Janet Biehl - Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin

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Janet Biehl 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Biehl, Janet, 1953

Ecology or catastrophe : the life of Murray Bookchin / Janet Biehl.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780199342488 (alk. paper)

eISBN 9780199342501

1.Bookchin, Murray, 19212006.2.EcologistsUnited StatesBiography.3.EnvironmentalistsUnited StatesBiography.4.Social ecologyUnited States.5.EnvironmentalismUnited States.I.Title.

GF16.B66B54 2014

363.7092dc23

[B]

2013029714

I MET MURRAY late in his life, in 1987, and as I did the research for this book, I was fortunate that many who knew him well before I did gave generously of their time and their thoughts. I could not have written it without extensive interviews from Dan Chodorkoff, Barry Costa-Pierce, Bob DAttilio, the late Dave Eisen, Joy Gardner, David Goodway, Jack Grossman, Wayne Hayes, Howie Hawkins, Joseph Kiefer, Ben Morea, Jim Morley, Calley ONeill, Charles Radcliffe, Dimitri Roussopoulos, Karl-Ludwig Schibel, and Brian Tokar. In some cases they shared papers, books, and tapes as well as their impressions and memories. Im deeply grateful to all of them.

Heartfelt thanks to others who talked to me about Murray as well and sometimes also shared documents: Flavia Alaya, Steve Baer, Harriet Barlow, the late Peter Berg, David Block, Reni Bob, Horst Brand, Stewart Brand, Frank Bryan, Caitlin Casey, Juan Diego Prez Cebada, Stuart Christie, Linda Cohen, Jutta Ditfurth, David Dobereiner, Crescent Dragonwagon, Mike Edelstein, Fanis Efthymiadis, Bob Erler, Paolo Finzi, Gil Friend, Carlos Chino Garcia, Vincent Gerber, Rafa Grinfeld, Richard Grossman, Susan Harding, Anne Harper, Wolfgang Haug, James Herod, Annette Jacobson, Robert Kadar, Jerry Kaplan, Stavros Karageorgakis, Ken Knabb, Bill Koehnlein, Makis Korakianitis, Lucia Kowaluk, Burton Lasky, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sveinung Legard, John Lepper, Mat Little, Arthur Lothstein, Sam Love, Svante Malmstrm, Vivien Marx, Lisa Max, Lester Mazor, John McHale, Paul McIsaac, John McMillian, Richard Merrill, Stephanie Mills, Roy Morison, Brian Morris, David Morris, Pat Murtagh, Osha (formerly Tom) Neumann, Roz Payne, Ivar Petterson, Paul Prensky, Peter Prontzos, Michalis Protopsaltis, Michael Riordan, Mark Roseland, Meg Seaker, Rick Sharp, Josh Shortlidge, Chuck Stead, Suzanne Stritzler, James Swan, Jane Thiebaud, and Bruce Wilson.

In the early 2000s Bookchin donated his papers to the Tamiment Library at New York University. Before he did so, I made photocopies of many of them; hence the allusions to MBPTL and authors collection in my source notes. The originals are at Tamiment; I am extremely grateful to Peter Filardo and Erika Gottfried for help in accessing those materials. After this manuscript was completed, I turned my own collection over to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, for the convenience of scholars in Europe. Im grateful to Huub Sanders of the IISH for arranging for that deposit.

Im also most grateful to the Anarchist Archives Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Institute for Social Ecology archive in Marshfield, Vermont; the Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, Vermont; the Bailey-Howe Librarys Special Collections, at the University of Vermont in Burlington; the Goddard College Archives in Plainfield; the Vermont Historical Society in Montpelier; the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration in Waterbury; Milne Special Collections at the University of New Hampshire, in Durham; and the Centro Studi Libertari in Milan, Italy.

For their hospitality on my research trips, I thank Inara De Leon and Todd Norbitz, Tim and Berle Driscoll, Dave and Shirley Eisen, David Goodway and Che Mah, and Stephen Kurman. Inara De Leon, Laura Ramirez, and Andy Price gave me early encouragement. K. K. Wilder and Ted Tedfords tips on interviewing proved helpful, and my writing benefited greatly from conversations with Paula Harrington and Eve Thorsen. Judith Jones, in retirement after her remarkable decades-long editing career at Knopf, read and commented helpfully on the manuscript, as did Stavros Karageorgakis and Karl-Ludwig Schibel. Any errors in the book are my own responsibility.

For their emotional support during my work, Im indebted to Bronwyn Dunne, Eirik Eiglad, and Eve Thorsenyou were indispensable to this project, my dear friends. Thanks as well to Sezgin Ata, Emet Degermenci, Metin Guven, Marcus Melder, Peter Munsterman, Michael Speidel, and Thodoris Velissaris for their encouragement; to Mary Biehl and Bea Larsen for cheering me on; and to Lynn Brelsford for keeping my spirits up in the home stretch.

Heartfelt thanks as well to Drs. Claudia Berger, Zail Berry, and Matthew Watkins, as well as the Visiting Nurses Association of Chittenden County, for the superb end-of-life care that they provided for Murray. Special thanks to William E. Drislane, Esq.

For her persistence in finding my book an excellent home, hearty thanks to my agent, Anne G. Devlin. It is a great privilege to be published by Oxford University Press. My editor, Jeremy Lewis, stood by my book through thick and thin, for which Im immensely grateful.

Im grateful above all to Murray for all he gave me, and to the improbable twist of fate, indeed the astounding good fortune, that brought his life and mine together.

THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER, said to be a leading figure in the ecology movement, waited beside the stage. Id expected to see an aging hippie, that day in 1986. Yes, aging he was, with a shaggy gray mustache and a certain weariness in his sixty-something frame. But his clothes were hardly hippie stylethey were industrial dark green, like a polyester uniform, and his shirt pocket was stuffed with mechanical pencils that skewed the suspenders and his houndstooth wool vest.