| Wednesday, April 25, 2007 11:14AM | | | | Green Thoughts: On the Environment | Posted By: Timothy Liu
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| The PEN World Voices Festival got off to a good start last night in the dim cavernous reaches of Cooper Union’s Great Hall. Hard to account for the numerous seats that had fully obstructed sightlines to the podium at center stage, but I suppose something was needed to keep the ceiling from caving in. Earlier outside, the line snaked around the building, promising a packed house full of readers conscientious enough to recycle. Most of the invited speakers didn’t seem up to the task of finding ways for literature to engage the present pre-apocalyptic climate changes wreaking havoc on the planet. Only the penultimate presenter, Marilynne Robinson, seemed to embrace the moral imperative, and this “by way of accident” since she mentioned having “misunderstood the assignment,” the assignment being that writers select an excerpt written by another writer who takes on the environment. (Billy Collins also “broke from the rules” by reading a poem of his own centered on the nomenclature of gated communities for the elderly, explaining to the throng that his ego could “only be restrained for so long.”) Whoever concocted the “assignment” is partially to blame for the evening’s sentimental politics. I enjoyed Geert Mark’s remarks that we’re “at the beginning of a classic disaster movie”; with the warmest winter on record and the sea-level rising, he suggested that our landscapes and cities are not eternal anymore, that Amsterdam won’t be around in another 350 years; yet the poem he read had little to do with his lament. Then there were the comedians of the evening, Gary Shteyngart reading a George Saunders’ spoof on global warming and Salmun Rushdie reading from “The Airborn Toxic Event” in Don DeLillo’s White Noise, each drawing much laughter from the crowd but comic relief at what cost? Jonathan Franzen made a plea to all of us “who have responsibilities to animals who are not equipped enough to adapt to rapid climate change and habitat destruction,” reading an excerpt from Jane Smiley’s Greenlanders, a passage about humans raising a polar bear cub who ends up making a meal out of his captors when full grown, a tale that had the moral complexity of a children’s tale. Colson Whitehead read from Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic “The Road” but rushed through the sentences, diffusing their drama. The women fared better. Roxanna Robinson read excerpts from Chekhov who witnessed heavy deforestation when the Russian serfs were freed: “Forests keep disappearing . . . and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.” Janne Teller read from Knut Hamsun’s Pan, showing how human nature is bound to nature itself, that destroying the environment not only demolishes habitat but who we essentially are. But it was Marilynne Robinson reading from her essay “Wilderness” that finally hit home, reminding us that everyone “has gotten nuclear power” and that even “undiscovered species must feel the effects of our stewardship.” The curse in Genesis? How man was given the power to bring the whole world down. Robinson remarked that “of all the books out there for sale on the table, mine is the only one I know to address the issues concerning our environment.” Touché. I kept wondering, and where is Gary Snyder or Bill McKibben? Last night made it resoundingly clear who the real stewards are. | | |
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2 Comments | Add a Comment |
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| 4-30-07 1:59PM: Roxana Robinson said...
With great respect to Marilynne Robinson, whose work I admire, she spoke about the rest of us that night without full knowledge. I write frequently on the environment, and my most recent novel, "Sweetwater," which was there on the table, is about precisely that - "the issues concerning our environment."
I hope more and more people write about these issues, and that we reach a critical mass.
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| 4-26-07 9:45PM: Martha Southgate said...
Good point about Bill McKibben--you might consider adding a live link to your blog that would take readers to his very useful website http://stepitup2007.org/ or his personal website www.billmckibben.com. Thanks for commenting!
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