Four Seasons in Five Senses: Things Worth Savoring

by David Mas Masumoto

Overview

The nation's favorite literary farmer pays homage to the life of the senses.

Rushing from one thing to another, we lose sight of the art of living, which for California farmer David Mas Masumoto is also the art of farming. Not fast farming, of the kind that produces fast food, but slow farming, the kind that notices each change of light and temperature and produces peaches with juice that runs down your chin.

On the farm, appreciating the fruits of one's own labor requires all the senses: smell that knows when a peach is ready to be picked; sight that observes the health of a season's crop; touch that measures the weight of a fruit; hearing that recognizes each voice that calls out across the fields; and taste that savors the refreshing tang of a fruit at that perfect moment of ripeness. Taking us into his fields to witness the cycle of the harvest, Masumoto reminds us that we must stop living on the run in order to savor the world around us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393325362
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/17/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David Mas Masumoto is the author of Harvest Son and Epitaph for a Peach. His organic farm is in Del Rey, California.

Editorial Reviews

"Writing lovingly, lyrically...Masumoto passionately engages every fiber of his being [in] bringing the land to life for his readers....Through his eyes we see the translucence of peach blossoms about to burst. Through his ears, we hear a symphony as his shovel uproots encroaching weeds. His hands pluck a ripe peach and we brush away the dew, breathe in its musky aroma. He takes a bite and we drink in its nectar as we would fine wine."

Booklist

"An agreeable reader for anyone who enjoys food and quality of life."

The Bloomsbury Review

"Masumoto paints pictures with the simple words of a farmer."

California Rare Fruit Growers Inc. Magazine - Linda Kincaid

"Masumoto has written compellingly about life on his family farm in the Central Valley and his struggles to stay in business."

Oakland Tribune - Christina Eng

"Masumoto lyrically describes life on his organic farm through each of his five senses."

Portland Oregonian - Sarah Gianelli

"Masumoto writes about his prized crops with missionary zeal and a poetic sensibility."

Seattle Times - David Takami

"Vivid and compelling...Masumoto might well have called this book Simple Pleasures."

Washington Post Book World

As its title implies, Four Seasons in Five Senses takes us through the farm-year seasons in the hoary convention of "nature books," and celebrates the senses. Indeed, the experience of growing, harvesting, selling and tasting fruit becomes the central metaphor for a kind of philosophy of sense-celebration, which, like much of Walt Whitman's poetry, becomes a catalogue of affirmation. "Simple Pleasures," Masamuto might well have called this book.

Despite the anxieties of farming, this is the self-portrait of a contented man, at ease with himself, his home, his work. One wonders where -- as a writer -- Masamuto will go from here. Perhaps to the next generation of Masamutos -- his children. Will they, too, follow the farming life? Therein lies the tale of the future of family farms. — Wanda Urbanska

The Washington Post

California farmer/memoirist Masumoto (Harvest Son, 1998, etc.) meanders through his fields and memories by way of the five senses. As agriculture increasingly focuses on big business and the bottom line, Masumoto has become an eloquent voice for that increasingly rare breed, the family farmer. Working the land his parents worked before him, his life revolves around the production of Sun Crest peaches and writing evocative books about the process. Here, the author leads a tactile tour of the farm over time. Vivid passages introduce each of the book's five sections, as Masumoto recalls the smell of wet concrete, the taste of a stringy peach, and all the silences of the country he grew up in. As a member of a Japanese farming community, his experiences are both familiar and new: he recalls spring picnic menus that included sushi and bento boxes, the impact of racist land-ownership laws on his family, and his inability to communicate with his non-English-speaking grandmother during the many long hours they worked the fields side by side. Masumoto is particularly adept at conveying the junction at which tradition and modernity meet, describing the difficulties of choosing how to sticker his fruit and of following it to market, or portraying a visit by ten food editors from national magazines who "found it hard to slow their stride" while touring the farm and even harder to select their own peaches to be delivered overnight to their offices across the country. Most enchanting are his brief essays on family members. "Scent of My Father," which reports on Dad's tendency to smell of cut grass, mud, and sweat, pays moving homage to the ties of earth and blood. Intense, sensuous, lyrical, shaped bythe sensibility of a poet and the eye of a farmer.

Kirkus Reviews