It is as though, in the literary imagination, climate change were akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel And if the urgency of a subject were indeed a criterion of its seriousness, then, considering what climate change actually portends for the future of the Earth, it should surely follow that this would be the principal preoccupation of writers the world over – and this, I think, is very far from being the case. It is very difficult, surely, to imagine a conception of seriousness that is blind to potentially life-changing threats. There is something confounding about this peculiar feedback loop. It is as though in the literary imagination climate change were somehow akin to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel. Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously: the mere mention of the subject is often enough to relegate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction. When the subject of climate change occurs, it is almost always in relation to nonfiction novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon. As proof of this, we need only glance through the pages of literary journals and book reviews. I t is a simple fact that climate change has a much smaller presence in contemporary literary fiction than it does even in public discussion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |