Falling Off the Page

An overlooked entry from a blog I sometimes read raises some unsettling questions about our future environmental well-being.

Annie Proulx, the novelist most famous for “The Shipping News” (1993), argues landscape appears and matters less in contemporary stories than in those written a half-century ago or earlier.... In the course of the last century, she notes, the natural landscape became something other than what Americans lived in and with; increasingly, it became what they observed from afar or passed through. Today, she concludes, writers’ audiences consist of ever-increasing numbers of “urban and suburban readers and critics who have little or no experience of the natural world.”

Accordingly, “The vast number of readers, editors, booksellers, critics—and writers themselves—” explains Proulx, “have little knowledge or recognition of landforms, regional differences, wilderness areas, or even the existence of extensive rural and frontier locales.” This dearth of knowledge and experience, Proulx claims, is evident in contemporary American fiction: nature appears less and less often as something formative, as something more substantive than backdrop. 

Research published last month in Sociological Inquiry suggests the decreased presence of natural landscapes, or nature, in stories isn’t limited only to adult fiction. Since the 1970s, the study’s authors state, “natural environments have all but disappeared” from children’s books.

So then, the blogger asks, Will diminished exposure through story combine with urban and suburban lifestyles’ physical isolation from the natural world to strengthen the separation between the nonhuman and human, between nature and culture?

I would guess that reading does less to shape one's relationship with nature than actual time spent outdoors, though with that diminishing, perhaps there is a greater role for reading in shaping attitudes toward the environment (However, I'm increasingly skeptical about the capacity of reading to affect young people in any way).   All the same, the trend described here represents a nearly seismic shift in literary culture.  Nature has had a prominent role in American literature at least since William Bartram cobbled notes on his journey though Florida into the first international best seller by an American writer.  And who can imagine children's stories without animals, or without more works like Where the Red Fern Grows or Island of the Blue Dolphins? 

Obviously we've had our fair share of writers with roots in the concrete, too, many of whom I like very much.  But works in which the natural world has a strong and vibrant presence have done much to deepen my own awareness of and concern for it, not to mention leading me into my profession. 

The Precipitate blogger urged a renaissance of nature in children's literature.  I'm afraid fish blogging can't contribute much to that work, but I'm rooting for whoever takes it up.