Volume 48, Number 11 · July 5, 2001
Frequent Fliers
By Brad Leithauser
Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly
Sue Halpern
Pantheon, 212 pp., $23.00
That old, airy injunction—Pursue your dream—takes on an almost literal flavor when you peer into the world of the lepidopterist. For butterflies can seem like creatures born no less of the mind than of the earth. They are vivid like dreams, and shifting and balky like dreams, and when like dreams they expire, they leave behind an all but weightless residue. In Sue Halpern's bright new book, Four Wings and a Prayer, the species under scrutiny is Danaus plexippus, the monarch butterfly, which, although a sizable specimen by North American standards, typically weighs less than a gram. Its lipid reserves—the stored fat that fuels its transcontinental flights—are measured by the milligram. We're in the realm of motes and minims—not far from the world attended by Peaseblossom and Cobweb in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Review, 2333 words
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