BACKYARD GIANTS

How far would you go for the World’s Biggest Pumpkin?

Wall Street Journal deputy bureau chief Susan Warren spends a season following the travails of a distinctly American subculture: growers of giant pumpkins. The cultivation of a half-ton fruit requires pragmatic ingenuity, a can-do optimism in the face of terrible odds and an enthusiasm for grotesque gigantism. Dick and Ron Wallace, the father and son growing team at the center of Wallace’s narrative, exemplify the type: male (though women do compete), competitive and frighteningly obsessive about the hobby. Growing these freakish giants requires unrelenting, backbreaking physical labor and a firm grasp of botanical science; as fragile as hothouse orchids, giant pumpkins are vulnerable to all manner of disease, pests, balky weather and the genetic strain of achieving such Brobdingnagian proportions. The Wallaces are eminent in the growers’ community, admired for their formidable gardening acumen and generosity to their fellow hobbyists, but they have been plagued by bad luck, time and again raising world-class pumpkins only to have them rupture or rot at critical moments. Ron Wallace views the season covered here as his last chance to go all-out, devoting himself completely to the massive pumpkin patch that dominates his property in a desperate bid to win a world record—his intensity in this endeavor is both admirable and a little frightening. This is all strangely engrossing; while the subject of pumpkin growing might not have obvious general reader appeal, Warren masterfully limns the subculture (complete with rabid Internet message boards) and the personalities of the fanatical growers (who plunge thousands of dollars into the hobby and often risk personal relationships due to the time-intensive nature of the pursuit), and the degree of peril is so high it is impossible not to get swept up in the suspenseful course of the season. It has been suggested that, oftentimes, the smaller the stakes (and bragging rights to growing the world’s biggest pumpkin seem awfully small stakes indeed), the bigger the drama. That’s certainly the case here.

Quirky and surprisingly affecting good fun—Ira Glass must be jealous.