Oct 24 2007
Science Writing Done Brilliantly: Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Butterfly Lessons”
A recent addition to my reading pile is Best Science Writing 2007, (this year’s book with last year’s writing, a little confusing for the literal-minded folks in the crowd) and it’s a real treat because I’ve been on a media fast (or at least a very austere diet) for a few years now and so missed most of these wonderful pieces.
One I was sure to have caught back in the old days is Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker article “Butterfly Lessons,” first because I was so capitvated by Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and second because ever since La Bonita and I went out with Bob Pyle on one of his field seminars, I’ve been very tuned in to all things lepidoptera-ish.
I say this article is science writing done brilliantly because Kolbert uses story so expertly to both frame what she’s trying to convey, and to increase its impact, and its persistence in memory.
At the beginning of the article we get two very dense and punchy paragraphs setting up the introduction of Chris Thomas, the English biologist who is presumably going to give Kolbert — and us — the butterfly lessons of the title. During the 500 words or so that Thomas is initially on stage, you not only come to feel that you know this “amiably harried” scientist with his Range Rover smelling of wet socks and his dog the size of a small horse, but you also realize that you’ve found out a whole hell of a lot about the historical distributions of polygonia c-album, the comma butterfly.
Everyone Kolbert profiles in this article is sketched vividly; so much so that you feel like you’re standing there in the lab with the author, looking over the shoulder of a couple of scientists animatedly describing their work. The only time my interest flagged was in the section on sudden extinction of the golden toads of Costa Rica’s Monteverde cloud forest. But that wasn’t Kolbert’s fault; I’d already read a great deal about Bufo periglenes, done my mourning, and moved on.
For some reason I picture Kolbert standing in a library somewhere, repeatedly spinning one of those antique globes with a map of the earth on it. First she stops the spin by pointing to Costa Rica or Nebraska or northern England, loads the listener up with vivid people and a great deal of information, and then spins the globe again. And you know, the article’s not that long. Or it seems much longer than it is, maybe, just because of how much natural history comes through.
Finally, we come back to our old friend Chris Thomas, who I suspected we hadn’t see the last of. The article ends with him speaking quietly, paused in the act of wandering around in his backyard looking for commas–speaking about how we only have one earth, and how we don’t understand the consequences of much of what we are doing to it.
As a piece of writing, this is devastatingly effective–much more impactful and enduring than the other approaches to the same message I’ve run across recently, which even with someone predisposed to hear the message, barely get in the door. I talking of course about the preaching, the yelling, the guilt-tripping, the “you’ve been a bad boy and will be punished,” the sanctimonious, all that.
More on this another time.