance and depth, and every separate narrative carries a sense of emotion and family history worthy of a novel in its own right. But, like the ecosystem Patricia hypothesises, all of these characters are connected on one level or another, be they sharing plots of land or impacting one another in a more diffuse way, like plants sending seeds or pollen through the air, or chemicals on the wind. The narrative threads push out like roots, and when two happen to converge, they fuse and strengthen one another, forging out in a new direction as one.
However, as hinted previously, the tree motif is not merely some device to portray the interconnected nature of contemporary life. Because, as much as Powers is interested in the existential questions of communication and isolation that mark the human condition, he has identified something more pressing, and indeed more existential. The systems of capitalism and consumerism have created an eschatological irony, where the constant push for efficient productivity is unravelling the systems that make life possible. A zealous commitment to growth that is destroying us. Furthermore, while all but the most dishonest now recognise that something about the current system is untenable, the overwhelming majority have done nothing of any consequence to reverse the trend. When the measures of success and happiness are almost entirely capitalistic, then why would we expect otherwise?
“Imminent, at the speed of people, is too late. The law must judge imminent at the speed of trees.”
Powers understands this, and takes it upon himself to fight against the tide with every ounce of his energy, no matter how it might be received or make him look. Which brings us back to Bob Ross. The Overstory feels like Richard Powers’ bravery test. Unless you’re a white teen with dreadlocks or live in a commune, there’s nothing cool about preaching green. That dismissive tree-hugging jokes are so easy and universal is a testament to that. So, when Powers’ intricate details are lost beneath his bullhorned message, and the moving character studies are drowned in facts about trees, the more ‘sophisticated’ reader might find themselves breaking out in a rash. When characters climb trees and paint trees, eat and sleep in trees, chain themselves to trees, the well-tested alarm bells in the ‘rationalist’ mind start ringing. Because, be it through self-harm or vague sinister forces, the image of the environmentalist has been seized and re-purposed as something of a joke—the stereotypical New Age crazy living off water and goodwill—thus undercutting any form of viable protest. Speaking about the environment makes you either a naive idealist or unhinged polemic, and neither belong in the circles of the truly ‘intelligent’ (“Righteousness makes Mimi nuts,” Powers writes on page 240. “She has always been allergic to people with conviction.”) Thus, to speak about the environment is to silence yourself.
But Powers refuses to be silenced, which translates to a lot of (intentionally) heavy-handed dendrological metaphors, a lot of (non-ironic) talk of rediscovering the beauty of nature and much (sincere) discussion of how humans are terrible and short-sighted and doomed in the way of a Greek tragedy. Essentially, a lot of trees. However, the fact that such a premise feels tiring, and the metaphors ham-fisted, and the views unsophisticated only confirms Powers’ point. There’s nothing hip or trendy about this message. There is no cultural capital to be earned, no badges of honour to wear, no quick redemption to cash in at the next available opportunity. There’s a slow, grinding process of unpicking ourselves from the prevailing attitudes and expectations, a version of life less comfortable and entertaining and cool. A willingness to appear naive in the short term in the hope of defeating the wider foolishness, a committed attempt to confront what surely lies before us. The Overstory represents a bravery test not only for Richard Powers, but for us all.
“Adam fights down his hatred of virtuous singing […] Maybe it’s okay. Maybe mass extinction justifies a little fuzziness. Maybe earnestness can help his hurt species as much as anything. Who is he to say?”
The Overstory is out now via William Heinemann (UK) and W.W. Norton & Company (US). You can find out more about Richard Powers on his website.