The Orchid Thief
by Susan Orlean
List Price: $14.00
Pages: 284
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 044900371X
Publisher: Ballantine
In Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and
obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and
sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is
missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente
spaghetti. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians
were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a
wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most
extraordinary plants and trees. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids
and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. After he
was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies
in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native
Amer-ican activists, and devoted orchid collectors. The result is a tale that
is strange, compelling, and hilarious.
New Yorker writer Susan Orlean followed Laroche through swamps
and into the eccentric world of Florida's orchid collectors, a subculture
of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is
all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean learned the history of orchid collecting,
discovered an odd pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spent time with
Laroche's partners, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with
the United States.
There is something fascinating or funny or truly bizarre on every page
of The Orchid Thief: the story of how the head of a famous Seminole
chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy; or
how seven hundred iguanas were smuggled into Florida; or the case of the
only known extraterrestrial plant crime. Ultimately, however, Susan Orlean's
book is about passion itself, and the amazing lengths to which people
will go to gratify it. That passion is captured with singular vision in
The Orchid Thief, a once-in-a-lifetime story by one of our most
original journalists.
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1. Is there a hero in The Orchid Thief? An anti-hero?
2. Is the book subjective? Objective? Or a different genre altogether? Some people describe this as "literary non-fiction." Is that how you would characterize it?
3. Susan Orlean resists the temptation to feel possessed by the orchids but she is willing to undergo great trials in order to satisfy her passion for reporting. Is this passion evident in her writing?
4. The passion for collecting is described in the book as a means of infusing meaning into life, subjecting the vicissitudes to some order, acquiring the ability to mold and change the nature of things, i.e. create life itself. What other means do humans employ to achieve the same ends, and how effective are they?
5. John Laroche would not describe himself as an orchid person. To him the orchid is a temporary albeit very intense passion, a means to an end, not an end in itself. How would you analyze the difference between Laroche's motives in collecting orchids and the regular orchid collectors we visit in the course of the book?
6. Laroche wrestles verbally with the thought that acting within what he considered the bounds of the law for his own immediate gain was ultimately an act of altruism. His rape of the Fakahatchee would force the law to be changed and close the loophole that allowed him to poach rare and wild orchids from an Indian reservation in the first place, thus protecting the species in the wild, and securing it for the marketplace at the same time. Is this the thought process of an amoral character? Or is he just an everyday charlatan? Discuss.
7. Laroche makes a very telling statement: "When I had my own nursery I sometimes felt like all the people swarming around were going to eat me alive. I felt like they were that gigantic parasitic plant and I was the dying host tree." Is Laroche playing the role of the victim, the martyr to a (preferably lost, but grand) cause or is he in control of his life by making a living off other people's weaknesses, whether it be a passion for orchids or pornography? Discuss.
8. Orlean seems fascinated by the story of Darwin and the study of the orchid with the eighteen inch nectary and the moth with the eighteen inch proboscis to feed on it: the idea that two totally differentlife forms evolved specifically to serve each other; that neither could have existed without the other. What has the evidence of the orchid's adaptability altered your perception of the theories of evolution?
9. Orlean interrupts her central narrative of John Laroche with stories of the orchid hunters of the past, the contemporary state of Florida and other histories. How does this affect the pace of the work? Is the framework she has devised successful?
10. The Native Americans on the reservation are entitled by one law to remove protected species from their land. Is this law justified?
11. Orlean seems surprised by the abundance of sexual references to orchids in her book. Yet the flower is the prime sexual organ of most plants. Seek out a florist with a good representation of orchids. What alternative descriptions of these exotic flowers can you devise?
12. What is the real core, the central character, of the book: Laroche? Florida? Orchids? Native Americans? Darwin? Orlean?
13. As a reader, what did you expect from a book about orchids? How did your experience of reading The Orchid Thief compare to what you expected?
14. The working title of The Orchid Thief was "Passion." What does that suggest about the themes in the book?
15. What, besides orchids, could generate a book like this? Are there other subcultures or other objects of desire that might be as provocative?
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"Like the orchid, a small thing of grandeur, a passion with a pedigree . . . The Orchid Thief shows [Orlean's] gifts in full bloom. "
——The New York Times Book Review
"A lesson in the dark, dangerous, sometimes hilarious nature of obsession...you sometimes don't want to read on, but find you can't help it. "
——USA Today
"Irresistible . . . A brilliantly reported account of an illicit scheme to housebreak Florida's wild and endangered ghost orchid. Its central figure is John Laroche, the 'oddball ultimate' of a subculture whose members are so enthralled by orchids they 'pursue them like lovers.' "
——Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Fascinating...tales of theft, hatred, greed, jealousy, madness, and back-stabbing...an engrossing journey. "
——Los Angeles Times
"Artful . . . In Ms. Orlean's skillful handling, her orchid story turns out to be distinctly 'something more.' . . . Orchids, Seminole history, the ecology of the Fakahatchee Strand, the fascination of Florida to con men. . . . All that she writes here fits together because it is grounded in her personal experience. . . . [Her] portrait of her sometimes sad-making orchid thief allows the reader to discover acres of opportunity where intriguing things can be found. "
——Christopher Lehmann—Haupt, The New York
Times
"Deliciously weird...compelling. "
——Detroit Free Press
"Zestful . . . A swashbuckling piece of reporting that celebrates some virtues that made America great. Here are visionary passions and fierce obsessions; heroic feats accomplished in exotic settings; outsize characters, entrepreneurs at the edge of the frontier, adventurers. . . . Orlean, an intrepid sociologist among the orchid fanatics, is also a poetic observer. "
——The Wall Street Journal
