Recently, I lucked into The Gentle Subversive, the latest entry from the Oxford University Press New Narratives Series. This very well written look at the writing career of Rachel Carson has given me a whole new respect for the nature writer and really fired me up to read everything she ever wrote. Mark Hamilton Lytle did something quite interesting with this mini-biography (275 pages with index and endnotes at each chapter); he focused solely on how Carson became a writer and why she chose to write the things she did. Each book is followed from inspiration to completion and it gives a whole new perspective on her body of work. I had no idea how meticulous she was about getting input from scientists in the field. I also didn’t realize how truly revolutionary her manner of science writing was. Here’s a taste:

While still working on the book [The Edge of the Sea], Carson made interdependence the central point of a talk she gave to a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December 1953. The majority of the scientists sitting before her, she recognized, did their work in a laboratory with specimens isolated from their natural habitats. To understand a clam, they dissected it first and thought less about where and how it lived and more about how it looked through a microscope.

Carson used a microscope as well, but for her, the seashore as much as the laboratory was the place for research. Only there could one observe the relationship of living things to the larger whole. Each fit into “the complex pattern of life. No thread is found to be complete unto itself, nor does it have meaning alone. Each is but a small part of the intricately woven design of the whole…� As she looked out upon that audience of distinguished scientists, she spoke confidently about her own beliefs; “The edge of the sea is a laboratory in which nature itself is conducting experiments in the evolution of life and in a delicate balancing of the living creature within a complex system of forces, living and non-living. We have come a long way from the early days of the biology of the shore, when it was enough to find, to describe, and to name plants and animals found there.� Now, Carson asserted, scientists want to know, “Why does an animal live where it does?� What is the nature of the ties that bind it to its world?� Answers to those questions, she speculated, might lie in “the biological role played by the sea water.� As she explained it, “in the sea nothing lives for itself.� Each life form alters the chemical nature of the water it inhabits, creating conditions conducive to other living things. “So the present is linked with the past and the future,� she concluded, “and each living thing with all that surrounds it.� In that way, she made ecology the central theme of her book.

Later, while writing about Silent Spring, Lytle explains how much political danger Carson was in by going against the idea that chemicals (and thus technology) were good for America; she was challenging the American way of life. “The consensus encouraged social and political conformity, respect for governmental and community authority, uncritical patriotism, religious faith and a commitment to a vague notion of an American way of life defined by prosperity, material comfort and a secure home. A person did not have to be a Communist to come under suspicion as a subversive. One had only to dissent against commonly accepted values, as Carson intended to do, to be considered disloyal.�

Change the word “communist� to “terrorist� and you could be speaking about America over the past few years, which gives you an idea of just what Rachel Carson was going up against when she decided to write about the damage of DDT.

This book really impressed the hell out of me and even though it is an adult title, it would be a perfect choice for teens writing biographies on great Americans or studying the history of the environmental movement. For writers it is a real treat – even if science writing is not your thing. It’s an excellent peek into the mind of a great writer and truly inspired me.

(Post title is a quote from George Decker, an economic entomologist and USDA adviser, at the time the book was published.)