Jane Smiley on the farm and cooking
Jane Smiley doesn’t shy away from ambitious literary projects. She wrote “The Greenlanders,” a saga about the dying Greenlandic civilization, in the epic Norse tradition. In “A Thousand Acres,” she reinvented Shakespeare’s King Lear in America’s contemporary heartland — and won a Pulitzer Prize. In her latest literary pursuit, the “Last Hundred Years” trilogy, Smiley explores America through a family whose roots begin in the fertile soil of a Depression-era Iowa farm. Across multiple generations, she draws a stunning portrait of American culture through the last century. The final volume , “Golden Age,” is released Tuesday.
What made you want to explore farm industrialization in the “Last Hundred Years” trilogy?
Farming is the basis of any culture’s life. ... One of the reasons I wanted to write this book is that Americans are so proud of themselves — it’s sort of the way you are if you’re an American: We’ve done so much for the world; we’ve invented so much. But the very things that we think we are proud of, such as commercial, conventional farming, can be the things that destroy us.
What in your mind has changed most in our culture’s relationship
to food over the last century?
The corporatization of food. The combination of seed companies, pesticide companies, supermarkets and grain futures trading — there’s an unbreakable hold that businesses have over food production now.
Our culture seems to have embraced everything about industrialized food. And it’s been terrible for the land; it’s been terrible for our health. I find it fascinating, actually. The way that a culture chooses to feed itself is really how that culture thinks of itself. So obviously we must be a culture that thinks of itself — that thinks of the land and the crops and the nutritional basis of our food — as much less important than some kind of instant pleasure from food.
How do you try to cultivate a healthy relationship with the food you eat?
I like to cook. I grew up in a family where everybody really loved to cook, and I watched my grandmother, whose great pleasure was cooking. …When [my husband and I] get up in the morning, almost the first thing we talk about is what we’re having for dinner. That sets the tone of the day, and I know what we’re going to shop for and what we’re going to eat for dinner. And we’re always sorry that dinner doesn’t last very long. I love to cook dinner and I love to bake and I love to make ice cream.
In “Golden Age‚” you explore the consequences of farming with agrochemicals and genetically modified crops. What are your personal feelings about this?
I think pesticides always turn out to do more damage than the corporations who promoted them thought they were going to do — or said they were going to do. Because all pesticides are an experiment … .
Genetically modified foods are another experiment that Monsanto decided to foist upon the general public. There are two sides to that. There’s a big controversy about whether genetically modified foods are actually dangerous. I feel that they are. ... But the other side of it is, even if they aren’t dangerous, the insistence by Monsanto that they now own the genome makes every farmer dependent upon paying Monsanto.
An important symbol in the trilogy is the movement away from horse farming to tractor farming. I know that you are a horse enthusiast. How does riding and caring for horses balance your writing life?
As far as fitness and health, I think riding is good exercise. It uses up calories, but it’s pretty easy on your knees and your hips because the horse is carrying your weight. But I don’t do the really strenuous things like eventing or endurance riding. I just go and ride. And then in the course of taking care of the horses and tacking up the horses, you walk here and you walk there. So basically I’m out for an hour and a half or two hours, and that seems to be pretty good exercise.
I’ve had this experience a lot where I’m sort of scratching my head about whatever book it is ... and while I’m tacking up the horse or riding the horse, the thought comes to me of what to do. It’s like any exercise that takes your mind away from the problem you’re working on, and the relaxation allows new thoughts to come in.