There are often references to the visual arts in John Burnside's novels. In The Locust Room (2001) the photography of Raymond Moore stands for the kind of vision that the main character tries to achieve. In A Summer of Drowning (2011), the focus shifts to painting. The main character's mother is a famous painter and … Continue reading A defence of storytelling: John Burnside’s Ashland & Vine and the visual arts
Category: Wild things (blog)
Talk on climate crisis narratives (OSL Ravenstein seminar on ecocriticism)
In January 2017 I gave a talk for the OSL Ravenstein Seminar on ecocriticism. It was based on a chapter in my forthcoming book, Climate Crisis and the Twenty-First-Century British Novel, about climate crisis narratives. I talked about the ways in which a sense of immediacy is created in Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) and The … Continue reading Talk on climate crisis narratives (OSL Ravenstein seminar on ecocriticism)
On the absence of climate fiction in Dutch literature
For a long time I barely read Dutch literature. As a scholar of British literature, I read plenty of British novels, a bunch of American ones and books from other countries written in English. Occasionally I also read books in German. I started to see parallels between American and British climate fiction on the one … Continue reading On the absence of climate fiction in Dutch literature
Narrating crisis: the stories we tell about floods
I have recently become fascinated by flood narratives. Part of that, perhaps, has to do with growing up on a (former) island on which the memory of the 1953 North Sea flood is still very much alive. It also has to do with contemporary circumstances, especially how floods are presented as a consequence of environmental … Continue reading Narrating crisis: the stories we tell about floods
The books I read in 2015
I read a lot. I can relate to what Zadie Smith says in her piece on being addicted to reading: Can I really not manage a brief subway ride without textual support? Is that normal? Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, Wish I … Continue reading The books I read in 2015
“Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain” – Christmas songs in the Anthropocene
Listening to yet another Christmas song last week, I wondered about the mismatch between the weather we sing about – snow – and that which we experience: unusually warm temperatures and rain, at least this year. I assumed that the songs had fit in better at one time with Christmas weather. "Jingle Bells" was written … Continue reading “Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain” – Christmas songs in the Anthropocene
Announcing Climate Crisis and the 21st-century British Novel
I'm fascinated by how we talk about nature and how we imagine it. Contemporary stories about nature are the topic of my new book, Climate Crisis and the 21st-century British Novel. The way we think about nature goes beyond new nature writing or documentaries of the kind that became popular after Al Gore's An Inconvenient … Continue reading Announcing Climate Crisis and the 21st-century British Novel
