As part of my off-season regime, I am hopelessly trying to catch up on books that I am scouting out for the 2023 version of Destination: Books. My anthropologist daughter Cynthia sent me one such book for consideration– The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.
The book begins by centering on the matsutake mushroom as an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. What adds to its uniqueness is that it thrives in damaged landscapes in the northern hemisphere—most notably Japan, Oregon, and Finland. By damaged, I mean scrubby landscapes of usually pine trees leftover from commercial logging by the timber industry. It cannot be grown commercially and harvesting it relies on a diverse population of mushroom hunters* who vary in background, customs, and language. In Oregon, many of the hunters are Hmong (from Laos), lu Mien (Laos and Thailand), or Khmer (Cambodia) who migrated to the Northwest after families who were displaced by the War in Southeast Asia. Also, included in the book is a history of the Japanese forestry industry, which factors into today’s matsutake landscape as well.
Tsing describes in detail this unusual supply chain of matsutake commerce. Since the mushroom thrives in human-disturbed forests, it offers some resurgence in ravaged ecosystems. Quoting the book’s jacket: “In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?” By investigating one of the world’s most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents “an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.”
Mushroom hits the sweet spot of a Destination: Books offering—the intersection of sustainability, distant places to visit and good writing. Tsing's book is wide in scope and can be challenging at times, but well worth the effort.
The book is available in the Fungi and Mushroom section of the Destination: Books online store (powered by Bookshop.org) next to Merlin Sheldrake’s classic Entangled Life. Purchases made there are shared with independent booksellers like Destination: Books.
* The photograph of an immigrant Thai mushroom hunter at the top of the posting comes from a New York Times 2013 video series. Thomas Patterson took the photo. (The Mushroom book has many black and white hotos, but none that I could get ahold of.)