Book Review -- On A Farther Shore, William Souder

Rachel Carson is barely remembered today but through the 1950s and 60s, her name was as recognizable as that of any movie star or pro athlete. The author of four books -- the first three, beautifully written treatises on just about everything then known of the oceans; the fourth, a world-shaking attack on the overuse of pesticides -- she was just as likely to be the topic of conversation at any family dinner table as at one of President Kennedy’s press conferences. She was big.

I’ve always had a bit of a mixed relationship with her books, though. On the one hand, from the first time I picked up a copy of The Sea Around Us in junior high, I loved the thought of Rachel Carson. I loved that most of what she wrote centered on the ocean. I loved that she made it seem possible to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of a vast subject. I even loved the somewhat dowdy photo of her on the back cover of the book.

On the other hand, I have to admit that I was never quite able -- then or now -- to make it all the way through any of her books. As beautifully written as her ocean books are, they’re too general for me. I prefer more detail over a smaller range. As for Silent Spring -- her attack on the overuse of pesticides -- I found the fact that such a book even had to written too maddeningly frustrating.to stay with from cover to cover. (But the truth is that you can still hear the ignorant blaming Carson for the deaths of millions from malaria.)

Through all these years, though, Carson herself remained a shadowy figure about whom -- with the exception of that back cover photo -- I knew little. When the biography On A Farther Shore came out, I decided to rectify that.

The book does a decent job of showing us that much of Carson’s early adult life gave little hint of the success she would have or the mark she would leave. An above-average student from a poor family, she graduated from a women’s college with a degree in a biology, and wound up at the Bureau of Fisheries, a federal agency that would eventually become the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Her job was not as a scientist, though, but as a writer, taking scientific reports, distilling them down to their essence, and then writing them in language a layman could understand.

The work brought her into contact with countless marine scientists, many of whom she developed working relationships with, some of whom encouraged her toward work beyond what she was already doing. Her first step in that direction, the book Under The Sea-Wind, was a minor success at best. The second, however, The Sea Around Us, spent months on the best-seller list and catapulted Carson to fame. Its follow-up, The Edge Of The Sea, did almost as well.

The details that emerge of Carson during this period are a study of contradictions. She did little to dissuade the misperception of herself as a scientist and a diver (she had made one helmet dive off the coast of Florida, during which she never let go of the boat’s ladder). The combination of ill-health and inveterate re-writing meant that her books were generally finished years behind schedule. She sought almost no publicity for herself. She never hesitated to complain to her publishers about even the slightest of grievances she felt had been committed against her books. When she agreed to the making of a documentary based on The Sea Around Us, it was produced by Irwin Allen, of The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure fame. It won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1953 but Carson hated it as overly sensational. Before it was made, though, she had had the chance to work with a young Jacques Cousteau instead. She decided against it.

The picture that emerges of Carson is of an exceedingly private, quiet but confident woman, who seemed an unlikely protagonist in the war against the giant chemical industry. Silent Spring -- the events that eventually convinced her to write it, the research that went into it, the years it took to finish it, and the battles that were fought after its publication, take up nearly the second half of On A Farther Shore. And, for me, that imbalance is where much of the difficulty of the book lies. By comparison, the details of the research, the trials and tribulations, and the thought processes that went into Carson’s three ocean books are barely touched upon. And since that’s where my interest lies, it’s a disappointment.

Still, On A Farther Shore does a good job filling in the blanks of Carson’s life. And it’s a life that should be remembered because, without her and Silent Spring, the environmental movement as we know it today probably wouldn’t exist. More importantly, the way in which Carson first staked the battle against the chemical industry and its close ties with its supposed regulators, and the manner in which she then calmly defended her work against a barrage of blustery attacks -- weirdly reminiscent of those used today against anyone raising environmental warnings -- provides a strong intellectual blueprint against hyperbole and in defense of the environment.

It was published in 2012 by Crown Publishers.