I started reading this with a bookclub of wine and cider makers — people who know a lot more than I do about how things grow, in other words, and who are not academics. It was awesome, because it gave me such a different angle on the book. As we joked, whereas they tolerated the jargon and references to theory but felt rather annoyed that there wasn’t more detail about the mushroom, I was only delighted to have some mushroom added to my usual diet of theory and jargon.
But what really struck me about their response was the frustration some had with the cool detachment of the book, the refusal to judge or advocate. This is, course, pretty much required in anthropology, but it was interesting to question that premise, and debate its effects.
The book is organized in the sort of kaleidoscopic mosaic I find irresistible, almost in spite of myself — short chapters, no clear narrative arc but lots of through lines. It hops from one part of the world to another, and — my favorite! — engages in comparative reflection and meta-reflection on the work of comparison along the way.
If asked what the book says — not what it’s about, but what it actually says — I would have to admit, sheepishly, that I can’t quite say, and this isn’t only because I read the first half over a week or two and then took almost a year to get through the rest. Tsing uses the maitsutake mushroom as a fulcrum to consider various systems, and especially, what emerges at their interstices. The whole industry around the mushroom is informal yet organized, highly contingent yet enduring, part of the larger capitalist system but also in some sense at its margins (or some might say outside it: one of the most memorable parts of the book, for me, is where she pauses to discuss this debate). So too, the science of the mushroom is an assemblage of various approaches and methods: Chinese, Japanese, American, and the on-the-ground know-how of pickers themselves. There’s been a lot of talk, in recent years especially, about various forms of knowledge, but this book offers an especially vivid and compelling illustration of what that can really mean.
Kasia Reads 