Why have American novelists, especially the 'serious' ones, got this thing about tree species?

Question

Look at Franzen's the Corrections. He names two tree species on the first page. This is par for the course: the private eye can't drive past some woodland on the way to an interview without the narrator telling us what all the trees were. Why have the more 'literary' writers got this compulsion to spell out tree species? Surely the average American these days is a townie - or is it because he's a townie and the writer wants to connect him to his roots? I think all those summer camps must cast a long shadow.

Answer 1

Actually, I think you got it right in your own question: "the writer wants to connect [the reader] to his roots." Quite literally -- not because he's a "townie," not because he's been taught to use specific, concrete details (though that is not irrelevant), not just because he needs to throw words around.

I can't speak for novelists, but in my poetry I often find myself using images of trees and wildflowers. The tree is rooted in the the soil, in hard-fast reality, dependent on the earth for its nurture and stability. But the tree always reaches for the sky, drinking in air and light, slithering in the breeze, shaken by the winds, surviving storms (or not!), turning the raw elements of life into something beautiful, or at least something unique even in its commonness.

Trees do not represent just the natural world that we live within; they also represent the natural beings that we are. I cannot walk under a spreading live oak, a towering pine, a scraggly mesquite, or a maple changing through the seasons without a sense of the blessing of life and the limitations of mortality.

Writers to not just throw in a tree every now and then as a kind of decorative element, a "symbol" if you will. God forbid. They don't have to say it out loud. Or dwell on it in detail. But trees remind us, consciously and unconsciously, of the beauty and, yes, the fragility of living things. Novelists and poets -- whether consciously or unconsiously -- "connect us to our roots." That, after all, is what good literature does.

Answer 2

Do you mean species as in the scientific name, or just telling whether it is an cedar or a poplar or whatever? I really don't care if the narrating character is sitting under the shade of a Quercus alba (if that is spelled right), but what's wrong with mentioning that it's an oak?

I'm a townie, and I know types of trees. No one made me learn them at some summer camp, either. I learned because I like being able to tell a silver maple from a red one, even before the leaves turn.

Answer 3

Publishers, editors and readers want the writing to be specific so that when you read the description, the environment is not ambiguous. The writer is basically supposed to paint a picture with words for the settings. Even most urbanscapes will have trees, and they provide a nice contrast to the hard edged parts of the scene.

Answer 4

Apart from Franzen, who else?

Answer 5

because it takes a lot of words to fill a book

Answer 6

you're right there's too much tree-hugging and not enough bestiality.