Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, Merlin Sheldrake
I’ve been looking forward to Entangled Life for quite a while, so hurrah! It’s finally here. I read it pretty quickly, and then had to put it aside and think whether it actually met my expectations. Sheldrake’s really, really keen on fungi, that much is obvious; sometimes I was less interested in his poetic hands-on eagerness to understand them close up — I wouldn’t wax lyrical about Mycobacterium tuberculosis in quite the same way, however wonderful and terrible I find it.
In the main, it’s accessible and interesting, and centres fungi completely in a way that normally doesn’t happen. There are lots of books about microbiology and few are the ones that really delve into fungi, partly for the good reason that we don’t actually understand fungi very well and have a lot to learn. There are a lot of interesting facts in this book, and some interesting speculations as well.
I just… I don’t know, I ended it feeling that Sheldrake was more interested in evangelising for fungi than anything else. The bit at the end where he says he’s going to seed a copy of the book with spores and dampen it, and then eat the mushrooms that grow… and then pulp another book to make alcohol out of it — I don’t know, it had me pulling back a lot and saying “y’what, mate?” There’s something very performative about it, and if someone were to tell me he were being mind-controlled by our secret fungal overlords, well… In fiction, that’s exactly what’s going on.
It’s odd for me that I ended the book with that strong feeling of “…dude, what?” instead of fascination with the genuinely interesting scientific titbits newly learned.
Oay please indulge me for a moment with this comment: This book came up on my Twitter feed a few weeks ago because the author was doing a launch with a local (self-described metaphysical) bookstore. With the fungi focus + unique name, I immediately wondered if he had any connection to this musician I like named Cosmo Sheldrake (who uses a lot of nature recordings he makes in his music)… turns out they are brothers. What you’ve written about the performative aspect fits exactly what I would imagine about this guy, haha.
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Iiiinteresting! Thanks for sharing that… it’s certainly context.
I know this is necromancy, but Merlin and Cosmo are also the sons of parapsychologist (and former biochemist) Rupert Sheldrake, so the “performative” aspect or the general… woo-ness, might actually have come honestly by being raised by a weird hippie dude. Also, from friends who have done shrooms, the book basically *feels* like a good shroom trip and Merlin says himself he’s done shrooms so it’s at least partially also the result of getting high on his own supply.
I found the audiobook, which he narrates himself, incredibly soothing. Which means I slept more than I remember the book. XD