Greg Critser |
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Greg Critser contributes regularly to USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and Harper's Magazine, where Fat Land originated as a cover article. He lives in Pasadena, California.
Bestselling Greg Critser, author of the acclaimed Fat Land, speaks to us about his inspiration, motivation and obesity, plus we ask him what his one wish would be and the answer isn't world peace ...
What motivated you to write on this subject?
Two things, really. One was my own struggle with obesity. At age 44, I was about 35 pounds overweight. As I detail in the book, I was pretty much in ignorant bliss about it until a couple things happened, both on the same day. Getting out of my car one Saturday, I opened my door into traffic and almost decapitated some poor fellow riding by on his bicycle. He yelled back at me: Watch it fatso! That was surprising because, as you know, among middle class people we never say such things. A few hours later I got a call from my doctor, telling me there was a new obesity drug on the market, and that I was a perfect candidate for it. I should add that I had not asked for the advice. Nevertheless, those two shocks motivated me to lose the weight. And the process of losing the weight made me realize that my ability to do so had less to do with any super willpower, although it took some of that, as much as it did the fact that I was able to afford to achieve and maintain normal weight: I had the time, money, and education to learn about good nutrition, to get consistent medical advice about it, to buy and prepare good foods, and, because I live in a nice area, safe streets and parks in which to recreate. So I came to see obesity as a class issue.
That insight was driven home when, again as detailed in Fat Land, I encountered a 450 pound young man in the emergency award, being operated on for a failed gastroplasty, or stomach stapling. It was then that I started asking the main question that guides Fat Land: How is it that we Americans, perhaps the most health-conscious of any people on earth, came to preside over the deadly fattening of our youth?
What kind of experience do you want your reader to have?
I would like the reader to have the experience of reading a lively investigation not just about a medical issue but, really, about what happens to modern nations when they go on a sustained consumer binge without putting in place some ways to mitigate the impact of excess consumption. I want them to think deeply about, for example, how excess food consumption is like, say, over-consumption of other resources. I like to tell my politically attuned friends in Berkeley, California: Why do you have no problem telling your children that it is morally wrong to cut down too many redwood trees, yet somehow can't bring yourself to tell them the same thing about eating too much food? What's the disconnect there? So I wanted Fat Land to break down old liberal-conservative dichotomies, which I think it does.
Who has inspired you as a writer?
That's hard to answer. Certainly the great story-tellers, both fiction and non-fiction. In the realm of the modern novel, Graham Greene and Brian Moore are two. In terms of the classics, Dante Alighieri. In non-fiction, my inspiration is found in great journalism. Period. It happens every day in both big and small newspapers. Also, great history writing. I was originally trained as a historian, and recall being moved by figures ranging from the late Roy Porter, a British historian of medicine, to the American Richard Hofstadter, who wrote about US socio-political history, and Carey McWilliams, who wrote about social injustice.
Who has influenced your work?
Believe it or not, more and more I keep coming back to Proust. Perhaps because Proust was so concerned with what had been lost, and what we have tried to put in the place of what we have lost. In a way, that is what Fat Land, or, for that matter, what so much of contemporary investigative-narrative non-fiction is about. Particularly when one deals with complex societal changes, as in the case of obesity. What happened to the country that once did not need to consume so much? How did we lose a sense of balance and moderation? There is something deeply moving when one seeks the answers to such things, and also something exilirating.
When you were doing your research for the book, what surprised you the most?
The near-total lack of reporting about the plight of physical education in the school system. I think this is because everyone likes to talk about the food end of the obesity equation--calories in, so to speak. But people know very little about the importance of the calories out part, particularly when it comes to children. Trying to figure out what happened to PE led me to the National Archives, where I read some of the original speeches by JFK about the importance of public fitness programs. He knew something that we are only now acknowledging: the price of a society that benefits from labor saving technology is daily vigorous exercise.
Is there a particular book or author that has had a significant influence on you as a writer?
Carey McWilliams. He was a longtime California writer and social activist who mainly dealt with the plight of ethnic minorities. He later became the editor of The Nation, the US's oldest liberal weekly journal.. I loved his fluid writing style and ability to hone in on the core of almost any subject.
One wish: what would it be?
Besides world peace? How about a modern world that understands that sometimes it is better to proceed slowly, and quietly, and with respect for the wonder of daily life than to constantly be on the run? Then again, perhaps world peace would be easier.
