Reviewed by David Walton
Linda Lears very thorough and readable biography of author and naturalist
Rachel Carson is sure to be the definitive book on Carsons life. Rachel
Carson: Witness for Nature is factual, unslanted, neither speculative nor
pryingeverything that a biography should be, and then some. With 485 pages
of text and about 150 of notes and bibliography, Lear doesnt swamp her
reader, but she does lose some of that sense of proportion so crucial to
understanding Rachel Carsons accomplishmentthe way in which one person
can make an enormous difference in the world.
Rachel Carson lived an exemplary life, exemplary in the sense that she
lived moderately, virtuously, with dedicated and determined craft, but
also exemplary in the medieval sense that her story has a lesson to impart.
It is, however, a lesson easy to misread, and easy to misrepresent. I confess
that at first I rebelled at the detail Lear included: a synopsis of every
college composition Rachel Carson wrote, every teacher and mentor who encouraged
her, every editor who responded favorably or not to one of her articles.
But slowly, over many pages, a picture emerges of the life of a gifted,
dedicated woman of the American 30s, 40s, and 50s, a time when women were
excluded, routinely passed over, only nominally represented on faculties
and in government agencies. Lear tells a fascinating story about American
professional women in the first half of this century, and of the network
of female alliances that promoted and sustained a young woman of talent.
Separate from the interest of Carsons own life, which is considerable,
Lears biography is a rich cultural history, crossing, as Carson herself
did, the realms of science, government service, academic life, publishing,
and literary celebrity.
But does Rachel Carsons own particular life merit a 500-page biography?
Or, put a little differently, is Rachel Carsons particular life best served
by a meticulous, step-by-step catalogue biography?
Working in two of literatures most perishable forms, nature writing
and social action, Carsons niche is probably secure. As a science writer,
she is unparalleled in her clarity and expressiveness, her marvelous precision
of language and sense of cadence preserved in that favorite bestseller,
The Sea Around Us.
But it is as the author of Silent Spring, a crusader classic still potent
today, that Rachel Carson has become a figure of historic as well as literary
consequence, earning comparisons to Thomas Paine and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
That 1962 exposé of the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide spraying
led to a ban on DDT, to the foundation of the Environmental Protection
Agency, and, some would say, to the entire environmentalist movement.
Silent Spring is a model of persuasive writing, eloquent and grimly
effective, most persuasive in its unembellished devotion to nature, most
eloquent in its strict reliance on fact and reasoned argument. Its brevity
is part of its impact, and the audio abridgment read by Ellen Burstyn (Durkin
Hayes, $16.99) captures vividly its powers of rhetoric, its unassailable
logic, and its ability to touch both feeling and reason, and is an excellent
accompaniment to Lears biography.
Carsons death of cancer in 1964 at age 56, just two years after its
publication, transformed her into an iconthe birth mother, beacon saint,
and virgin martyr for the environmentalist movement. Hers is a life, like
Gandhis or Albert Schweitzers, best displayed in its simplest form, and
for that Id recommend John Henrickssons Rachel Carson: The Environmental
Movement (Millbrook, 1991), 96 pages with index and bibliography, its dual
title suggesting the ways Carsons life has become linked to her subject;
or, better still, since it can be combined with a walk in nature, Ginger
Wadsworths 1992 audio biography Rachel Carson: Voice for the Earth (Audio
Bookshelf, $17.95), read by Melissa Hughes in just over two hours, designed
for family listening ages 10 and up.
But a glance across the shelf of books that have accrued about Rachel
Carson and the controversies she stirred up quickly illustrates the risks
of simplification, and the importance of having one book like Lears that
puts all available facts about Carsons life on the record. Lears story
is never dull, and one comes away, as we rarely do from these catalogue
biographies, liking the subject better, and admiring her more.
One particularly interesting feature is how much Rachel Carson reflected
the Pittsburgh region (she grew up in Springdale, near New Kensington,
and graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham College),
at a time when Pittsburgh was the most polluted city in America; and how
much she reflected that segment of Pittsburgh society devoted to culture
and the arts, to academic and professional attainment, over the prevailing
industrial norm. Rachel Carson is one of a string of remarkable women that
includes Gertrude Stein, Martha Graham, Willa Cather, and Gladys Schmitt,
whose careers developed and took shape from, often in flight from, the
things they experienced hereand for that, too, Lears is a valuable and
rewarding biography.
David Walton is a short-story writer and freelance book critic.
Copyright 1998 Carnegie Magazine
All rights reserved. Email: carnegiemag@carnegiemuseums.org
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