Book Notes: The Overstory by Richard Powers

I recently finished the book < The Overstory> by Richard Powers, which was published in 2018 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2019. I was introduced to this book through a sketchnote community known as Verbal to Visual, where Kelly Pratt and Doug Neil spoke highly of it. Their words piqued my interest, prompting me to borrow a physical copy from the Oakland library on January 13, 2023. It took me about a month to finish and it is a really big book (about 500+ pages!).

Side effect alert: “The Overstory” will inspire you to start paying attention to trees and their significance. If you are interested in a more detailed review, below are my book notes and reflections on this book.

📝 Summary

This book is structured as a tree with four parts: Roots, Trunk, Crown, and Seeds.

The first part Roots comprises eight short stories introducing 9 characters and their family history and most importantly their connections with trees. Each character has a signature tree. For instance, the artist Nick echoes the practically extinct American chestnut tree, vulnerable and dying. Olivia is associated with the elegant and beautiful maidenhair, also known as the Ginkgo tree. Another character Doug is associated with Douglas Fir, with its sense of integrity and perseverance. The forest scientist Patricia is linked with the ancient and wise Beech.

Part 2 Trunk is where the characters meet, and their fate became entangled. They seek to protect the last remaining old-growth redwoods forest in the Pacific Northwest. However, their endeavors end in a romantic yet tragic event, leading to Part 3 Crown, where the characters grow apart like the branches of a tree.

Part 4 Seeds is my favorite chapter. One scene that left a last impression on me is when Patricia, at a gathering in silicon valley, imitates the “suicidal tree” that can only reproduce once in a lifetime and drinks poison in front of everyone to raise awareness.

I find it most fascinating how this book seamlessly blends together fact, fiction, and research.

🧞‍♂️ Fresh Perspective

Through the character Neelay, Richard Powers offers his view on a good direction of AI, which is able to speculate on what it takes to live and put those speculations to test. AI can tell people what life and nature want from people, instead of people’s endless wants from nature. The wrong direction is when our robot descendants use us for fuel, or keep us in infinitely entertaining zoos.

🧙‍♀️ Memorable Stories

• Douglas Pavlicek: he participated in the Stanford Prison experiment when he was a young man. He joined the US air force and served in Thailand until one day his jet gets damaged by a missile. Douglas was saved because of a banyan tree. He then went back to Oregon and planted thousands of douglas fir seedlings but discovers that it only helped the logging company to cut down more virgin forests.
• Olivia Vandergriff: this character was inspired by a real-life tree-sitting activist – Julia Lorraine Hill. She lived in a 200-foot (61m)-tall, approximately 1000-year-old California redwood tree for 738 days between Dec 10, 1997 and Dec 18, 1999.
• Patricia Westerford: She is also based on real-life forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, who first discovered that trees can communicate with one another by exchanging chemicals through the air and through the fungus network underground.
• My personal favorite character is Neelay, probably because of I work as a coder. Neelay created his first game inspired by a bottle tree at Stanford. I recently visited Stanford and found the tree!
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❝ Favorite Quotes

The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

Richard Powers

What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer.

Richard Powers

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🌳 Tree Facts

• When reading about the chestnut tree disappearing in the US, I was curious whether it was fact or fiction. It turns out it’s true. There used to be 4 billion American chestnut trees but now the trees are technically extinct due to a fungus infection.
• Another cool tree fact is about Tachigai versicolor, also known as the “suicide tree”. It only flowers once in its lifetime. And because of the thick rain forest canopy, Tachigali’s wind-borne seeds never land far from their parent. In order to let the offspring germinate and reach the sun, the old tree falls, opening a hole in the canopy and its rotting trunk enriches the soil for new seedlings.
  • from Patricia’s words: “Did you know that every broadleaf tree on Earth has flowers? Many mature species flower at least once a year. But this tree, Tachigali versicolor, this one flowers only once. Now, suppose you could have sex only once in your entire life…How can a creature survive, by putting everything into a one-night stand?”

🍯 Key IDEAS to TRY

• Learn to identify trees! I brought this book after reading <The Overstory. I was able to identify 15 trees already!
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• Go visit old growth forest once: the author Richard Powers mentioned that the impact of the book on himself is that he moved from Stanford to Great Smokey Mountain because of the visceral feeling (the look, the smell, the touch) he first visited there to see the old-growth forest. The largest old-growth forest in the United States is the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, which covers over 16 million acres and contains large areas of intact temperate rainforest.