Sand, water, salt : managing the elements in literature of the American West, 1880-1925 / Jada Ach.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ach, Jada, 1980- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

West (U.S.)--In literature.

West (U.S.).

Ecology in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 328 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Lubbock, Texas : Texas Tech University Press, [2021]

Summary:

Jada Ach's scholarship in Sand, Water, Salt: Managing the Elements in Literature of the American West, 1880-1925, seeks to reevaluate the Progressive Era's environmental legacy. Taking an ecocritical approach to turn-of-the-century literature set in the American West, Ach interrogates texts by asking what kinds of environmental, national, and cultural stories the elements have to tell about land and oceanic management. Sand, Water, Salt investigates managerial engagements with dynamic ecologies in three particular Western environments: the arid deserts, the semiarid high plains, and the Pacific Ocean. At different times, and to varying degrees, Americans have deemed these environments economically unproductive, incompatible with Anglo-American settlement, and/or highly unmanageable. Despite these varied complaints, the United States has also intensely desired these "wasteland" spaces, perceiving them as sources of both national wealth and elite pleasure. Sand, Water, Salt moves through a variety of novels, memoirs, and cultural artifacts from the 1880s to the 1920s, including L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank Norris's McTeague, Mary Hunter Austin's The Land of Little Rain, The Virginian by Owen Wister, Life among the Piutes by Sarah Winnemucca, as well as Jack London's The Sea-Wolf and Yone Noguchi's The American Diary of a Japanese Girl. Ach ultimately asks what we gain by looking back at fin-de-sïcle American literature with a queer, ecological justice-oriented eye, a particularly invigorating conversation that uniquely uses the elements as foci.--Amazon.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Radical Elements

ch. 1 Under "The Forester's Eye"

Overseeing The Elements In Progressive Era Management Utopias

ch. 2 "Left All Alone In This World's Wilderness"

Queer Ecology And Managing Desert Sand

ch. 3 "Under The Ditch"

Managing Bodies (Of Water) In Western American Literature

ch. 4 The Salt Cure

Brining Soft Bodies In The "Wild Waste" Of The Pacific Ocean

Coda: Exiled Birds And Abandoned Boats Drifting Toward A Conclusion On The Queer Pacific.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-318) and index.

ISBN:

9781682830819

1682830810

OCLC:

1196242895