Atdtda36: Watch your step, everyone, 1018-1021 #1

[alice wellintown]

The chapter seems to be woven from the books that the environmental
movement generated. Like these:
http://www.indiana.edu/~engweb/faculty/profile_sSanders.shtml


On 8/8/13, Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Ch67 ends with the anticipation of survival, some kind of future. The new
> chapter begins with a backward glance ('summer had been memorable .'etc),
> while also showing us what might be thought the lesser of two options
> ('grapes turned on the vine to raisins overnight'). The grapes/raisins or
> 'hay . burst[ing] spontaneously into flame', or '[w]ildfires . crossing
> borders', might be seen as nature reimposing itself on the culture that
> would masquerade as nature. That the natural cycle, what is considered
> natural, has been affected by an early summer might be taken as fateful
> ('Naturist cults were overcome with a terrible fear .' etc), even though
> the
> first line's backward glance suggests that the anticipated end of the world
> has not occurred. The reader is therefore positioned at a distance from
> those (ie '[n]aturist cults') who have detected some kind of grand design
> (or, of course, metalanguage), culture imposing itself on nature. Then,
> betrayal by 'the luminary they worshipped' (first paragraph) is succeeded
> by
> the break-up of the Chums of Chance organisation, now 'a loose collective
> of
> independent operators' with 'no repercussions from above' (third
> paragraph).
> But then note the 'sinister luminary' that appears as the Chums' journey
> unfolds with a loss of agency, 'the ship . seized and borne downslope .'
> etc
> (bottom of 1019).
>
> The 'cults' of the first paragraph are replaced in the second by
> Inconvenience, its crew engaged by 'an updraft over the deserts of Northern
> Africa unprecedented in size and intensity'. Free but not free. Here is a
> different kind of anticipation, in some respects, even if we see a
> destructive nature taking the role of the previous chapter's class war.
>
>
>