- In 1997, Michael Pollan wrote an essay, a section of which was originally "about making opium tea from his home-grown poppies and drinking the tea". He had some "fear that the Drug Enforcement Administration would raid his house and seize his property" if this were published, as he thought it could be viewed as “taunting the government.”
- Pollan's new (2021) book "This is Your Mind on Plants" restores that material. (Which, incidentally, involved finding a zip drive, and using LibreOffice to read the old Word document.)
- Recently, in a Tim Ferris podcast, Pollan's version of the events of 1997 (see https://tim.blog/2021/06/30/michael-pollan-this-is-your-mind... starting with the phrase "in the ’90s at the height of the drug war") kind of suggests that the section was left out because of the advice he got from the lawyers of Harper’s Magazine.
- (Though he does mention their lawyer saying "you must publish this article for the good of the Republic", and a contract the publisher made saying “If you get arrested, we will not only defend you, we will pay your wife a salary for the whole amount of time it takes for you to defend yourself and if necessary, serve your sentence. And if they take your house, we’ll buy you a comparable new one.”)
- In the posted submission here, John R. "Rick" MacArthur, the president and publisher of Harper's Magazine, points out they did their very best to get him to publish it, and it was Michael Pollan who "insisted on withdrawing the passages about making and drinking the tea".
- It concludes with "Pollan took the easy way out. I don’t blame him for having been afraid. He just now shouldn’t try to lay responsibility for his decision on anyone but himself."
That's the summary, but after having read both the posted article and the transcript of the podcast (Edit: and most of the 1997 article, which is a fine picture of paranoia), it's not clear to me what disagreement there is, if any. Both versions seem to agree almost entirely: both versions point out that the publisher heavily pushed Pollan to publish the article in its entirety, even offering him that amazing contract, and it was Pollan who chickened out.
The main disagreement seems to be about Pollan's speculation in the podcast:
> I mean, he’s a crusading publisher, like a crusading journalist. And I shouldn’t speak for him, but my guess is he was hoping something would happen. He was hoping I would get arrested. This would put Harper’s on the map. This would be a giant case. He would take it to the Supreme Court, and he would. He has bottomless pockets. I mean, and publishing for him is kind of an avocation. And he was always looking for the big story that Harper’s would get involved with. I mean, we saw that just last year with the Harper’s letter around free speech versus the efforts to curb free speech in the name of various woke values. He’s not afraid of controversy.
Here the publisher himself mentions "It was a bitter blow to me, because I have always put the freedom to publish in the forefront of my work, and I lost some respect for Pollan after that", so the entire thing seems a non-issue to me. All we've left of the disagreement is
• the (rich, fearless) publisher encouraging an author in every way possible to publish something controversial,
• the (not-so-rich, not-so-fearless) author thinking/speculating something along the lines of "it's easy for you, but I'm not so bold as to court controversy; it's [not] my cup of tea".
Well, counting now, the "summary" part of the comment is 329 words long (and there are another 312 words in the comment), while the posted article here is 900 words long (the original one was nearly 18000 words). But consider that the relevant part of the podcast transcript is 2000+ words long and the comment above is a summary of both, and more importantly the summary is written from a neutral point of view, in chronological order with some added context, and I think it has some value…
But yeah, after typing the comment (mostly for my own understanding) and realising how short the posted article was, I did consider whether to post the comment or not, but having accidentally ended with that perfect pun, it was hard to abandon it. :-)
I'm just gobsmacked that the publisher saw himself as superior to Pollan given that neither of them was willing to risk federal charges and possible prison. There was nothing stopping MacArthur from making his own opium tea and drinking it.
Publishers generally shouldn't be in the business of poaching writers ideas, even if the writer eventually is too afraid too allow what they've written to be be published. It is not as if there was some urgent conspiracy that wasn't being exposed--the public was aware that opium existed--the tea drinking just supported the point of the essay. Your reading is rather uncharitable.
Nobody should poach ideas. But there's nothing wrong with asking, "Hey, if you are that firm on not wanting to write about it, do you mind if I do?" The publisher apparently didn't do that, but still saw fit to "lose respect".
I also don't see what's uncharitable about my reading. I see a rich man looking down on somebody for not being willing to take a risk he won't take himself. What do you claim I'm missing here?
- In 1997, Michael Pollan wrote an essay, a section of which was originally "about making opium tea from his home-grown poppies and drinking the tea". He had some "fear that the Drug Enforcement Administration would raid his house and seize his property" if this were published, as he thought it could be viewed as “taunting the government.”
- The published version (available at https://www.wesjones.com/pollan1.htm as pointed out by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27804124), under the title "Opium, Made Easy" in Harper’s Magazine, left out that section.
- Pollan's new (2021) book "This is Your Mind on Plants" restores that material. (Which, incidentally, involved finding a zip drive, and using LibreOffice to read the old Word document.)
- Recently, in a Tim Ferris podcast, Pollan's version of the events of 1997 (see https://tim.blog/2021/06/30/michael-pollan-this-is-your-mind... starting with the phrase "in the ’90s at the height of the drug war") kind of suggests that the section was left out because of the advice he got from the lawyers of Harper’s Magazine.
- (Though he does mention their lawyer saying "you must publish this article for the good of the Republic", and a contract the publisher made saying “If you get arrested, we will not only defend you, we will pay your wife a salary for the whole amount of time it takes for you to defend yourself and if necessary, serve your sentence. And if they take your house, we’ll buy you a comparable new one.”)
- In the posted submission here, John R. "Rick" MacArthur, the president and publisher of Harper's Magazine, points out they did their very best to get him to publish it, and it was Michael Pollan who "insisted on withdrawing the passages about making and drinking the tea".
- It concludes with "Pollan took the easy way out. I don’t blame him for having been afraid. He just now shouldn’t try to lay responsibility for his decision on anyone but himself."
That's the summary, but after having read both the posted article and the transcript of the podcast (Edit: and most of the 1997 article, which is a fine picture of paranoia), it's not clear to me what disagreement there is, if any. Both versions seem to agree almost entirely: both versions point out that the publisher heavily pushed Pollan to publish the article in its entirety, even offering him that amazing contract, and it was Pollan who chickened out.
The main disagreement seems to be about Pollan's speculation in the podcast:
> I mean, he’s a crusading publisher, like a crusading journalist. And I shouldn’t speak for him, but my guess is he was hoping something would happen. He was hoping I would get arrested. This would put Harper’s on the map. This would be a giant case. He would take it to the Supreme Court, and he would. He has bottomless pockets. I mean, and publishing for him is kind of an avocation. And he was always looking for the big story that Harper’s would get involved with. I mean, we saw that just last year with the Harper’s letter around free speech versus the efforts to curb free speech in the name of various woke values. He’s not afraid of controversy.
Here the publisher himself mentions "It was a bitter blow to me, because I have always put the freedom to publish in the forefront of my work, and I lost some respect for Pollan after that", so the entire thing seems a non-issue to me. All we've left of the disagreement is
• the (rich, fearless) publisher encouraging an author in every way possible to publish something controversial,
• the (not-so-rich, not-so-fearless) author thinking/speculating something along the lines of "it's easy for you, but I'm not so bold as to court controversy; it's [not] my cup of tea".