ENVIRONMENT New NARRATIVE Directions in Econarratology edited by ERIN JAMES AND ERIC MOREL ENVIRONMENT AND NARRATIVE THEORY AND INTERPRETATION OF NARRATIVE James Phelan and Katra Byram, Series Editors ENVIRONMENT AND NARRATIVE NEW DIRECTIONS IN ECONARRATOLOGY EDITED BY Erin James AND Eric Morel THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBUS Copyright © 2020 by The Ohio State University. This edition licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: James, Erin, editor. | Morel, Eric, editor. Title: Environment and narrative : new directions in econarratology / edited by Erin James and Eric Morel. Other titles: Theory and interpretation of narrative series. Description: Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2020] | Series: Theory and interpretation of narrative | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Collection of essays connecting ecocriticism and narrative theory to encourage constructive discourse on narrative’s influence of real-world environmental perspectives and the challenges that necessitate revision to current narrative models”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019034865 | ISBN 9780814214206 (cloth) | ISBN 0814214207 (cloth) | ISBN 9780814277546 (ebook) | ISBN 0814277543 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Ecocriticism. | Environmental literature. | Narration (Rhetoric) Classification: LCC PN98.E36 E55 2020 | DDC 809/.93355—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034865 Cover design by Andrew Brozyna Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro for Ben and Freddie, my favorites From Erin for Grandmaman, an avid reader and early recommender of books From Eric CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION Notes Toward New Econarratologies ERIN JAMES AND ERIC MOREL 1 I. NARRATOLOGY AND THE NONHUMAN CHAPTER 1 Unnatural Narratology and Weird Realism in Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation JON HEGGLUND 27 CHAPTER 2 Object-Oriented Plotting and Nonhuman Realities in DeLillo’s Underworld and Iñárritu’s Babel MARCO CARACCIOLO 45 II. ECONARRATOLOGICAL RHETORIC AND ETHICS CHAPTER 3 Readerly Dynamics in Dynamic Climatic Times: Cli-Fi and Rhetorical Narrative Theory ERIC MOREL 67 viii • CONTENTS CHAPTER 4 A Comedy of Survival: Narrative Progression and the Rhetoric of Climate Change in Ian McEwan’s Solar MARKKU LEHTIMÄKI 87 CHAPTER 5 Ecocriticism as Narrative Ethics: Triangulating Environmental Virtue in Richard Powers’s Gain GREG GARRARD 107 III. ANTHROPOCENE STORYWORLDS CHAPTER 6 Feeling Nature: Narrative Environments and Character Empathy ALEXA WEIK VON MOSSNER 129 CHAPTER 7 Finding a Practical Narratology in the Work of Restoration Ecology MATTHEW M. LOW 147 CHAPTER 8 Worldmaking Environmental Crisis: Climate Fiction, Econarratology, and Genre ASTRID BRACKE 165 CHAPTER 9 Narrative in the Anthropocene ERIN JAMES 183 AFTERWORD Econarratology for the Future URSULA K. HEISE 203 Contributors 213 Index 217 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS WE WOULD LIKE to thank all of the contributors who have been part of the project at various stages. The initial call for proposals received dozens of inter- ested and interesting abstracts, and the culling from this was even still too large. As a result, a subset of fascinating essays originally intended for the col- lection had to be split off and published elsewhere, and we are pleased with the result: a special issue of English Studies focused on ecocriticism and narrative theory that complements this collection. We thank the contributors to that issue: Dana Philips, Bart Welling, David Rodriguez, Marta Puxan-Oliva, Tay- lor Egan, and Daniel Cryer. We also thank the journal’s editor, Odin Dekkers, and the peer reviewers for that issue who helped bring that scholarship to its audience. We would also like to thank our colleagues who were part of con- versations about this book at its earliest stages: Eric Heyne, Nancy Easterlin, Glenn Wilmott, and Anna Banks. We are so pleased to be releasing this collection in this series with The Ohio State University Press. All of the editorial staff have been easy to work with and supportive: Lindsay Martin, Kristen Elias Rowley, and Ana M. Jimenez-Moreno. This collection would not be as strong if it were not for the insightful and targeted feedback of the anonymous reviewers and especially the series editors, Katra Byram and Jim Phelan, who read the chapters and offered their recommendations. Katra’s meticulous reading and Jim’s solution- ix x • Acknowledgments oriented feedback have helped each of our contributors sharpen their chapters to make the whole even stronger than the inherent strength of its parts. Erin would like to thank her colleagues at the University of Idaho who supported her through this project and listened to early versions of its argu- ments. She owes much to the friendship of Jennifer Ladino, Jodie Nicotra, Alexandra Teague, and Tara MacDonald. She would also like to thank the members of the Ecocriticism Reading Group, especially Scott Slovic, Peter Remien, Xinmin Liu, Anna Banks, Debbie Lee, Donna Potts, and Kota Inoue, for their vibrant monthly conversations. Kota’s memory lives on in these pages that he helped to foster. Numerous graduate students have helped Erin appreciate potential new directions of econarratological scholarship, includ- ing students in the “Narrative and Environment” seminar: Dustin Purvis, Jake McGinnis, Jordan Clapper, Joseph Perreault, Megan Tribley, and Vanessa Hes- ter. Erin is also thankful for the University of Idaho’s Seed Grant program, which provided financial support for this project. She would like to thank Eric, her favorite collaborator and the best editor that she knows, for being such a great friend and colleague. Above all, she would like to thank her par- ents, and Ben, Freddie, Rudy, and Poppet for their unconditional love. Eric is grateful for those who provided feedback on his chapter over the course of its various iterations, including Gary Handwerk, Jesse Oak Taylor, Nancy Easterlin, Greg Garrard, Eric Heyne, Sam Hushagen, and Ned Scha- umberg. The final form benefited especially from the elegance of Jim Phel- an’s feedback on the manuscript draft. In addition to the financial support of teaching positions in the University of Washington’s Department of Eng- lish and Program on the Environment, he received invaluable moral support throughout his time working on this collection from Ned Schaumberg, Lydia Heberling, Lowell Wyse, and William Lombardi. Eric’s family has heard him stress about this project for years, and he sends them love and appreciation. But perhaps above all, Eric would like to thank Erin for this opportunity to collaborate on this project; few scholars have the opportunity to work on such a boundary-pushing project from the get-go of their careers, and fewer still have the privilege to work with as gracious and supportive a mentor as Erin. That she saw merit enough in his work to bring him on not just as a contribu- tor but as a collaborator has felt like a gift. INTRODUCTION Notes Toward New Econarratologies ERIN JAMES AND ERIC MOREL TWO SIMPLE PREMISES lie at the heart of this edited collection of original essays: first, that stories about the environment significantly influence experi- ences of that environment, and vice versa, and second that scholars can do a much better job of understanding those stories and suggesting alternatives. Further, these essays acknowledge that understandings of narrative change as the environment changes—that the modern environmental crisis, in addition to being partly a crisis of narrative, also promises to have a strong effect on narrative and narrative theory. As a forum for discussing the reciprocal relationship between environ- ment and narrative, this collection explores what we call econarratology, or the paired consideration of material environments and their representations and narrative forms of understanding. This collection’s contributors suggest methodological possibilities within econarratology by examining the mechan- ics of how narratives can convey environmental understanding via building blocks such as the organization of time and space, characterization, focaliza- tion, description, and narration. They position narratives as important occa- sions and repositories for the values, political and ethical ideas, and sets of behaviors that determine how we perceive and interact with ecological homes. They also query how readers emotionally and cognitively engage with such representations and how the process of encountering different environments in narratives might affect real-world attitudes and behaviors of those read- 1 2 • ERIN James AND ERIC MOREL ers. They suggest that changing humans’ interactions with the environment requires not only new stories but also a better understanding of the ones that have long been in circulation. Moreover, they contend that today’s environ- mental challenges necessitate revisions to models of narrative. Overall, this collection explores the ways in which econarratology expands and enriches the theory and interpretation of narrative. PAIRING NARRATIVE AND ENVIRONMENT Narratives have become a touchstone for scholarship within the emerging field of the environmental humanities. Collecting work in and across fields such as literature, philosophy, sociology, geography, anthropology, history, and sci- ence and technology studies, research in the environmental humanities seeks to offer up an interdisciplinary and wide-ranging response to today’s environ- mental challenges and emphasize the