The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution

by Stephen Heyman

Overview

Winner of the 2021 IACP Award for Literary or Historical Food Writing
Longlisted for the 2021 Plutarch Award

How a leading writer of the Lost Generation became America’s most famous farmer and inspired the organic food movement.

Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America’s first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

A lanky Midwestern farm boy dressed up like a Left Bank bohemian, Bromfield stood out in literary Paris for his lavish hospitality and his green thumb. He built a magnificent garden outside the city where he entertained aristocrats, movie stars, flower breeders, and writers of all stripes. Gertrude Stein enjoyed his food, Edith Wharton admired his roses, Ernest Hemingway boiled with jealousy over his critical acclaim. Millions savored his novels, which were turned into Broadway plays and Hollywood blockbusters, yet Bromfield’s greatest passion was the soil.

In 1938, Bromfield returned to Ohio to transform 600 badly eroded acres into a thriving cooperative farm, which became a mecca for agricultural pioneers and a country retreat for celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who were married there in 1945).

This sweeping biography unearths a lost icon of American culture, a fascinating, hilarious and unclassifiable character who—between writing and plowing—also dabbled in global politics and high society. Through it all, he fought for an agriculture that would enrich the soil and protect the planet. While Bromfield’s name has faded into obscurity, his mission seems more critical today than ever before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324001904
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/14/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	56 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Stephen Heyman has written for the New York Times, Slate, Vogue, and many other publications. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Pittsburgh.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 Garden (1918-1938)

1 Foreign Soil: Brest, January 1918 9

2 Invasive Species: Paris, Winter 1925-26 21

3 Hothouse: Senlis, 1939 46

4 "Teched": Saint-Brice-sous-Fôret, 1931 69

5 Tangled Roots: Senlis, 1932 86

6 Blight: Senlis, Summer 1936 110

7 The Rains Came: Aboard the Victoria 129

Part 2 Farm (1938-1956)

8 Seeding: Richland County, Ohio, December 1938 151

9 Germination: Malabar Farm, 1939 169

10 Victory Garden: St. Louis, Missouri, 1943 186

11 Food Eight: Malabar Farm, 1942 200

12 Erosion: Malabar Farm, 1945 218

13 Four Seasons at Malabar: Based on farm journals, 1944-1953 227

14 On the Hill: Washington, DC, May 2951 239

15 Breeding: Malabar Farm, 1952 251

16 Unto the Ground: Duke Farms, Hillsborough, New Jersey, 1955 265

Epilogue: The White Room: Itatiba, São Paulo State, Brazil, 1954 274

Acknowledgments 287

Notes 291

Credits 329

Index 331

Editorial Reviews

12/09/2019

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956), an all-but-forgotten Lost Generation writer, gets a reassessment, more for his agricultural than his artistic legacy, from first-time author Heyman in this diverting, though at times superficial, biography. The book traces Bromfield’s unlikely career arc, showing how he parlayed his success as a bestselling and award-winning novelist who happened to have a knack for gardening into a full-throated agricultural innovator and reformer by the early 1940s, raising early alarms about the use of chemical pesticides and the environmental sustainability of farming practices. Heyman gives generous coverage to Bromfield’s reputation as a bon vivant, bolstered by his friendships with a diverse array of cultural heavyweights, from Edith Wharton, who exchanged gardening tips with him, to Humphrey Bogart, whose wedding to Lauren Bacall was held on Bromfield’s farm in Ohio. Finding much greater value in Bromfield’s agricultural writing than in his fiction (“Yes, it was overdone. Yes, it was overly romantic. It was, after all, a Louis Bromfield novel”), Heyman suggests that the former significantly influenced such modern environmental activists as Wendell Berry, but his discussion of Bromfield’s specific ideas are lacking. As a result, personality outweighs analysis in this portrait of Bromfield, but his colorful life makes for diverting reading. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Mesmerizing. Abounding in wit, insight, elegance, and narrative talent, The Planter of Modern Life is at once terribly entertaining and subtly illuminating—rather like Bromfield himself, a man at ease in the most rarified Parisian gatherings and bumping along on a tractor on his Ohio farm. This original, ardent visionary of the American environmental future still has much to teach us."

Victoria Johnson

"I couldn’t put this book down. In this wonderful biography, Stephen Heyman pulls the curtain back so those of us who practically idolized this bigger-than-life soil spokesman can finally understand the complicated man behind the legend."

Joel Salatin

"Heyman applies keen narrative skills to tell the story of Bromfield’s celebrity-studded life—two lives, really—as an author and farmer. The result is a rattling good yarn."

The Wall Street Journal - Barry Estabrook

"A brilliant, engaging read about the life of a literary icon and, until now, unrecognized founder of the organic movement."

Dan Barber

"The Planter of Modern Life is an inspiriting read in its entirety — the kind that restores your faith in the humans that make humanity."

The Marginalian - Maria Popova

"This is more than a sparkling biography; it’s a botanical adventure story of a full, plant-based bohemian life, following the journey of a modern Johnny Appleseed from Ohio to World War I France to Hollywood to our dinner plates."

Michael W. Twitty

"The astounding tale of Louis Bromfield, a rare and accomplished figure who has vanished from collective memory, despite his importance to issues ranging from organic food to the ephemeral nature of fame. An engaging and fascinating book on many levels."

Mark Kurlansky

"Inspirational...Bromfield’s original insight was seeing the crucial importance of soil health before science really understood why this matters, or how to build it."

Nature - David R. Montgomery

"In this delightful and exhilarating page-turner…Heyman does an impressive job of combining all of Bromfield’s interests into a cohesive narrative that captivates as both intriguing history and a significant look at early environmentalism."

Booklist (starred review)

"If Stephen Heyman had written Louis Bromfield’s life as a novel, readers would have found the tale too tall to believe."

Deirdre Bair

02/01/2020

Heyman, former editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, delves into the life of Louis Bromfield, an early 20th-century, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist in Europe and the United States, who was among the most successful writers of his generation but eventually faded into obscurity, becoming arguably more well-known for his abilities as a farmer than his literary achievements. Bromfield ultimately devoted his life to protecting and cultivating land as a precious resource, an early champion of conservationism. Inspired by the simple yet rich life of farmers in France, Bromfield cultivated gardens there and eventually moved to Ohio to establish Malbar Farm. There, he signaled the alarm about the harmful impacts of chemicals and advocated for the humane treatment of livestock, igniting a movement that has been influential to the current organic focus on farming and food. VERDICT An inspiring read for anyone interested in the historical roots of organic farming as told through a biographical narrative.—Gary Medina, El Camino Coll., Torrance, CA

Library Journal

★ 2019-12-09
In his first book, former New York Times editor Heyman recaptures the fascinating life of a man rife with paradoxes.

In this exploration of the life of Louis Bromfield (1896-1956), the author chronicles his journey from the darling of American expatriate writers in Paris in the 1920s—and later an agricultural visionary—to the dissipation of his fame and influence. But this is not just a standard biography; Heyman turns the story of this novelist, screenwriter, nonfiction author, and pioneering farmer into an utterly engrossing account of both his life and his times. For years, everything Bromfield touched turned golden, his reputation and robust book sales easily surpassing those of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. His contacts and friends were a who's who of international literary lions, Hollywood royalty, potentates, and politicians. His horticultural ideas, embodied with varying success in his Malabar Farm in Ohio, were indispensable for early organic farming in the United States. Yet lavish spending, chronic overextension, and arrogance served to undermine Bromfield's notable accomplishments and even overshadow his considerable humanitarian efforts during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. He died in 1956, his prestige in tatters. Heyman marshals meticulous detail, unflinching appraisal, indelible personalities, and rich character study in a narrative that straddles worlds and eras and never flags. These elements coalesce within a fluid, remarkably propulsive writing style that keeps the pages turning. This is a biography of dual landscapes—literary and pastoral—as much as a chronicle of a man. The narrative succeeds on every level, not least in Heyman's evocation of time, place, and the origins of American agricultural blunders that plague us still. The first third of the book, dealing chiefly with the Bromfield family's years in France, will be irresistible to those unaware of Bromfield's early eminence in letters or his relationships with such intimates as Gertrude Stein and Edith Wharton. Bromfield's story clarifies a period cloaked in romanticism and a movement buttressed by conservationist ideals.

An outstanding debut.

Kirkus Reviews