Refiguring the map of sorrow : nature writing and autobiography

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in both autobiography and environmental literature. In Refiguring the Map of Sorrow, Mark Allister brings these two genres together by examining a distinct form of grief narrative, in which the writers deal with mourning by standing explicitly both outside and inside the text: outside in writing about the natural world; inside in making that exposition part of the grieving process.

Building on Peter Fritzell's thesis in Nature Writing and America that the best American nature writing blends Aristotelian natural history and Augustinian confession, this work of literary interpretation draws on psychoanalytical narrative theory, studies of grieving, autobiography theory, and ecocriticism for its insights into how nature writing can become an autobiographical, healing act.

Allister examines works by Terry Tempest Williams, Sue Hubbell, Peter Matthiessen, Bill Barich, William Least Heat-Moon, and Gretel Ehrlich in order to demonstrate the difficulty of hearing nature speak, and of translating terrain and self into language and form. As he focuses on the many ways in which humans connect?often deeply and urgently?to animals or the land, Allister vastly extends our understanding of "relational" autobiography.

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This balanced contribution to ecocriticism examines autobiographical works that focus on grief, the mourning process, and the interaction of the human world with the world of nature. Comprising close readings of Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge (1991), Bill Barich's Laughing in the Hills (1980), Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978), Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (1986), and William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways (1982), the volume offers critical insight into autobiography as Allister (St. Olaf College) examines theoretical and artistic implications. Allister is interested in how these authors work through their grief, and he finds that they do so by extending themselves into the natural world and into the built environment. He applies an ecological term, ecotone, to the works he studies, defining them as border cases in which major perspectives of the human and the natural worlds meet. In this regard, this work follows in the critical footsteps of centrally located ecocriticism as defined in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, ed. by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996): the "desire to articulate the intricate webs of relations in the natural world--one foot in literature and the other on land." Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty. B. Adler Valdosta State University

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
1 Writing the Self through Others	p. 11
2 Living the Questions, Writing the Story Sue Hubbell's A Country Year	p. 34
3 An Unnatural History Made Natural Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge	p. 58
4 When All the World Is Cancerous Bill Barich's Laughing in the Hills	p. 81
5 Constructing a Self on the Road William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways	p. 101
6 A Pilgrimage to Fashion a Zen Self Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard	p. 125
7 Making a Home on the Range Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces and Western Myths	p. 145
Epilogue: "We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live"	p. 169
Notes	p. 173
Bibliography	p. 183
Index	p. 193

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