A review in tabs—excerpts I found noteworthy in Susan Orlean’s novel about orchid collectors in the swamps of Florida, about what passion really is and means. The non-fiction novel formed the basis for Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation, which inspired me to read the book.
Page 30
Is what I did ethical? I don’t know. I’m a shrewd bastard. I could be a great criminal. I could be a great conman, but it’s more interesting to live your life within the confines of the law. It’s more challenging to do what you want but try to do it so you can justify it. People look at what I do and think, Is that moral? Is that right? Well, isn’t every great thing the result of that kind of struggle? Look at something like atomic energy. It can be diabolic or it can be a blessing. Evil or good. Well, that’s where the give is–at the edge of ethics. And that’s exactly where I like to live.
Page 40
Everyone I was meeting connected to the orchid poaching had circled their lives around some great desire–Laroche had his crazy inspirations and orchid lovers had their intense devotion to their flowers and the Seminoles had their burning dedication to their history and culture–a desire that then answered questions for them about how to spend their time and their money and who their friends would be and where they would travel and what they did when they got there. It was a religion. I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn’t a part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I do have one unembarrassing passion–I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.
Page 49
Orchids thrived in the jungle because they developed the ability to live on air rather than soil and positioned themselves where they were sure to get light and water–high above the rest of the plants on the branches of trees. They thrived because they took themselves out of competition.
Page 50
Each time a hurricane hits Florida, botanists wonder what new orchids might have come in with it. At the moment, they are waiting to see what was blown in by Hurricane Andrew. They will know the answer around the seventh anniversary of the storm, when the seeds that landed will have sprouted and grown.
Page 100
I was getting used to his contrariness but he still puzzled me. He was always daring me to mistrust him, and then surprising me by being reliable, and he was always daring me to think he was a creep, and then he would unveil something that belied any creepiness. When I first met him, he told me he had found the only gem-grade fossil pearl in existence, a boast so specific that I couldn’t resist investigating it, and no one I talked to ever confirmed that such a thing could be true. I really wanted to confront him about it, but when he brought it up another time and I was about to challenge him, he said, “You know why I love that pearl so much? Because as long as I have it, I still sort of have the moment when I got it. The place I got it was wild when I was there, and it’s gone now, it’s all developed and the woods are just gone. And I was with my wife when I found it, she’s my ex-wife now, and I was with my mom, and my mom’s dead now. But having that pearl is like still having that moment, my mom is alive and I’m still happily married and the place I found it is still gorgeous.” I never brought up the question of the pearl again. I’m not a sucker. It’s just that questioning whether it really is the only gem-grade fossil pearl in existence felt piddling compared to what he said it meant to him–it would have been like telling someone deeply in love that the beloved one was ugly and short.
Page 109
The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many distractions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility. If I had been an orchid hunter I wouldn’t have seen this space as sad-making and vacant–I think I would have seen it as acres of opportunity where the things I loved were waiting to be found.
Page 136
I still considered Laroche and his schemes exceptional–actually, something beyond exceptional–but he had started to seem more like the endpoint in a continuum. He was the oddball ultimate of those people who are enthralled by non-human living things and who pursue them like lovers.
Page 201
More and more, I felt like I was meeting people like Lee who didn’t at all seem part of this modern world and this moment in time–the world of petty aggravations and obligations and boundaries, a time of bored cynicism–because how they lived and what they lived for was so optimistic. They sincerely loved something, trusted in the perfectibility of some living thing, lived for a myth about themselves and the idea of adventure, were convinced that certain things were really worth dying for, believed that they could make their lives into whatever they dreamed.
Page 256
The orchid world had the intimacy of a family and the fights of a family. Like a family, it provided a way to fit into the world, to place yourself inside a small and sometimes crowded and sometimes bickering circle, and that circle would be surrounded by a bigger circle, and then an even bigger circle, and then finally by the whole wide world; it was some kind of way to scratch out a balance between being an individual and being a part of something bigger than yourself, even though each side of the equation put the other in jeopardy.
Page 279
“Do you collect anything?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“It’s not really about collecting the thing itself,” Laroche went on. “It’s about getting immersed in something, and learning about it, and having it become a part of your life. it’s a kind of direction.”
Page 282
“I mean, logically, we have to get out as long as we walk straight. I’ve done this millions of times. Whenever everything’s killing me I just say to myself, Screw it, and go straight ahead.”
(Reader’s guide interview with Susan Orleans)
Page 288
I don’t like writing about thing I am too invested in initially. For me, part of the process of writing is the journey to understanding.
Page 292
Has a subject ever fallen in love with you?
Yes. And I felt great affection for him, but I understood what was going on. Let me explain transference to you. I knew he was confusing the circumstance with the specific emotion. He was in love with the sense of attention and interest, real attention and curiosity. it is a great feeling to have someone who simply wants to know everything about you but isn’t demanding in return. it is like therapy.
Clip from Adapation:
Leave a Reply