{"id":11839,"date":"2010-01-18T19:07:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T23:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11839"},"modified":"2016-06-06T15:28:04","modified_gmt":"2016-06-06T19:28:04","slug":"e-o-wilson-trailhead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/01\/18\/e-o-wilson-trailhead\/","title":{"rendered":"E.O. Wilson: \u201cTrailhead\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Trailhead\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby E.O. Wilson<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the\u00a0January 25, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick<\/span> here <\/a>to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker<\/em> webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
E.O. Wilson, at 80, is just about to publish his first novel, Anthill<\/em>, and this short story is either an excerpt or a summation of it. However, Wilson is not new to the publishing world\u00a0— or to the ant world.\u00a0His book The Ants<\/em>, written with Bert H\u00f6lldobler, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991.<\/p>\n
When I started this story I had already read Colette and Kevin\u2019s comments below (unimpressed by the story), and I also read it knowing that Wilson is a famous biologist. I think, therefore, that I was pleasantly surprised. It was much better than I expected\u00a0— indeed,\u00a0it is my favorite piece of \u201cfiction\u201d so far this year, though it\u2019s not really \u201cfiction\u201d like we think. It\u2019s much more a dramatization of an ant colony.<\/p>\n
The story begins with the death of the queen ant:<\/p>\n
While humans and other vertebrates have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight\u2019s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone.\u00a0Hence the workers were at first unaware of their mother\u2019s death. Her quietude said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signaled, I remain among you<\/em>.\u00a0She smelled alive.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The story then goes back a bit to when the queen was inseminated and began this colony with just a few small ant children, who were small and few by biological necessity.\u00a0We read about the processes of building and then the destruction of the colony when the queen is dead. Honestly, I was enthralled throughout. I never knew ants could be so fascinating. There is a lot going on under foot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker story is E.O. Wilson’s “Trailhead.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"E.O. Wilson: \u201cTrailhead\u201d","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[509,94],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-11839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-o-wilson","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/Trailhead.jpg?fit=1065%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-34X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11839"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18402,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11839\/revisions\/18402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11839"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}