As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art

Environmental History, Jul 2002 by Hoffman, Robin E

As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art. By Rebecca Solnit: The University of Georgia Press, 2ool. 234 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $34.95.

Many times, reading may serve as a means of travel; reading may provide us with an adventure. In Rebecca Solnit's, As Eve Said to the Serpent, the world is transported to the reader in the pictorial and rhetorical images of landscapes near and far, contemporary and biblical, real and abstract.

This book is not for an impatient person or one weak of soul. The book is organized into distinct essays, all with a unique approach to the concept of landscape. The tone of each essay is set with an introductory quote or two from authors representing an array of philosophies. Solnit's writing follows with a clearly stated thesis; from there the journey begins, with each of the essays continuing in a circuitons manner. For the stories and images that Solnit presents are collected from numerous references including contemporary artists, local environmental groups, and somewhat obscure historical events. There are points when the discussion seems tangential to the stated thesis and it is here that the reader's patience is essential. For example, in the essay entitled, "The Computer: The Garden of Merging Paths," the narrative takes the reader from Solnit's first visit to United Technologies in San Jose to the home of Sarah Winchester: "the widow of the man whose repeating rifle was the definitive weapon in western expansion" (p. 111), to the story of the breeding of the Bing cherry. After ten or so pages of this wandering, Solnit rewards the patient reader with a precis and suddenly it all makes sense. In this essay what is often billed as clean technology is presented in a whole new light as to its impact on the landscape. The obvious effects are visible in the unbridled development of subdivisions, industrial parks, and freeways in places such as Silicon Valley-the Winchester Mystery House and United Technologies references. The not so obvious effects are expressed in society's experiences and relationships with the landscape, most noticeably the fascination with VR, or virtual reality. Solnit also points out a new orientation to the landscape: "The real landscape of Silicon Valley seems wholly interior, not only in the metaphor of the maze and the terrain of the offices and suburbs but also in the much-promoted ideal of the user never leaving a well-wired home and the goal of eliminating the world and reconstituting it as information" (p. 19). The reader finishes the essay pondering the Apple Computer logo. We are told that the Apple headquarters are located on the former Olson orchard-the Bing cherry reference-and then asked, "What does it mean, this rainbow-colored apple with the bite taken out of it ... ?" (p.121).

Each of Solnit's essays speak to the tenuous relationship between nature, culture, and science. She provides scenarios and examples that strip away superficial beauty and subtly persuade the reader into pondering the aesthetic, asking which of these perspectives controls the others or which is of greater value. Perhaps the most poignant appraisal of this relationship is illustrated through an exploration of the nuclear bomb. Solnit's narrative speaks to the smallest particle; the atom is the smallest piece of nature. It is also a vital component in the largest reaction-a scientific marvel as the nuclear explosion, followed by the fallout-physical as the radiation and cultural in human strife.

There is some disappointment that photographs of many of the works of art cited by Solnit are not included and that many of the images that are shown are without explanatory text.

In Eve Said to the Serpent the prose and images are complex. Through these, the message that Solnit communicates is quite simple-the landscape is not just a series of geological formations nor just a collection of locations. It is a manifestation of societies new and ancient so entangled that any hopes of redemption and preservation may be thwarted by the very intelligence that has fed the destruction.

Robin E. Hoffman teaches with the Faculty of Landscape Architecture at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, N.Y Her research focuses on visual assessments of forested environments.