Puck

I read Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles: The Strange Realm of Fungi, by Lucy Kavaler, which has been republished in the Authors Guild Back-in-Print series of notable books. I reviewed Mushrooms a while back, and said in part:

Originally published in 1965, Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles stands as a landmark in popular science writing. There had been field guides to fungi before her, but Kavaler’s book may be the first to broadly and popularly survey those life forms without which Gaia would have no groove.

When originally published, Kavaler’s Mushrooms was described as “fascinating” by Time magazine in a lead review, and as “superb” by the New Haven Register.

I asked Kavaler a few questions via email, about drug plants and using the Web to once again market her book. Here is her reply; the voice of the interviewer is interpolated by Kavaler.

Q. Lucy, what did you find so exciting about fungi that you wrote a book about them?
A. “I felt like a flower that had just started to bloom” … “I became an angel floating deliciously through space.” You might not think I am answering your question by giving these quotations, but they excited me when I first heard them from people who were taking LSD-25 or consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms. It’s obvious that hallucinogenic mushrooms (like all mushrooms) are fungi, but oddly, LSD-25 was originally discovered in ergot, which is also a fungus.

Then, I was invited to join a group of writers, artists, and composers going to Mexico to partake of hallucinogenic mushrooms and write while under their influence. The idea was to find out how creative people react to a consciousness-altering drug. At that time, I had written books on the natural sciences and in marked contrast, highly plotted short stories. This was just the background they were looking for.

Q. Did you accept the invitation?
A. I was tempted, and partly because there has been a sacred mushroom cult in Mexico for hundreds of years, and on an earlier visit to the Yucatan, I had seen ancient stones in the shape of mushrooms with human faces carved on them.

Q, Did you yield to the temptation?
A. I was too afraid of having a bad trip when I was on my own in a foreign country. (This was not a nurturing group of people.) Later, I was glad I hadn’t gone. The whole group was arrested (I’ve never been told on what grounds) and sent to jail. And a Mexican jail – well, I’m a human rights activist and if there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that you don’t want to be imprisoned in a country like that.

Q. And this led you to “Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles?”
A. In time. I began to notice fungi in whatever I read or heard the line by Casanove, “Have Roquefort cheese with a fine wine and you’ll be ready for love/” Both the wine and the cheese are made with fungi, as are whiskey, beer and bread. Penicillium, the mold that changed medical history, is a fungus. Without the process of decay, brought about by fungi, life on earth would have ended almost as soon as it began. I saw the vastness of this kingdom and its influence on every one of us. No one else had seen fungi in this way, and I felt compelled to present my vision.

Q. Once you had the idea, did you find it easy to sell it to a publisher?
A. Anything but. I felt this book had to be written, but publishers did not think people would buy a book on fungi. Finally, a publisher decided to take a chance on it, gave me a very small advance, and warned me the print order would be small and no publicity was planned.

Q. I gather it didn’t work out that way.
A. As soon as I turned in the manuscript and the advance copies were sent to book reviewers, everything changed. The publisher was inundated with phone calls. Time magazine sent a photographer to the house. The print order was doubled and tripled. A book party and book tour were organized. The night before publication day, my parents gave my husband and me tickets to a play. We came out and the morning papers were just appearing on the newsstands. We bought copies and stood under a tree in the rain reading – and there was the book featured with a headline and a great review. We turned around and went into the nearest bar and drank champagne. It was a once in a lifetime experience; so you can see, this book has always been close to my heart.

Q..When did you first become a writer?
A. I became a professional writer as soon as I learned to read and write. When I was six years old, I composed a poem about snowflakes, and my mother sent it to a children’s magazine. They published it and paid me $1, which I immediately spent.
When I grew up, I started writing stories for the romance and confessions magazines. These are unsigned and in the first person, so they sound authentic. Actually, many of the plots came out of my own experiences, though I rarely admitted it.

Q. How did you get your start as a book author?
A. A series of articles on debutante balls and high society that I wrote for the Sunday magazine section of a newspaper was discovered by a book publisher and I was asked if I could turn it into a book.

Q. What happened after that?
A. Seventeen books, all published by major publishers. My books appear on “Best Books of the Year” lists, in hardcover, paperback and foreign editions and are excerpted in anthologies and in such national magazines as “Cosmopolitan” and “Smithsonian,”

Q. Could you tell us about a few of your books?

A. “The Secret Lives of the Edmonts,” a novel, is about the fabulously rich in 1895. The flamboyant heroine chooses between her husband, the aristocrat who seduced her at l5, and her “summer toy.” Excessive in every way, she rides a camel into the ballroom of her mansion. In the novel, “Heroes and Lovers, An Antarctic Obsession,” the feminist heroine leads an all-women’s expedition in a race against a famed polar explorer (her lover), to the South Pole. Eighty years later an unscrupulous television producer seeks to expose the explorer as a fraud. “The Astors, A Family Chronicle of Pomp and Power,” traces the family through two centuries and shows its great influence on the history and real estate of New York/ (These three books have also been republished in the Authors Guild Back in Print series and are available at bn.com, amazon.com and all other on-line bookstores, as is “Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles.”

Q. You mention being a human rights activist. What are you doing?
A. I am a “case minder” and take on the cases of dissident writers in foreign countries, imprisoned because of their views. I aim at having them wreleased, given medical care, allowed visits from family members. Whenever possible, I make contact with their families, some of whom are given sanctuary in the U.S.

Sometimes I am successful, as when one of my cases in Iran who had been under sentence of death was released. A writer imprisoned in China was allowed a visit from his son, his first visitor in four years. Recently, I learned that one of my cases in Uzbekhistan was in terrible physical condition. I was able to arrange for an International Emergency Fund to grant enough money to induce a physician to visit him in prison. But sometimes, I come up against a stone wall and can achieve nothing. I just keep trying, and things can change.

Q. Finally, what is your latest book project?
A. I have just finished a novel, with the working title, “In the Company of Evil,” that takes place in the turbulent mid-nineteenth century, a time of great corruption and also of the rise of high society. And, of course, there’s a love story.

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