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Plastic: An Autobiography
EP 35.
The autobiography of plastic is the autobiography of everything.
Excerpt:
Because plastic is so ubiquitous, I thought that I could probably uncover a direct link between my body and the plastic inside a dead albatross chick some three thousand miles across the ocean. If I could do that, maybe I could draw the net wider. I could see how wide, how far, how long I could stretch this net connecting my own body to this substance: plastic, which barely existed one hundred years ago and which now is so amorphous, so omnipresent, it seems to disappear if one tries to look directly at it.
The autobiography of plastic is the autobiography of everything.
Excerpt:
Because plastic is so ubiquitous, I thought that I could probably uncover a direct link between my body and the plastic inside a dead albatross chick some three thousand miles across the ocean. If I could do that, maybe I could draw the net wider. I could see how wide, how far, how long I could stretch this net connecting my own body to this substance: plastic, which barely existed one hundred years ago and which now is so amorphous, so omnipresent, it seems to disappear if one tries to look directly at it.
76 pages, ebook
First published September 15, 2015
21 people are currently reading
281 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 19, 2021
I've started reading Plastic: An Autobiography and I'm blown away. I knew Cobb was a phenomenal poet and incisively smart but this book is simply wow. It wrestles with the complexities of technology, our own entanglements with environmental degradation and pollution, the many histories that intertwine in the life of plastic. It weaves through global considerations and personal experiences. It's heart-wrenching and exhilarating. Most of all I love its refusal to settle for any easy answer or claim any moral high ground or answers. There is something exquisitely human in its reckoning with where we are complicit and where we resist in ways far beyond individual volition. I feel deeply interpellated by the work, in a way that allows me to look with new eyes, eyes that are both unflinching and deeply compassionate, on my own entanglements with climate change, war, and consumerism. Part memoir, part theory, part poetry, this book is a deep meditation on the materiality of our existence, including the materiality of language and its inextricability from the materiality of bodies, organisms, chemical structures, atoms.
May 21, 2024
i thought this book would be something else, but it still had some chapters that sent me reeling and terrified of humans and life on this planet.
the author looks at plastic and its production and the way it invaded our planet through different events, events that honestly i won't choose to focus on in a book about plastic, but she made it work most of the time, so it was things like: the atomic bomb and war and the making of planes and weapons, the albatross and all the plastic they ingest, trash we find in our every day life especially an old car part that she becomes attached to, the life of small towns suffering from all of the plastics factories that pollute their surroundings first.
it alternates between memoir writing: as she writes about herself, her journey to write this book, her journey asking about the plastic car part she found, her journey asking and collecting testaments from people affected by plastic pollution, her journey to participate in cleaning oceans from plastic, and then biography writing: about the people who had a role in making the atomic bomb, the people who had a role in making aand upgrading fighter planes, and those who knowngly on unknowingly made the world worse by developing these weapons.
I had a few issues with the way the book was sectioned, and some chapters were repetitive, and i liked the first part so much more (the albatross chapters made my heart race and made me stop reading because of how devastated i was after that). she's a poet and that appears in some of her writing.
the author looks at plastic and its production and the way it invaded our planet through different events, events that honestly i won't choose to focus on in a book about plastic, but she made it work most of the time, so it was things like: the atomic bomb and war and the making of planes and weapons, the albatross and all the plastic they ingest, trash we find in our every day life especially an old car part that she becomes attached to, the life of small towns suffering from all of the plastics factories that pollute their surroundings first.
it alternates between memoir writing: as she writes about herself, her journey to write this book, her journey asking about the plastic car part she found, her journey asking and collecting testaments from people affected by plastic pollution, her journey to participate in cleaning oceans from plastic, and then biography writing: about the people who had a role in making the atomic bomb, the people who had a role in making aand upgrading fighter planes, and those who knowngly on unknowingly made the world worse by developing these weapons.
I had a few issues with the way the book was sectioned, and some chapters were repetitive, and i liked the first part so much more (the albatross chapters made my heart race and made me stop reading because of how devastated i was after that). she's a poet and that appears in some of her writing.
December 17, 2019
The format this was in made the story feel alive and on the move.
October 2, 2018
Allison Cobb isn’t interested in delivering epiphanies to readers. She’s interested in literature that opens a mystery and a sense of wonder, and offers a container for others to experience that opening. Plastic: An Autobiography, embodies that mysterious and wonderful opening. It was published as a free digital download by Essay Press in September 2015. The book is a part of their “EP Series,” (as in extended play) where authors are given extended space and time to develop book-length projects. At the time of publication, Plastic: An Autobiography comprised of half the material Allison Cobb had written at that point.
The project’s origins date back to 2006 when Cobb first encountered Susan Middleton’s photograph of a gutted albatross full of plastic. The bird ate all of the colorful plastic—more than five hundred pieces—was unable to pass it, and starved to death. The image embedded itself in Cobb’s brain. One bit of plastic especially irked her, a WWII era equipment identification tag from the United States Navy. Plastic: An Autobiography began as a book years later, after Cobb moved to Portland, OR; when a large piece of plastic, a fender from a Honda, wrapped itself around the fence in her front yard.
After many years working for environmental protection groups, the suffocating omnipresence of plastic became inescapable. Because of the ubiquitousness of plastic, Cobb wanted to see if she could uncover a direct link between the plastic her body encounters and a dead albatross chick three thousand miles across the ocean. If that was possible, then she wanted to see how far the net of connectivity could be cast. By bringing these connections into writing, she hoped to uncover a way to exist on a planet that seems to be dying. She hoped the car part could be a catalyst of inspiration, which would lead to that better way of living. In the book’s introduction she admits that she failed to find an answer, and instead found only astonishment. This net of connections is as worldwide and inescapable as global capitalism.
“Anything alive could write this book. As it turns out, the autobiography of plastic is the autobiography of everything.” pg. vi
The bulk of the text focuses on four individuals: Stanislaw Ulam, a nuclear physicist and co-creator of thermonuclear weapons; Ensign Elwyn Christman, a Navy pilot who was briefly lost at sea in 1942 and belonged to the same squadron as the piece of plastic inside the dead albatross; Susan Middleton, photographer of the albatross; and Cobb, who’s personal experiences help bind the web of connections the book weaves.
The book is divided into seventeen mini chapters. The narrative takes place over multiple interviews and shifts between first and third person perspective. Cobb also makes space for poems to illuminate her research. The reader gets a crumb of each person’s story, and is then plunged into another scene as soon as the former is set. The narrative of each person and the tangential moments that find their way in between—a story about the sea and an albatross is obligated to bring up The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—loop back and reveal how the lives of disparate souls across time and space intersect. The narrative of Plastic: An Autobiography swirls and oscillates like the soft plastic that makes up most of the Great Pacific garbage patch.
Polyethylene was created to build thermonuclear weapons, which is colloquially known as the hydrogen bomb. The weapon is divided into two stages:
“Place an atomic bomb at one end of a cylinder, and the huge flux of radiation coming off the bomb would heat and compress the thermonuclear fuel at the other end, forcing its nuclei to melt together and creating fusion.” pg.67
“Radiation from the [atomic] bomb could heat the thermonuclear fuel, but the original designers still worried the implosion would blow the assembly apart before the fuel could get hot enough. They needed some other material to intervene, a material of low atomic weight that would not interfere with the reactions. They chose polyethylene…” pg.68
Polyethylene is now the most common plastic on earth.
Garbage. The title of the thirteenth chapter, which once meant the waste parts of an animal. Decay: to become food for something else. Plastic cannot be broken down by any life form and turned into energy, it can only get smaller and embed itself deeper into the earth and all of its inhabitants. A hydrogen bomb is five thousand times more powerful than an atomic bomb. Thermonuclear weapons were the primary source of dread throughout the Cold War, and they’re ability to end humandkind still looms. Yet thermonuclear weapons never brought about the destruction of all life. Instead, their byproduct polyethylene, is choking out many lifeforms on our planet while becoming an increasing threat to the wellbeing of humanity.
The book connects distant people and their destinies, their accomplishments and their ignorance, which all expire, all decay. Plastic comes from the Latin plasticus and the Greek plastikos, meaning able to be molded. And it is ever malleable, it continues to persist. Humanity is marked by it, like a gravestone.
By telling stories and connecting narratives, Allison Cobb has made a research project into a glorious work of art. If the rest of the book is as detailed and thought provoking, Plastic: An Autobiography could be her greatest work yet. It may not illuminate a new way to live, or a new truth about a planet that seems to be dying. But it certainly opens up a sense of mystery and discovery on a planet that before seemed entirely mapped out.
Originally published at Drizzle Review
Also available on Medium
The project’s origins date back to 2006 when Cobb first encountered Susan Middleton’s photograph of a gutted albatross full of plastic. The bird ate all of the colorful plastic—more than five hundred pieces—was unable to pass it, and starved to death. The image embedded itself in Cobb’s brain. One bit of plastic especially irked her, a WWII era equipment identification tag from the United States Navy. Plastic: An Autobiography began as a book years later, after Cobb moved to Portland, OR; when a large piece of plastic, a fender from a Honda, wrapped itself around the fence in her front yard.
After many years working for environmental protection groups, the suffocating omnipresence of plastic became inescapable. Because of the ubiquitousness of plastic, Cobb wanted to see if she could uncover a direct link between the plastic her body encounters and a dead albatross chick three thousand miles across the ocean. If that was possible, then she wanted to see how far the net of connectivity could be cast. By bringing these connections into writing, she hoped to uncover a way to exist on a planet that seems to be dying. She hoped the car part could be a catalyst of inspiration, which would lead to that better way of living. In the book’s introduction she admits that she failed to find an answer, and instead found only astonishment. This net of connections is as worldwide and inescapable as global capitalism.
“Anything alive could write this book. As it turns out, the autobiography of plastic is the autobiography of everything.” pg. vi
The bulk of the text focuses on four individuals: Stanislaw Ulam, a nuclear physicist and co-creator of thermonuclear weapons; Ensign Elwyn Christman, a Navy pilot who was briefly lost at sea in 1942 and belonged to the same squadron as the piece of plastic inside the dead albatross; Susan Middleton, photographer of the albatross; and Cobb, who’s personal experiences help bind the web of connections the book weaves.
The book is divided into seventeen mini chapters. The narrative takes place over multiple interviews and shifts between first and third person perspective. Cobb also makes space for poems to illuminate her research. The reader gets a crumb of each person’s story, and is then plunged into another scene as soon as the former is set. The narrative of each person and the tangential moments that find their way in between—a story about the sea and an albatross is obligated to bring up The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—loop back and reveal how the lives of disparate souls across time and space intersect. The narrative of Plastic: An Autobiography swirls and oscillates like the soft plastic that makes up most of the Great Pacific garbage patch.
Polyethylene was created to build thermonuclear weapons, which is colloquially known as the hydrogen bomb. The weapon is divided into two stages:
“Place an atomic bomb at one end of a cylinder, and the huge flux of radiation coming off the bomb would heat and compress the thermonuclear fuel at the other end, forcing its nuclei to melt together and creating fusion.” pg.67
“Radiation from the [atomic] bomb could heat the thermonuclear fuel, but the original designers still worried the implosion would blow the assembly apart before the fuel could get hot enough. They needed some other material to intervene, a material of low atomic weight that would not interfere with the reactions. They chose polyethylene…” pg.68
Polyethylene is now the most common plastic on earth.
Garbage. The title of the thirteenth chapter, which once meant the waste parts of an animal. Decay: to become food for something else. Plastic cannot be broken down by any life form and turned into energy, it can only get smaller and embed itself deeper into the earth and all of its inhabitants. A hydrogen bomb is five thousand times more powerful than an atomic bomb. Thermonuclear weapons were the primary source of dread throughout the Cold War, and they’re ability to end humandkind still looms. Yet thermonuclear weapons never brought about the destruction of all life. Instead, their byproduct polyethylene, is choking out many lifeforms on our planet while becoming an increasing threat to the wellbeing of humanity.
The book connects distant people and their destinies, their accomplishments and their ignorance, which all expire, all decay. Plastic comes from the Latin plasticus and the Greek plastikos, meaning able to be molded. And it is ever malleable, it continues to persist. Humanity is marked by it, like a gravestone.
By telling stories and connecting narratives, Allison Cobb has made a research project into a glorious work of art. If the rest of the book is as detailed and thought provoking, Plastic: An Autobiography could be her greatest work yet. It may not illuminate a new way to live, or a new truth about a planet that seems to be dying. But it certainly opens up a sense of mystery and discovery on a planet that before seemed entirely mapped out.
Originally published at Drizzle Review
Also available on Medium
June 25, 2022
I didn’t want to read this but of course someone I admire encouraged our book club to read it. I have regrets in my life and being part of the plastics problem is one of them. This book is a sobering read about many interconnected world problems. In the end I’m glad I read and had a hard time putting this book down. I keep thinking about Dow Chemicals slogan...better living through chemistry. Glad I didn’t end up working for them after all!
January 20, 2022
a beautiful journey indeed
I learned so much, but I loved that I didn’t expect to learn most of it
what a unique, deeply personal, style of nonfiction ✨
I learned so much, but I loved that I didn’t expect to learn most of it
what a unique, deeply personal, style of nonfiction ✨
May 2, 2023
Wow. Everyone should be reading this book! Cobb is amazing at her job and she explains the plastic pandemic in a very compassionate and unique way. So very interesting!!!!
September 12, 2021
Expansive. History of plastics (ethylene/fracking/atmospheric pressure), the ghost resource that’s killing us slowly. (That’s my opinion) Anyway, I have to give this book high ratings because of its style and it is responsible for stretching my brain. The cranial workout was wonderful. Cobb disseminates narrative through tidbits of knowledge. Her research is craved the more you read. There is a poetical style (Cobb is a poet) in paragraph and in the methodically-named chapters that festers anticipation. I can’t believe how wide my eyes grew by reading this compilation of bravery, fact, and truth gem-book. Words are power and here they be. Capture it if you can.
In the end, the albatross story is eclipsed by the other stories. There is depth-of-content here to hold in your hand and it’s within everyone’s reach.
In the end, the albatross story is eclipsed by the other stories. There is depth-of-content here to hold in your hand and it’s within everyone’s reach.
September 22, 2021
How much of what we create will remain once we’re gone? What legacy will be left for those that come after us? In Allison Cobb’s Plastic: Autobiography, she explores these questions on personal, social, environmental, and historical levels. She pours poetry, precision, and curiosity into the perspective that informs her writing. She is a writer and poet, not a scientist or historian. While this may make her “inexpert” in many of the intersecting fields she weaves together in this book, it is an asset. It is perhaps because of this that the many threads that run through these short chapters cohere into a fabric that is moving, organic, and infused with care in all of the ways that plastic is not.
December 5, 2021
Early on in Plastic: An Autobiography, Allison Cobb recalls her fascination with a plastic-strewn Hawaiian beach, describing it as “kaleidoscopic, mesmerizing.” These same words perfectly describe her book. Plastic: An Autobiography is a beautifully written, intricate mosaic that weaves memoir, poetry, cultural and scientific history, chemistry, biography, etymology, journalistic reportage and self-reflection into a penetrating rumination on humanity’s relationship with plastic.
Read my full review here: https://www.resilience.org/stories/20....
Read my full review here: https://www.resilience.org/stories/20....
April 7, 2025
read for my poetry workshop. i think we read the chapbook version which isn't on here but i wanted to log anyway. we also got allison cobb to come and talk with us, which was cool. this was during my objectively evil miserable week (bobby passing) so that poor baby albatross full of plastic meant a lot to me. i pinned a picture of him w/ the "i cry out to you, god, but you do not answer. i stand up but you merely look at me" job quote (again - next level misery due to the death and other things) and it helped me thru the week and then some. i love that albatross. i think about him a lot.
May 12, 2023
An extraordinary amount of research went into this memoir. From the origins of the atomic bomb and WWII to plastic pollution and the amount of non-degradable garbage that washes up on Hawaiian shores, this book is quite an exploration on connections leading to human-produced climate change and the little we know about it.
April 23, 2022
Weaves together personal stories with some of their history of science and technology leading to industrial chemistry as well as weaponized physics. A bit to disjointed for my tastes.
January 21, 2023
oblique & opaque
February 14, 2023
Good book that is more poetic than most non-fiction. An important book that highlights the destruction of the plastic industry. I picked it up because it won the Oregon Book Award. Highly recommend!
January 14, 2025
A wide-ranging look at Plastic and its impacts on our world and ourselves, packaged in a kind of memoir.
October 16, 2025
Genuinely making me feel bad for my plastic consumption… #college
December 6, 2021
Honestly the most thought provoking, emotion promoting, and brain entertaining non-fiction that I have read, and I only read non-fiction now. Allison Cobb has written with such a dynaic lens that I am continually surprised and touched, taught and wowed. Thank you so much Allison, you have increased my already empathetic attachment to this world and our strife together.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews