Is it wrong to read a piece about a fatal kidney disease for
pleasure? No, not when the piece is by Elif Batuman, whose art is in her
marvelous gift for description. Remember the turkeys “nodding their heads and
gurgling like members of a jury,” in her superb “The Memory Kitchen” (The New Yorker, April 10, 2010), and the
corn bunting’s distinctive cry (“which resembles jangling keys”), in her
wonderful “Natural Histories” (The New
Yorker, October 24, 2011)? Her “Poisoned Land,” in this week’s issue,
contains a number of pleasurable details, e.g., her depiction of researcher
Calin Tatu (“Tatu, who is in his forties, and has a buzz cut and a
close-trimmed beard holds a medical degree in immunology but prefers working in
the lab to seeing patients. He was wearing tinted glasses and a cargo vest, and
had spent the previous week climbing Mont Blanc. At lunch, over double
espressos and two Coke Zeros, he told us about his research”), her description
of aristolochia (“In the golden afternoon light, I saw the famous plant for the
first time, recognizing its heart-shaped leaves, narrow yellow tubular flowers,
and the round brown pods that have given rise to one of its local names:
priest’s balls. Tatu broke open a pod. Inside, hundreds of seeds were lined up
in two rows, like pupils in a schoolhouse”), and this glorious evocation of a
Bosnian cornfield:
The cornstalks seemed to be standing around chaotically,
like skinny, crazy people, their arms flung in all directions. As we drove
past, there was one magical moment when they arranged themselves into rows and
it was possible to see clearly all the way to the end, before they dissolved
back into disorder.
What a delightful, irresistible passage!
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