In
Orange Blossom Trail, American writer George Saunders and American photographer
Joshua Lutz offer an alternately poetic and searing evocation of the cruelty and tender beauty of contemporary American life.
Lutz and Saunders first met on a magazine assignment, where they discovered a shared interest in both the psychological and material conditions of the laboring individual and the Buddhist teachings of attachment and the sacredness of existence.
Through Lutz’s recent photos, and three texts selected by Saunders from different moments in his career, the book asks, when do we zoom in and when do we zoom out from the individual lives whose labor supports other lives. Revealing the stark realities behind the idyllic narrative of Florida’s orange groves, Orange Blossom Trail is a meditation, in two voices, on the alienation of the industrialized landscape and the brutality of American inequality.
From the essay by Joshua Lutz
Established as a scenic route connecting the bountiful orange groves of Central Florida, the Orange Blossom Trail soon gained popularity as a desirable destination for those seeking an idyllic escape from the struggles of modern urban existence. (...) While the oranges became a metaphor for the sweet rewards of hard work, persistence, and the hope of a better future, the reality grew more complex.
The once-abundant groves began to dwindle, facing challenges from disease, urban expansion, and climate change. The sweet aroma of the blossoms that filled the air gave way to the scent of fumes and rot within the transient nature of life. The dream sold to eager families faced a reckoning with harsh truths. The current misery is palpable, as the people who call this place home grapple with poverty, mental illness, inequality, and ultimately limited opportunities. Amidst the struggle, the metaphor of oranges remains relevant. Just as oranges require time, care, and resilience to thrive, the community along the Orange Blossom Trail showcases the indomitable spirit of humanity, that despite hardships, people can still find hope, connect, and experience moments of sweetness even in the face of distress.
From Thought Experiment by George Saunders
The upshot of all of this is not a passive moral relativism that makes the bearer incapable of action in the world. If you repeatedly come to my house and drive your truck over my chickens, I had better get you arrested or have your truck taken away or somehow ironclad or elevate my chickens. But I’d contend that my ability to protect my chickens actually improves as I realize that your desire to flatten my chickens is organic and comes out of somewhere and is not unmotivated or even objectively evil—it is as undeniable to who you are, at that instant, as is your hair color. Which is not to say that it cannot be changed. It can be changed. It must be changed. But dropping the idea that your actions are Evil, and that you are Monstrous, I enter a new moral space, in which the emphasis is on seeing with clarity, rather than judging; on acting in the most effective way (that is, the way that most radically and permanently protects my chickens), rather than on constructing and punishing a Monster.
If, at the moment when someone cuts us off in traffic or breaks our heart or begins bombing our ancestral village, we could withdraw from judging mode, and enter this other, more accepting mode, we would, paradoxically, make ourselves more powerful. By resisting the urge to reduce, in order to subsequently destroy, we keep alive—if only for a few seconds more—the possibility of transformation.
