Reading The Overstory in the Shadow of Bolsonaro

In early January, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, took office. It is not a stretch to describe Bolsanaro as a fascist, someone who pines for the days of military dictatorship and torture of leftist opponents. In addition to his desire to reverse even the most moderate of reforms enacted under the previous government and his embrace of the most radical of neoliberal economic programs, Bolsonaro has also set his sights on accelerating the exploitation of the Brazilian rainforest.

As reported in The Guardian, huge new regulatory powers have been transferred to the Agriculture Ministry, that most declare beholden to agribusiness interests. Deforestation is at the forefront of the agenda and considering how significant a sinkhole of carbon gases the rainforest plays any further attacks on its integrity will be detrimental not only to the inhabitants of the Amazon but also the fight against climate change.

It’s in this bleak shadow that I picked up Richard Powers’ The Overtory. Shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2018, and appearing on many year end best of lists, this a five-hundred page tome offers a poweful cri de coeur on behalf of The Trees.

The Overstory is a work of fiction structured like a tree. Powers first introduces 8 characters in what is deemed the book’s roots. Each discrete story involves people in someway touched by the world of trees, pessimistic about the damage humans have ravaged upon the beautiful creatures of wood, eager in some way to save them from destruction. The second part, the trunk, brings the characters together as their stories begin to overlap and influence one another as their journeys turn to activism and challenging industries insatiable need to destroy. The third part, the cover, jumps ahead twenty years as the consequences of their actions come to fruition, before concluding with the seeds, the hopeful promise of some sort of salvation for the wonders of forests.

Powers uses beautiful prose to disclose the mysteries of the tree, from the scientific to the mystical, exploring how the trees own language to one another conveys not only something truly magical, but also more powerful than even the most promethean desires of human industry. And though he clearly admires the tree much more than the species eager to destroy it, Power manages to convey the power of human compassion and empathy, with his subjects driven to save these creatures at great personal cost.

Although incredibly ambitious in scope and structure, this is not a perfect novel. Not all storylines work well and shedding a couple of the more pointless characters may have led to an even more powerful work. It is also an incredibly pessimistic take, almost nihilistic in the end game Powers sees as likely. Admittedly, I share some of this pessimism, but a cri de coeur must also inspire those to take action, to stop the destructive path we head in. Doing so may have weakened the work, made it too propagandist, but sometimes the political imperative demands the weakening of art.

All that said, this a book people should pick up. If not to be motivated to take up the fight, at the very least to appreciate the magical marvel that is majestic creature we call The Tree.