Stewart’s Award-Winning NOT SO RICH AS YOU THINK

For years George R. Stewart had been writing about the interrelationships between humans and the Earth system.  Most of the writing was fictional, some historical.  Now, in the late 1960s, perhaps inspired by Silent Spring, he wrote his first examination of specific environmental problems  afflicting this nation and much of the world.

Not So Rich As You Think  examines the various issues that others were pressuring society to correct, or authors were writing about, and suggests solutions.  But Stewart, as always, went beyond the conventional to break new ground.

One chapter, “The Ultimates,” was, so far as I know, the first general description of the dangers of global warming.  Stewart describes the dangers of carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere, even using the phrase “greenhouse effect” to describe it.  (He prefers the phrase “closed-car  effect.”)  But he is not alarmist about it, suggesting that Earth has weathered such things in the past, and will likely weather this one.

Most environmental literature and many environmentalists view humans as special, like the Bible; but the environmentalists see humans as a special problem that somehow needs to be controlled or even removed.  Stewart always considered humans and their works, including their communities, as part of the ecosystem.  So in this book, he considers how human community are being harmed by the same corporate/bureaucratic policies which are poisoning the water and the air.   In a chapter entitled “Waste Without Weight” Stewart describes how the modern corporate state weakens social capital by constantly moving people around and thus prevents those people from ever developing a sense of community.  He suggests that the disorder caused by development and pollution may have a terrible effect on the personalities of humans, theorizing that juvenile delinquency may be one result.

The book was illustrated by the brilliant satirical cartoonist, Osborn.   His cartoons in Stewart’s book emphasize the connections between “filthy lucre” and a polluted society.  (Osborn’s first cartoon series was done for the Navy in World War II.  It was about a clumsy fellow named Dilbert.  It was the inspiration for the modern comic strip “Dilbert.”)

The book was well-received, although Kirkus called it “second-rate muckraking.”  The book received the Sidney Hillman Award. A copy of the book today, in fine condition, can go for well over one hundred dollars, so the market speaks well of the book.

Anyone interested in reading the contemporary environmental observations of one of the founders of modern ecological perspectives will find the book interesting reading. Stewart’s inclusion of the effects on human community and social capital means that the book still stands by itself, for it was and is the pioneer in a humanistic ecological viewpoint.

FIRE – Stewart’s Second Ecological/Geographical Novel

Time for a slight change in focus.

Although I consider Stewart  an ecological author – that is, one who defines human character by how individuals relate to the ecosystem – a good friend who is a distinguished geographer reminds me that Stewart can also be considered a geographic author – one who writes about the land as a character in the work.  Stewart probably considered himself more geographer than ecologist or environmentalist until the Environmental Movement came to have such an influence on the world, even though he was one of those who laid the thought-foundation for that Movement.  But whether we consider him a geographic or ecological novelist, his second novel about “the land” fits well under both definitions.

Fire is the story of another ecosystem event.  This tim. it’s a huge fire in the Sierra Nevada, north of the Donner Pass region.  As in Storm, the fire becomes the protagonist, and human character is defined by how his characters respond to the great fire.  Again, he names the fire – Spitcat – although this time he also names most of the humans as well.

The book focuses a little on ecology than Storm does, opening and closing with events that reveal the interrelationships in the ecosystem.   It opens with a lightning strike, and closes with the fire-opened serotinous cones dropping their seeds to the ash-enriched, now-sunlit earth.   In one of the strongest passages, the old Ranger and the young Chief Ranger talk about the effect of the fire on one of the most beautiful parts of the forest – a glen, frequented by deer.  The old ranger is broken-hearted to see the glen burned over, and the deer killed.  It has been his wilderness temple.   But the young Chief Ranger tells him that seeing something as beautiful depends on our place in the ecosystem.  To a rabbit the brushy landscape that will replace the glen for a while is a place of great beauty.  The old Ranger, who grew up in the forest  is a Man of the Forest – he only knows that he has lost what he loves the most.  The Chief Ranger, college-educated, is the spokesman for the ecological view of Earth.  In their conversation, the reader, for the first time, feels the drama of the dawning of the ecological view of the world.

Fire is the only novel in which he repeated himself.  That is, he used similar techniques to tell a similar eco/geographic story, and set the story in what appears to be the same landscape, the central Sierra Nevada, where Storm is set. But Stewart challenged himself in writing the book. Although the novel is set in a national forest just north of Tahoe,  that forest does not exist. To make it seem real, he asked his son Jack to create a map of the forest, sprinkled with names on creeks and mountains and ridges and lakes; then had famous impressionist painter David Park sculpt and paint a model of the forest.  Working from the excellent map and model, he could easily visual the terrain of the fictional Ponderosa National Forest, and thus the events on that terrain.

People still look for the Ponderosa National Forest, but it is only to be found – like Middle Earth – between the pages of a book.

The book, like Storm before it, was both a best-seller and a Book-of-the Month Club selection.  And, like Storm, it would be filmed.  There are two versions of Fire – one, so corrupted by the Hollywood studio which bought the rights that it is unrecognizable, became Red Skies In Montana.  The other version was a TV movie done by Walt Disney.  While somewhat lightweight, A Fire Called Jeremiah kept the ecological focus of the book.

Disney was quite a fan of Stewart’s work.  Before Fire was written, Disney invited him to the studio to work as a consultant.  Stewart spent a few days there, working up ideas for educational films and a series of proposed series of films about American folklore.  Although never credited, I believe his influence can be seen in the folklore films – Song of the South, Johnny Appleseed, and the others – and the True-Life Adventure films.  Stewart and Disney had lunch together during Stewart’s studio time; and Disney sent a warm letter to Stewart after his visit.

With the publication and massive readership of Storm and Fire, Stewart had begun laying an intellectual foundation for the paradigm shift which led to the Environmental Movement, and the acceptance of environmental thinking by most people today.   But it was his next book which would cement that paradigm shift into the consciousness of humankind.  That third ecological novel, now considered one of the great American novel, and never out of print, is one of the great intellectual and literary accomplishments of the 20th century – and perhaps of the second millennium.