tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2839922450198375320.post4749699822632057606..comments2023-03-27T10:17:22.922-05:00Comments on 10 Things Wrong With Environmental Thinking: African Melancholia: Reading Peter Matthiessen’s African Silence 20 years on DublinSoilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12746847572672641393noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2839922450198375320.post-30948669839186611772012-09-06T12:29:06.469-05:002012-09-06T12:29:06.469-05:00Dr S+I, I am largely sympathetic to this positive ...Dr S+I, I am largely sympathetic to this positive account of Mathiessen's work. I believe him to be a great writer, and said as much. Perhaps I stressed sadness a little heavily in my last paragraph, but I identified a number of trends in this work: wilderness, a privileging of traditional peoples, remoteness, and one might add an attraction to charismatic animals. And the mood of melancholia, sadness etc. These are common themes in environmental literature, common orientations in a lot of environmental thought. Sure, a great artist is uniqueish, but my suspicion is that an artist that is neither creating a trend, nor resonating with a trend is not recognizable as an artist. Though Mathiessen may have created certain environmental sensibilities he is also responding to them. This is, I think, worth thinking through (I certainly am not the only one to find this interesting).<br /><br />Listing to reports this week about elephant slaughter in central Africa this work becomes especially relevant. If one of the functions of environmental literature is to assist in altering our course, then we will have to broaden our literary approaches. In general, I would say that if we had environmentalism that corrected our course we know it by now. DublinSoilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12746847572672641393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2839922450198375320.post-48446076419398941932012-09-05T17:01:48.657-05:002012-09-05T17:01:48.657-05:00
Are environmental writers sadder than the other...<br /><br /><br />Are environmental writers sadder than the other environmentalists? Anyway, I do believe that Matthiessen’s exquisite literature shows other traits as well, his core approach can’t be reduced to ‘sadness’. I presume that if nostalgia is a feature of all those who write about environment (and I do not think it is), it then has to be a feature of at least many, if not all, those who care about environment (I don’t believe that, among those interested in the subject, those who write popular prose, the literary temperaments, are the only who feel tempted by sadness, etc.); it’s more likely that success, popular success, favors the writings tinged by a bit of anger—righteous or not—and the flipside of that anger is this ‘nostalgia’—‘nostalgic environmentalism’ is likely to be more successful. But this explains almost nothing about individual works and their writers.<br />In other words, I do not think that sadness drives Matthiessen; care drives him. <br />The literary success’ sociology is a part, if not the core, of the sociology of literature; it should be seen whether the readers tend to favor those works exhibiting nostalgia, so that ‘nostalgic environmentalism’ doesn’t impose the pattern, but benefits from preexisting requisites.<br />Exactly because he’s a distinguished writer, Matthiessen can’t be a specimen, a good case to analyze as typical for a trend. Also, his approach can’t be reduced to a routine.<br />Such a writer isn’t successful because of a generic trait. He may fit a general pattern because one feature of his. <br /><br />A. k. a. Lehrman.Doctor Singularis et Invincibilishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07498947639761749290noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2839922450198375320.post-64356874570552871202012-09-02T04:50:09.203-05:002012-09-02T04:50:09.203-05:00Liam, tried to comment on this but Wordpress wante...Liam, tried to comment on this but Wordpress wanted more security dances. Hope this one works. Briefly, Mathiessen is so important, and mixes personal reflection well with his intellectual and geographical journeys. You might want to check out Big Life Foundation, online and on Facebook. Nick Brandt, photographer [On The Earth] has in desperation set up an anti-poaching operation in Amboseli, and now finds his organisation at the heart of painful conflict between the Masai and the Kenya Wildlife Service. woodworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465358061763294743noreply@blogger.com