A new mode of nature writing?

Madeleine Bunting writes in The Guardian on what she sees as a new way of writing about nature. She sees this as a visionary movement, where learning to pay attention to particulars has a redemptive quality that benefits both humans and the natural world (though I'm not sure that was a quality absent from previous modes of nature writing).

Bunting argues that books such as Mark Cocker's Crow Country, Kathleen Jamie's Findings, and Roger Deakin's Wildwood are "a new genre of writing. It doesn't quite fit to call it "nature writing", because what makes these books so compelling - and important - is that they put centre stage the interconnections between nature and human beings."

"The floods in Yorkshire last month were a sharp reminder of what happens when we don't understand the land on which we live. The sight of thousands of flooded homes made us realise what many previous generations would never have forgotten about the way in which water has to move through land. Renewing our relationship with the natural world, on which our wellbeing depends, is at the heart of this genre of writing - but it presses its case not with statistics and fear of apocalyptic scenarios of global warming, but with seduction, urging on readers an aesthetic case for the spectacular beauty that lies beyond their windscreen if they can be bothered to stop the car and get out.

It's the British equivalent in the 21st century to John Muir, the legendary writer who founded the US Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, and who in 1901 wrote that "thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilised people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home". We may have hills rather than mountains, but that's what summer holidays should be about - going home."

Sounds like a good group of books to add to your reading pile. Bunting mentions that all of the writers she discussses have pebbles to hand, or lined up on their desks. What pebbles do you have lined up on your desk? I'm tending currently toward smooth, water-rounded stones nearest my desk; the fossils are six feet further away.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows of sustainable paper

By David Biello

I promise not to give anything away, just wanted to highlight a few facts about the impending mega-release: its first printing will consume 16,700 tons of paper (which, depending on whose estimates of tree per piece of paper you believe, equals roughly 400,800 trees), according to Scholastic.

Ah, but the printers have performed a little wizardry of their own, using wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. 260,520 of those trees were "sustainably harvested," which means the companies that harvested it took into account environmental and social factors (though it doesn't mean they didn't come from a plantation, just that this tree farm set aside some acreage for "natural forest cover." Oh, and the plantation species don't have to be native if "their performance is greater than that of the native species," according to the FSC website.)

Because the printing industry in the U.S. alone consumes at least 24 million trees a year, according to the Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies at Georgia Tech, any steps in this direction are to be lauded. After all, preventing the loss of forests could go a long way towards avoiding catastrophic greenhouse gas levels.

But any book that has sold millions of copies before it even hits the shelves (and despite leaks) is probably better suited to recycled paper--and a "deluxe" edition printed on recycled paper will be available. But why only 100,000? Granted, China is eating up the supply of waste paper at a galloping pace--preventing 65 million metric tons of the stuff from hitting landfills, according to a recent report--but surely there are a few sheaves left somewhere. And it shouldn't take wizardry to find them, nor cost an arm and a leg (though I hear wizarding might.) Zhang Yin, the "Queen of Trash" seems to be making a good living at it, muggle or not.

Useful links on the original article site, the Scientific American blog.

Terence McKenna's Library Destroyed

Terence McKenna's book collection, housed in office storage space owned by the Esalen Institute, has been destroyed by fire in Monterey, California. Erik Davis gives the details. The late "visionary psychedelic bard" seems to have assembled an extraordinary library. McKenna's brother Dennis has an index of the collection, and I hope that will be published in some form one of these days.

Thanks to Kent Steadman of Cyberspace Orbit

Keywords: Terence McKenna, Erik Davis, books, library, collection, Dennis McKenna, Esalen, fire

The Last Unicorn: animated version to be released on DVD

The animated version of Peter S. Beagle's book The Last Unicorn is being released on DVD on February 6, to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Peter Beagle has been beset by a number of legal problems in recent years, and has been struggling to obtain money long owed to him because of underpayment for work he did on the animated version of The Last Unicorn. It's a longstanding problem that's gone on for decades. Because of the continuing legal problems, he is not getting any share of the sales except from those sold by Conlan Press. You may buy copies from Conlan Press online, who say if you buy it from them, half the proceeds for each DVD will go directly to Peter.

http://www.conlanpress.com/html/news.html

When I was in high school, Peter Beagle and Theodore Sturgeon were the first writers I ever was aware of who spoke to me. It was not just for their narratives, but for the way they wrote. There was a certain clarity and meticulous care in the choices they made. I did not know anything about the craft of writing then, but I knew they were good.



Keywords: Peter Beagle, Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn, DVD, Conlan Press, Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings