Design Observer :: Join the Discussion http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/ en-us Design Observer Group 2011-07-04T00:13:56-05:00 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0 About the prerogative to write fiction, fine -- anyone's free to be generic about birds flying over, or run-over animals in the road, etc. What I join the author in objecting to is scamming the reader with bogus precision of detail.
I do agree with Jim Collins that the birds and lilies example from Matthew was mostly off the mark -- though he does gloss over the author's actually apt counterexample on one point, some birds' reaping and gathering of seeds (on which there's also Aesop's ant to think about), and I'm not sure why he construes, with umbrage, her summary of Matthew's message as "her portrayal of Jesus as a muddled-headed character pedaling 'don't worry, be happy' CD's with his loaves and fishes. (BTW please look up pedal and peddle.) Perhaps he found it flip but I don't find anything in the two dozen lines he pastes in from Matthew that would indict her concise single line as misrepresentation.
Kevin, where do you find the phrase "real identities" that you assail? My search function comes up with your own use of it as the first instance in this thread.
More to the point, the author did assure us that she's not concerned with the naming-as-claiming issue, but with whether we care enough to pay attention -- for which naming is a necessary step if we're going to collaborate on doing anything about the survival of whatever it is -- and it's not particularly anthropocentric nor arrogant to observe that our species's brain and propensity for enterprise place us inescapably in the position of stewards or else annihilators. So if we care about preserving this world we've inherited -- and which I wish/hope my son too can inherit most of -- then we're obliged to learn how its web of life works, and that means paying attention and studying, and that means naming things.

]]> Crispin Miller http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-07-04T00:13:56-05:00 galaxiecarol http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-29T22:27:24-05:00 barny http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-29T17:24:00-05:00
1. Writers of fiction should ground their works in understanding of the natural world, and are irresponsible when they don't.

2. Writers of fiction may have other points to make in their works that have little to do with accurate details in the actual world.

While I empathise with the first perspective, for the most part, I don't think it really matters which butterflies are identified in, for instance, 100 Years of Solitude. Sometimes, fiction is rooted in real places, and it seems awkward when flora and fauna are thrown around like mis-matched chairs in a room. There are other cases where this is less central to the flow of a work, and I don't think that there is necessarily anything wrong with such a disconnection. Fiction does not pretend to be science or accurate in straightforward way, and this imprecision can be exactly what is needed to make some other point. Anyway, the assertion is a generalization that could be a kind of cookie cutter over fiction. That simply doesn't work. You can care deeply about the natural world and also not bother with the species of Ionesco's rhinocerous. This is why we have proper formal divisions between disciplines.]]> D E Newton http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-29T13:02:46-05:00
Do we realize our lives we made to live forever? Eden is more than
a HOPE that's what God gave his only EARTH Child named Jesus born through a Woman named Mary. BUT how many people know how to learn to read our Bible?

At least, I am learning more on how to read & understand it too.

]]> Elizabeth http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-29T12:07:42-05:00
Like Tom writes in his comment, I also highly suggest Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and/or Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.]]> Casey Seda http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-29T09:21:38-05:00 Kevin http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-28T10:30:50-05:00 T. Boudreau http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-28T10:27:16-05:00
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

"The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."

"A sand County Almanac" is an excellent book to read if you want to further develop your understanding of the relationship that should exist between man and the biotic community.

TR]]> Tom Rogers http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-28T09:07:39-05:00
I have a different problem, though - I live in the Fynbos Biome, (Western Cape, South Africa) and the plant species are so dense and numerous that it is impossible to learn them all, except generically, with a few individual species as examples. I am told there are as many plant species on the slope of mountain above my house as in North America. In fiction here, only general terms for flora work, because a non-specialist audience would not know the names of any but a few species (such as protea, pelargonium, erica, lobelia). ]]> Mike Cope http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-28T05:04:11-05:00
i am delighted by this piece: I agree with its notions of respect through natural history, I agree with a notion of appreciation that develops into an understanding that frames human life

terrific! probably the best thing I have read on the internet for a v long time! Up there w the poems of Philip Larkin.]]> Tom Young http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-28T04:14:21-05:00
It is deplorable that writers, fiction or not, would get details like those mentioned wrong. It reflects the sort of carelessness and indifference that has led to the ecological disasters and mass extinction that face the planet. If literature tells us nothing else, it tells us that such arrogance never goes unpunished.

My only consolation, that I keep hearing myself repeat these days, is that none of this will matter in a hundred million years (maybe a billion?), or so. C'est la vie.

I will vigorously recommend this article on my obscure little blog, and hope a few more open minds read it.

Cheers,
Jim
http://www.completelybaked.blogspot.com

@garbo: Fiction, if it is done well, creates an even more truthful version of reality, with natural details enhanced and clarified, but not altered or misidentified. The idea is learn about our world from fiction, not abandon it.]]> Jim Welke http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-17T08:26:11-05:00       Something in this carelessness, this imprecision, must have reminded her of things in the bible that bothered her, so to work she went, finding fault, first in Jesus' characterization of the behavior of birds and the habits of plants and, secondly, in the attitude toward life that Jesus promoted, both of which were found in a passage in Matthew from the middle section of the Sermon on the Mount. She writes:
      "Fudging the facts about nature to serve writerly ends goes back a long way. Who has not committed to memory the oft-repeated lines from what is perhaps the most familiar work of creative nonfiction of all time — the New Testament? 'Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns. ... Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,' counsels the Gospel According to Matthew. "
      And, after supplying us with some wonderful natural historical and biochemical detail, she continues:
      "But does it matter that misinformation about birds and lilies is used uncritically to deliver the larger message of Matthew — don’t worry, be happy, trust providence?"
      After looking at her examples and the "oft-repeated lines" that offended, I could come up with little in the way of misinformation; and, as far as the characterization of Jesus' outlook on life, noticed only our Armadillo blinking in the hot sun, far from home.
      To say that birds sow as they pursue their avian ways (that is, they eat) seems to fail some critical test of volition which, I assume, is Jesus' point of departure and which we ought to require of this particular example. (Plus, isn't it seed design which enables germ plasm to survive its intimate encounter with birds' interior lives?) For those in search of the obvious: Jesus chose not to relate what some birds can do, but (ahem) what most birds do do. They forage. It is not misinformation that we confront in his discourse, but an entirely reasonable metaphor for which our author seemed unprepared. SImilarly, her little dissertation on photosynthetic "work" would gratify only the dreariest pedant. That the scriptures neglect to function as biology texts will forever vex some, but to say that what we read in Matthew amounts to error is just wrong-headed.
      More damaging than the accusation of incompetence is her portrayal of Jesus as a muddled-headed character pedaling 'don't worry, be happy' CD's with his loaves and fishes. What struck me about her characterization of the passage was that she had "committed to memory the oft-repeated lines", insinuating a degree of familiarity that is in striking contrast to the actual words and their plain meaning. I wonder whether Cunningham felt as familiar with his material?
      For those with ears to hear (an invitation issued elsewhere in Matthew) here is the actual text:

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? “And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? “And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ “For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Matthew 6:24-34.
]]> Jim Collins http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-14T18:43:07-05:00
It certainly is, Ms Fischer, which is why I suggest you look up the meaning of the word enormity in your phrase 'nature's shorthand for enormity'. ]]> Peter Temple http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-14T01:45:46-05:00
I would say that the inaccuracies in the book are not an example of fiction, just bad writing; closer to something by Dan Brown or Chuck Palahniuk, while pretending to be by Hemingway, Faulkner, or Turgenev, at least in how it treats certain details and biases. This, I think, is the author’s point, and it’s a good one, though her use of terms like “natural” and “natural history” would be worth interrogating.
]]> faslanyc http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-10T16:18:14-05:00 MARobinson http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-10T11:52:56-05:00 garbo http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-10T11:21:22-05:00 Amy Metnick http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-09T16:04:09-05:00 Frank Izaguirre http://places.designobserver.com/feature/a-home-before-the-end-of-the-world/26568/#comments 2011-06-09T14:54:44-05:00