Shouldn't the cascades of extinction and rapid planetary warming register in our literature?
From Lydia Millet
What makes 'The Lorax' such a powerful fable is partly its shamelessness. It pulls no punches; it wears its teacher heart on its sleeve.
Fiction should be an ethically safe space, free of fancy ideas. It should be dedicated modestly to relationships or escapism or the needs of luscious voyeurs.
Work-wise, I try not to repeat myself too often. And I have to love whatever I'm doing.
If I can't find a way to love it, I let it go. Kind of the opposite of the popular homily.
'Dept. of Speculation' contains numerous enviable lines.
The comic novels I did when I was in my 20s had a harder edge - less sympathy for people. Or a sympathy that was harder to detect: Characters' foibles and obsessive bents were unrelenting, like caricatures.
On climate change, we have only a handful of years to make massive changes, according to the scientists. The politicians have to act, and only the people can make them, because Royal Dutch Shell's not going to do it.
Both climate change and extinction are results of our tyranny over the nonhuman world and our domination of, and exploitation of, whole categories of each other - and those, in turn, are clearly linked to agriculture, the cattle-industrial complex, capitalism.
You need not fear my extinction. Fear my proliferation! I've already reproduced!
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