The Anthropocene Reviewed, Reviewed
I don’t care much for non-fiction. In fact, I prefer the exact opposite. The high fantasy worlds of Sanderson or Rothfuss are safe havens I can escape into. They are bastions of solitude and peace, even if the author’s world is at war. Sometimes - many times - anything is better than the Anthropocene.
But The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green is an exception. I don’t believe any book has had such a short TBR shelf life in my little library. I’m not ashamed to admit that I often pick up a book, read a few chapters, and return it to my shelves because it’s not the story I need at that moment. Sometimes the story is too surface level. Others are too deep and broad. I come back to them when the time is right.
The Anthropocene Reviewed found its way into my life at the time when I needed it. A time that I believe I will look back on as my biggest turning point. My copy arrived, signed of course because John Green’s desire to give himself repetitive motion injury outweighs his desire to leave a page blank, just one short month after the worst panic attack I have ever had in my life. I spent April 17th falling into progressively worsening thought spirals that ranged from “I’m going to lose my job” to “I am dying. I hope my husband tells our son I was a good mom.”
That night, I did not sleep.
On Sunday, I told my husband that I hoped he would tell our son I was a good mom. And that I needed help.
On Monday, I got help.
One month later, my copy of The Anthropocene Reviewed arrived. The medication I’d started taking was beginning to level off, and my interest in Things was rekindled. Things like Writing. Things like Playing. Things like Reading. I cracked open the lavender spine and chuckled at the two-and-a-half star review of the half-title page. Then I read the Introduction and knew that this book would bring me the same nostalgic comfort you feel when the sky is a matte gray in the earliest days of autumn, your tea is warm enough to soothe you but cool enough to drink, and a quiet rain blesses the earth outside your window in a rhythmic pitter-pat that lulls you into an afternoon nap.
My favorite quote in the book - and there are many great ones - comes from the Introduction. “I was suddenly a very small boat in very high seas.” It resonates with me in many ways. On the first read, it captured what it feels like for me to be in the throes of anxiety. As the high seas become violent, as I’m one crashing wave away from splintering apart, I feel very small. Rereading the Introduction now - from a much healthier mental state - I’m struck by how my brain assumed that the high seas Green was referring to were churning and ripping the boat board by board. Hmm.
That’s what I love most about The Anthropocene Reviewed. It is beautiful and raw metaphor that can resonate with a wide audience of thousands, or a small audience of two - the self you were a short month ago and the self you are now in this moment.
Green’s writing is, at some times, comedic. At some times, stoic. And at all times, genuine. I enjoyed every essay, though I admittedly have a few favorites. The two I want to expand on are “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance” and “Sycamore Trees.”
“Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance” tells the story of a printed photograph that Green sees almost every day. The photo, taken by August Sander and initially titled “Young Farmers,” depicts three men dressed in nice suits with canes in their right hands and straight lines on their faces where smiles are usually seen. Green talks about his obsession with this photo. How he spent years working to track down the biographies and other photographs of the boys depicted in the image. He says, “In the end, as with so much effort in the world, I was not able to do this by myself and succeeded only by collaborating with others.” While he is speaking of Tuataria, this essay reminded me of all those who have helped me along the way. Many are still here, still helping when I need it. They encourage me to write my novel or to pursue the Stories I want to Keep or grow a lush garden like my grandmother did, because I am her granddaughter and the earth needs a stewardess. Nothing is accomplished alone. On my hardest days - and I still have hard ones - I need this reminder.
“Depression is exhausting,” Green writes in “Sycamore Trees.” “It gets old so fast, listening to the elaborate prose of your brain tell you that you’re an idiot for even trying.” I don’t know that truer words have ever been written. In this essay, Green talks about how his brain plays a game he calls What’s Even The Point? in which his brain creates this elaborate certainty that there is no point in trying or doing anything, because nothing really matters. I always thought that all people felt that way. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I realized that some people simply don’t. And I felt robbed. I felt like I’d been cheated and that whatever divine dealer you believe in and stacked the deck in the house’s favor. Green captures through stunning, beautiful prose and metaphor what this blinding blizzard of depression and numbness feels like. And in two short paragraphs, he gives me a reminder of what it is to appreciate life and being alive and loving. A reminder I need less these days, but need none the less:
But for now I’m just looking up at that tree, thinking about how it turned air and water and sunshine into wood and bark and leaves, and I realize that I am in the vast, dark shade of this immense tree. I feel the solace of that shade, the relief it provides. And that’s the point.
My son grabs my wrist, pulling my gaze from the colossal tree to his thin-fingered hand. “I love you,” I tell him. I can hardly get the words out.
Until The Anthropocene Reviewed, I’ve never had a book that stayed on my nightstand after I finished reading it. But there it rests, and will, until I don’t need it anymore. Until I find myself not needing the familiar comfort of the touching, thoughtful stories told in its page. I give John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars.
And because this turned into my own story of dealing with mental health, I give anxiety a half star.
