popcorn youth

[A version of this interview appears in this week’s Ithaca Times; photos via Amazon] A certain philosophy towards food consciousness — a desire to know how our food is grown, made and sold, as well as a keen advocacy for sustainable consumption — has skyrocketed in popularity in the last five years.

Some take it even further. In Adam Leith Gollner’s book The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession, fruits are the objects of obsession, a marvel of nature, and a crucial way of understanding human evolution.

Through his investigations both abroad — Gollner quests to the Amazon, the Seychelles, Borneo and West Africa — and at home, he unearths the untold treasures, controversy and the ancient history that explains the complex relationship that binds human beings to plants.

Recently, Gollner was featured as part of the Cornell Plantations’ fall lecture series, where he spoke at great length on The Fruit Hunters. Simultaneously informative and wildly entertaining, Gollner is a true storyteller, taking us beyond our experiences and into a truly unknowable territory.

The Montreal-based writer, musician and filmmaker writes for the New York Times, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, and was the former editor of Vice Magazine. The Fruit Hunters, in addition to being a national bestseller, was also an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review and a winner of the McAuslan First Book Award.

Currently, Gollner is working on his second book, titled Springs Eternal: The Neverending Quest for Neverending Life, a work that will explore our relationship with water and immortality.

The Ithaca Times recently met with Gollner, who, in addition to speaking about his next book, the creative process, and his previous life as a music critic, gave us a detailed tour of the Cornell Plantations’ Botanical Garden, which apparently houses a healthy, hermaphroditic kiwi plant. Who knew?

Ithaca Times: One of the very first impressions I got at your lecture is what a great storyteller you are. What makes a good story?

Adam Leith Gollner: Hmm. That’s a good question! A good story is something that makes you feel a sense of wonder. Something that makes you feel amazed by just how magnificent the world is, and how crazy it all is.

An editor once told me that in journalism, what you can do as a writer is bring people into places that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and you reveal this world to them. You bring readers into people’s private lives and you can kind of be this eavesdropper on this psychological and emotional landscape. It’s a world that you didn’t know existed, and you bring people into that world. No matter what, as a writer, you always have your antenna out.

IT: Could you talk about the topic of your next book?

Gollner: Actually, I’m going to Clifton Springs today, which is about an hour from Ithaca. It’s a natural hot springs and it’s research for my next book.

My next book is about immortality, and people who want to live forever. This idea of immortality, historically… that age-old quest. Oh — quests! Quests are important in a story. Stories are good when you’re trying to… find something.

IT: Even if they don’t find it?

Gollner: I think so. You know, an impossible quest is a good quest. (Laughs)

IT: Last night at your lecture, you held up an unusual plant that you found on the beach during your travels. Did you manage to find someone to successfully identify it?

Gollner: (Laughs) Ah, yes. The crazy root. People seem to have agreed that it is a root.

IT: And you found the root above ground?

Gollner: Yes, above ground. I didn’t dig it out, it was just there. (Laughs) I wish I were the kind of person who dug around! But no, it was just there.

I also think a story becomes good when it goes unexpected places. A textbook, or something similarly official, sticks to facts. But a good story will take you in unexpected directions, and you can’t know ahead of time where it will go. I have no idea if there will be anything really useful at Clifton Springs! But you have to go, you have to see, you have to find out. It’s exploration.

IT: The book balances the hard facts so well with the more poetic aspects of your writing style. Does that feel like an organic aspect of how the book ended up?

Gollner: Thank you for saying that. It’s funny — to me it feels like this weird document, and you just do it. I guess it was organic in that sense… but that sort of goes with the obsessive nature of it, like, what is obsession? It’s that insanity. A total preoccupation. You can’t think about anything else. Although I never got to that stage — I was sort of  this middle man — I was the guide who brought you on a tour of that place, and then brings you out, hopefully, alive. (Laughs) But the people in there? They’re gone. They are there for good. I’m not going to be a fruit person for the rest of my life — it’s just a story. (Laughs)

IT: Do you see The Fruit Hunters and Springs Eternal as being connected in any way?

Gollner: Yes. One of the last chapters in The Fruit Hunters is about a cult in New Mexico called the Children of Light, a cult of virgins and eunuchs. They were kind of fruitarians, but not rigorously. Like, they grew dates. They were this immortality-seeking cult, and they believed that they were going to live forever. But one by one they were dying, and now they’re all in their nineties and there are only three of them left. They invited me to spend the rest of my life there and live for free.

IT: (Laughs) Woah! It’s like, “Too close!”

Gollner: (Laughs) Right. Exactly. But it’s so interesting; every religion and philosophy has a relationship with that idea [of immortality]. Some people deny it, some revel in it. Some say there is no path, some are always looking for it. There is always some sort of belief system in place, and I thought that would be really interesting to look at.

IT: How deep into the project are you now?

Gollner: I’m pretty deep. I’m trying to do the whole thing in basically two and a half years, including it being edited, and we’re a year into it. It will take another year to get a complete draft together, and then another six months of editing.

IT: Of that process, does the research and fieldwork take up the most time?

Gollner:) Well, with The Fruit Hunters, the time line was a little more jumbled, because it was a bit more off and on. I was doing other things at the same time, I had other jobs, and I spent a year and a half as an editor in the middle of all that. It kind of put my project on pause. Now it’s like, ‘Oh, right, now I’m a writer!’ This is my main focus.

But, I mean, research can go on indefinitely. It’s the easiest part, and the most fun part. Like, what you’re doing right now, for your story, that’s fun. At least, I hope so. (Laughs)

IT: Oh yes. Least favorite part of the process: transcription.

Gollner: Exactly. That’s the worst part. It’s hell. For me, I hate the transcription. (Laughs) I find it really hard. And then, once it’s transcribed, there are other hard parts, like cobbling it all together and editing. There are so many parts, that the research is fun and I try to live it up.

IT: Did you know right from the beginning that the topic of fruit hunters would eventually become a book?

Gollner: No, I didn’t know that it would be a book I was going to write. I was just a young journalist, looking for good stories. It was only until the book’s completion that I was realized, ‘Oh my God, that’s what this is!’ Oftentimes you need the act of writing to figure out why you’re even writing it. You just don’t know. It’s only until you finish it that you see the hideous truth of what you’ve actually done come to light. (Laughs) It’s often kind of a challenging realization — at least it was for me. I had some emotional reasons for writing this book that I didn’t realize until I was at the very end.

IT: In the last decade, there’s been a tremendous surge of increased food consciousness, things like eating organic, buying locally and thinking sustainably. Do you get the sense that The Fruit Hunters is timely in that sense? To put it another way: is this a book that could not have existed 10 years ago?

Gollner: I think that’s true, for sure. [The book] was certainly part of this [global] moment where the consciousness of eating locally was being raised. And “foodies”? (Laughs) Five years ago, that wasn’t even a word in the mass consciousness. And in past years, it’s become very big.

When I initially started thinking about this book, it seemed like a really fringe, weird topic. It still is a weird topic, but it’s not that fringe anymore, which is quite astonishing. (Laughs)

Many things have surprised me along the way. First, that I got a publisher. Second, that I got a big American publisher. And that I’m able to make a living doing this? I had no idea that would happen. And then with certain things like the Miracle Fruit story. That became….

IT: A meme.

Gollner: Yes! You’ve heard about the Miracle Fruit tasting parties right? It’s like, it became this thing, this phenomenon. Front page stories in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. And I was like, ‘What? How did that happen?’ This weird story that became a big story! I guess I just happened to be there before it became that big story; the book was already in place…  I guess I am what you would call an early adopter. I just happened to be there ahead of time, and then it became a phenomenon.

IT: Do you think that this growing interest in food is a permanent paradigm shift? Or is it something that feels more temporary? Certainly food succumbs to trends as much as fashion or music, for example.

Gollner: I wonder about that! What do you think?

IT: (Laughs) You’re the expert. I’d like to know what you think.

Gollner: I am not certainly not the expert.

IT: Well, Ithaca is a special place because our community takes so much care with how we eat and what we think about with relation to the food industry and local agriculture. I think that it’s always been a defining part of living here and I certainly hope it stays that away. But it’s also such a hermetic environment as well, and I doubt that our sensibilities are across the board in New York State, that’s for sure.

Gollner: I think you’re right. I think that in certain pockets of the population, like Ithaca, that is here to stay. Now that people have discovered purple flowering broccoli and the heirloom tomato, no way will they go back to eating iceberg lettuce year-round. That’s not a flash in the pan. So in that sense, I do think that it is a permanent paradigm shift.

But as far as the entire North American population, I don’t know. Most people still eat hamburgers every day. Cheeseburger guzzlers. (Laughs) When all of this started changing, I began writing for Gourmet magazine. I loved it because it seemed so old fashioned and crazy, that people were so into food. Like, it was up there with, I don’t know, science magazines. I like them both equally. But then it became this phenomenon. I guess I am what you would call an early adopter. I just happened to be there ahead of time, before it became such a phenomenon.

I remember that magazines would contact me and ask me to start writing for them. One magazine said that they wanted to do an all-food issue and I went to an editorial meeting where they were all like, ‘What’s happening with food? What is going on in this moment? Is this just a trend? Is it just a momentary thing?’ Kind of like what you’re asking now. And their art director said, ‘Is food the new golf punk?’ (Laughs) Like, golf punk? Really? But, I don’t know… posterity will determine that. Posterity determines everything.

IT: Would you say that you approach learning about rare fruit as you would about discovering obscure music in, say, Montreal? Is it a similar process of discovery?

Gollner: Yes, totally. I have thought that exact comparison. I used to be a huge music lover, musician, music writer. It’s like, when you discover a really great song, it can make you feel really special… You’re totally enraptured; it’s a state of ecstasy. You’re taken outside of yourself. I remember having these amazing fruits, and it would be the same thing. I was like, ‘What is happening here? Why is this so good?’ And all I could compare it to was that it was like kissing someone for the first time, or this amazing song that you hear for the first time.

IT: It’s this visceral thing.

Gollner: It really is. Over the course of writing the book, I ate less of these incredible fruits, because you really have to travel to find them. You have to go into strange places to find them, farms and weird labs. Not just supermarkets or outdoor markets. They’re very rare. So I haven’t been having these experiences anymore. And I came to think of them as ‘horizontal experiences.’ My subconscious started to notice when I would bite into an amazing plum or peach or whatever, and it almost felt like I was lying down, like I was knocked over, even though I was standing up. It was this feeling of surrender to the majesty of the sensation. It’s a religious, mystical feeling.

IT: Is that feeling specific to your psyche? Or if anyone had the opportunities that you’ve sought, there would be a similar sense of rapture? Is it universal?

Gollner: If I took you to this farm in Vancouver where they grow mulberries, and I gave you one of those mulberries, you would have no trouble saying that it was one of the best things that you’ve had in your entire life. (Laughs) It’s completely precognitive. It’s pre-language. Articulating it comes afterwards, and then you spend years trying to decode that experience, but words always feel inadequate.

IT: You mentioned in your talk last night that it was difficult to do Internet research for many of the fruits you were trying to study. What role did the Internet play in shaping your research? Do you get a sense that there is much more information easily accessible on the Internet, or is it still too esoteric of a topic?

Gollner: Research is changing because of the increased access to data. Like never before. But even still, the best stuff is not on the Internet. People aren’t on the Internet. Stories aren’t on the Internet. Just weird little facts. (Laughs) I bring them into my stories to help bring them to life, but you still have to empirically experience those things yourself. You have to be able to pay attention to that tiny voice in the bottom of your mind that’s throwing things up to you, and you try to listen to that voice and write them down in your notebook. And for that to happen, you have to go places.

IT: It seems that The Fruit Hunters is just as much about the people as it as about the fruits themselves.

Gollner: Totally. It goes back to your question about what makes a good story. People are stories. People, characters, are what’s amazing. In non-fiction, characters are people who can speak the way you wish you could write. The things they say are like fully formed crystals that are beautifully cut on all sides. You just write them down and think, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’ (Laughs) Of course, those people are very, very hard to find. But they are out there and when you find one, you kind of hold on for dear life and hope that they keep talking, and that you will keep writing them down.

I really only understood that until I was writing this book. As a journalist, there’s not as much reporting that happens for your stories. You may speak to someone on the phone or do an interview briefly, but there’s usually not as much reporting involved. But when you start getting deeper into things and start talking to a lot of people for a story, you will suddenly find this one guy who is your character. It’s like, ‘Whoa.’

In my chapter on grapples, that character’s name was Gary Snyder. It was like everything that he said was perfect, in the weirdest way. It’s one of two uncomfortable chapters because I was there to find out that he uses bird repellent pesticide as a flavoring agent, and he didn’t want me to find that out. And that was the first time that I did an investigative thing, and I didn’t know it would end up being like that. I just wanted to know more about grapples! It was like the story wrote itself.

IT: Did you find that there were aspects of your book that elicited controversy in any way?

Gollner: Hmm. That’s a good question. I don’t know if I want to answer that. (Laughs) There are a couple of things here: Your responsibility as a writer is to tell the truth, your truth. To tell your story. And the people that you are writing about think that you are going to tell their story. And there is a conflict there. People sometimes don’t realize what they’ve gotten into when they agree to do an interview, and you as a writer may not realize what you have gotten yourself into either, because you could potentially learn some things about this person that are quite intense. And then you are burdened with that knowledge, and with the decisions of what to do with what you have learned. You have to ask yourself some hard questions about where your loyalties lie. Is it to these people who you have sort of charmed into opening up themselves to you. Or is the loyalty to your story?

IT: It seems like there is a weird trust at play there.

Gollner: Yeah. It’s one of the most intimate relationships that there is, outside of a family or a psychologist relationship. It’s very intimate. When you interview someone a lot of times and really get into their life, they often will really open themselves up to you. Almost more than they would open up to themselves.

IT: Do you ever experience guilt over making that decision?

Gollner: I do. I do experience guilt, totally. But I also have realized that it is part of what this job entails. I don’t wait to say it’s ‘business as usual’ because it is also an art. It’s a craft, storytelling, and this is one of the things that goes along with the craft. It’s like a blacksmith that gets soot all over his clothes. Well, you get psychic soot all over your clothes with this. (Laughs) Yeah, you find ways of dealing with it.

What helps is finding elder writers talk about it. It helps having mentors and learning about other ways people have dealt with it. And one of those great people for me was Tom Wolfe. Not in terms of the way he writes, but in terms of this essay he wrote as an introduction for ‘The New Journalism.’