I really enjoyed reading Pollan's experience about building his own hut in the woods, which would house his writing desk and books but be within sight of his home in Connecticut. About half of the book is about the nuts and bolts experience of designing and building the 8'x13' writing house, and the other half is much more philosophical and far ranging - about architecture in general, columns and pediments, conflicts between architects and contractors, feng shui, chi, and many aspects of building. He admits "a tendency of mine to lean rather heavily on words and theories in my dealings with the world." In Chapter 3 he wrote. "...deep piles of words on the page comprised for me a kind of soothing environment, a plush cushion into which sometimes I could barely wait to sink my head." If you're looking for a how-to book about building an outbuilding, you will become impatient with Pollan's book. If you're looking for a deep immersion in words about the history, theory and philosophy of building, interspersed with Pollan's actual experience in the project, you will thoroughly enjoy this book.
Pollan refers frequently to Thoreau and shared his desire to find a place of his own to write and spent untold hours surveying his land, bringing a chair to rest upon to look at each aspect at different times of day before selecting the perfect site for his hut. He wrote a letter to his architect to describe what he was looking for, and pored over drawings with the architect. Realizing his limitations as a handyman, he selected a skilled young carpenter to help him one day a week on the project. He visited the mill from which the wood was sourced, and found a custom shop to produce the windows where he planed some of the lumber for the framework himself. He developed a genuine reverence for the wood used in his hut, having selected and sanded and nailed almost every piece himself. He wrote that "buildings give us a way to leave a lasting mark, to conduct a conversation across the generations."
He concluded with "So this was the house for the self that stood a little apart and at an angle, the self that thought a good place to spend the day was between two walls of books in front of a big window overlooking life." The book concludes just as he is moving his books into the "writing house". I only wished that he had extended the book a bit to give us some flavor of his experience of working in the writing house, whether it inspired him or made him more productive. Indeed his writing career really flourished after the hut was built, but I think only his first book or two were written in Connecticut before he moved to Berkeley, California.
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