Omnivore's Dilemma

[sudhansu9dm]

In his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, which social critics see as yet another piece of evidence to support their thesis of a burgeoning interest in natural food among Americans, Michael Pollan elucidates industrial farming, explains organic farming, and discusses hunting and gathering food for oneself.

A) In his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, which social critics see as yet another piece of evidence to support their thesis of a burgeoning interest in natural food among Americans, Michael Pollan elucidates industrial farming, explains organic farming, and discusses hunting and gathering food for oneself.

B) Michael Pollan, in his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which social critics see as yet another piece of evidence to support their thesis of a burgeoning interest in natural foods among Americans, elucidates industrial farming, explaining organic farming and discussing hunting and gathering food for oneself.

C) In his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, elucidating industrial farming, explaining organic farming, and discussing hunting and gathering food for oneself, Michael Pollan gives social critics yet another piece of evidence to support their thesis of a burgeoning interest in natural food among Americans.

D) Michael Pollan, in his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, serving as yet another piece of evidence to support the thesis of a burgeoning interest in natural food among Americans, elucidates industrial farming, explains organic farming, and discusses hunting and gathering food for oneself.

E) In his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is seen by social critics as yet another piece of evidence to support their thesis of a burgeoning interest in natural food among Americans, Michael Pollan elucidates industrial farming, explaining organic farming and discussing hunting and gathering food for oneself.

Source: Platinum GMAT

OA: A

Can anyone explain how to approach this question. Thanks.

[jnelson0612]

Please post the answer to this question also; thank you.

[sudhansu9dm]

OA posted.

[saxenankit]

This sentence starts with 'In his ...', indicating a prepositional phrase. So you should expect a noun somewhere down the line which this phrase can modify. Also the prepositional phrase contains pronoun 'his', you should except an antecedent for 'his'.

The prepositional phrase ends with "The Omnivore's Dilemma, which ..". The phrase 'which social critics ....Americans' modifies the book 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'. When you through this phrase carefully you would see another pronoun- 'their', which can be safely tracked back to the antecedent - 'critics'. Thus, once you are sure that this phrase is error free, you can ignore this phrase for further verification.

So the question remains -
In his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, which ... Americans, Michael Pollan elucidates industrial farming, explains organic farming, and discusses hunting and gathering food for oneself.

Going further, we encounter 'Michal Pollan', which can be a proper antecedent for pronoun 'his'.

Also parallelism comes into picture. As per the parallelism law, all the elements of a list must be parallel. Option A correctly and parallely uses the present tense of the three verbs - elucidates , explains, and discusses.

Thus you will find option A as error free.

[sudhansu9dm]

Saxenankit, while I agree with you, I would like to know why other choices are incorrect.

C. One can argue obeys logical predication, i.e. modifiers are correctly placed and uses participial phrase that exhibits parallelism, elucidating, explaining and discussing. Why is it incorrect?

For that reason why is D and E incorrect?

[saxenankit]

The which phrase in the original sentence is a non-essential modifier and thus the main point is -
In his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan elucidates industrial farming, explains organic farming, and discusses hunting and gathering food for oneself.

Option C makes the idea stated in which phrase as main point. Moreover the +ING construction of verb elucidates incorrectly modifies 'In his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma'

Option D says - 'Michael Pollan, in his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, serving as yet another piece of eviden...'
'serving incorrectly suggests Michael Pollan served as yet another piece. This is incorrect.

In option E, parallel law is broken -
elucidates industrial farming, explaining organic farming and discussing hunting and gathering food for oneself.

Hope this helps..

[jnelson0612]

Nice explanations, saxenankit.