Author Barret Baumgart will be having a reading and signing for his new book entitled “YUCK” this Saturday at Hi Desert Times in Twentynine Palms from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. The book’s title refers to Yucca brevifolia, also known as the Joshua Tree, and through prose poem, memoir, and cultural history, Baumgart exposes a darker history of the iconic tree, back when it was considered a visual blight (even “demonic”) to early Los Angeles colonizers.
The former U.S. Forest Service trail builder says his new book “YUCK: The Birth and Death of the Weird and Wondrous Joshua Tree” began as a wedding gift. Baumgart had planned to do a bit of research for he and his wife’s Joshua Tree wedding invite, to write some “pilthy thing about the Joshua Tree on some nice paper for guests.” After the wedding was cancelled three times during COVID uncertainty, the wedding never happened, yet by then, Baumgart had found so much underreported history that his research had yielded a whole weird book.
“I found this vast treasure trove of like, Victorian vitriol directed at this totally innocent, harmless tree. I am genuinely shocked to find so much passionate purple prose just trying to poison this thing off the planet. I mean this is kind of an irrational thing––why was this thing hated so much? I’d say that the first starting point would be its anthropomorphic form. On the outskirts of paradise you have this ghoulish looking form.”
Aligning with Southern California’s massive propaganda campaign to convince people to move to the deceptive new Eden, early colonists even demanded they cut down the “useless” Joshua Tree to make paper.
“They went the most hardcore trying to turn it into paper. Southern California was rapidly expanding and in need of paper to advertise the climate paradise so there’s this whole kind of symbiotic element of destruction with its advertising.”
Yet even after all the effort comparing the Joshua Tree to hellish elements, the anti-Joshua campaign wanted to chop it all down into firewood, then found the strong and fibrous tree wasn’t even easy to burn.
“They’re constantly comparing it to Dante and the 7th circle of hell, the forest of suicides. It’s called infernal, it’s called demoniacal, it’s demonic––every word deployed at this thing is hilarious. It’s just incessant loathing. One of my favorite things is exactly what you said––it wouldn’t even burn. You can’t even burn the thing! It’s terrible for fire. But that is why I love it. After writing this book, I think what I like about it is the extent to which it has frustrated human beings. You know, it just stands there! Who knows what it represents? What is it a symbol of? It’s generating a lot of money for a lot of people. It’s just a symbol of something sacred, new age, authenticity in this location where there’s something that has meaning. What is it? I don’t know, but it’s obviously focused and localized around this tree, in this object.”
Baumgart reads and signs copies of YUCK this Saturday at Hi Desert Times in Twentynine Palms from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Free and open to the public.
