To recap briefly on Ecocriticism, the book, a damned useful overview to the field. Nicely balanced, many topics turned over and searched for tasty morsels. In contrast to an anthology, you get a single voice, which is nice. And since Greg Garrard is a Brit, there's a pleasant accent to go along with it.
However, I've moved on to Topophilia by Yi-Fu Tuan (and here). Quick read. He's got a superb, clean writing style. At least for this book. The issues and questions that he raises are picked up again and again in the ecocrit and ethocrit (that's what some of the Darwinian crits are calling themselves--along with gadfly, muckraker and curmudgeon) work in literature. He seems like a level-headed guy who wants to raise some issues, make some careful observations and suggest some directions we might head. This particular book is about how humans fit into their world--cultural, architectural, constructed (cities, etc), and natural. It's not exhaustive, but it's a fine survey. And did I say quick? In two hours, I'm a third of the way through the 250 pages. Maybe it'll bog down, but I hope not.
Lastly, a tech update. Regular readers. . .
I'm sorry, I had to take a break and laugh until I couldn't breathe. I know, there are some of you--hello, Kat--but I'm mostly an answer to Google searches about ecopoetry and ecocriticism. These are my raison d'etre, true, so I'm not heartbroken. Right, now, on with the tech.
. . . will recall that I purchased a package from DEVONtechnologies. I really wanted their DEVONthink database/notebook/catch-all. And I'm loving it. Along with the database came a search tool, DEVONagent. It's a little critter that uses a couple of search engines at a time, pulls from them, that is, and then has a paragraph or two from the results that most seem to match your search (it kicks out redundancies, etc). OK, so far, so good. Like a jumped up single search engine. But then I found out that it also graphically maps your term with the most closely associated other terms it finds. Then, it offers a second search window to search your batch of results. Also, you can get it to search links up to a depth of five. . . And it goes on and on.
You know you've got a serious geek mojo going when you get this excited about research tools.
Are you laughing at me? Me & Kat are starting a fan club.
Posted by: mathias Svalina | June 20, 2006 at 08:38 PM