Climate and Literature: Reflections of Environment ed. by Janet Pérez and Wendell Aycock (review)

Book Reviews203 JANET PÉREZ and WENDELL AYCOCK, eds. Climate and Literature: Reflections of Environment. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1995. 134 p. liiditor Janet Pérez describes Climate and Literature, the most recent volume in Texas Tech University's Studies in Comparative Literature Series, as a collection of essays "which, by examining works across centuries, across oceans and genres, [exemplifies] the myriad ways in which literature responds to environmental concerns (and anticipates them)" (5). The development of eco-criticism in American literary theory has encouraged scholars to explore the relationship between the writer and nature; this collection focuses on the presence of the environment in literature within a variety of cultural contexts and historical periods. The contributors discuss not only novels but also poetry and scientific essays to show how authors use climate as metaphor, as realistic detail, as protagonist, and even as an element of cultural identity. Nine of the volume's thirteen essays feature literature from Latin America, but three essays analyze works from other traditions: Horace's Odes, Zola's The Land, and the writings of the medieval Jewish scholar Jehuda Halevi. The collection manages to be broad enough in scope to include work on well-known contemporary authors like Gabriel Garcia Márquez and on "re-discovered" writers such as the eighteenth-century Peruvian thinker Juan de Barrenechea. Although the editors have organized the collection chronologically, each chapter differs from the next in how it approaches climate and literature. In "Writing the Bodies ofWater: The Clash ofthe Lasting and the Catastrophic in the Odes ofHorace," Rosemary Nielson and Robert Solomon highlight the use of water imagery in Horace's "Parade Odes" to show how his metaphors for change in nature reflect a human world that is also in transition. Stephen Newmyer also examines the use of climate-as-metaphor in his study of the writings of Jehuda Halevi. Building upon the Greek belief in the superiority of the Greco-Roman environment, Halevi used his "scientific " assertions of the superiority of the Palestinian climate as support for his belief that the Jewish people truly belong, and must return to, the Holy Land. Other essays examine the extent to which authors attempt to portray climate in a realistic fashion, rather than using it artistically to establish a mood or ambiance. In "Zola's Uses of Climate in The Land," Wendell McClendon argues that despite Zola's stated naturalist intent, his employment of climate is "finally more artistic than mimetic" (43). The cycle of the seasons around which his novel of French peasant life is structured parallels the human cycle of hope and despair which runs throughout the text. McClendon finds that the human characters in the novel ultimately become part of the environment. Gary Elbow, on the other hand, argues that Gabriel García Márquez's depiction of the climate of coastal Colombia in One Hundred Years ofSolitude "may approach realism far more closely than many of his readers, looking for the magic in his writings, may expect" (80). 204Rocky Mountain Review Latin Americanists in particular should find this volume useful. George McMurray's "The Role of Climate in Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction" gives a good overview of the way in which climate has helped to shape the Latin American novel and short story. He looks briefly at a wide variety of authors, including Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende, Elena Poniatowska, and Antonio Skarmeta. The essays that follow McMurray's elaborate on his initial observations. Clementina Adams' "The Endless Rains of Death and Desolation in García Márquez's Short Stories," Paul Nelson's "The Weather as a Story Element in Four Short Works from Latin America," and Leonard Cheever's "Ices Everlasting and Passions Perverted: The Physical and Moral Climate of PuIg1S Anti-Utopia" all focus on how the harshness of the natural world is symbolic of a political or social environment that is oppressive or sterile. Similarly, in her excellent study of Pedro Páramo, Cida Chase shows how the atmospheric imagery and climatic motifs that appear throughout Juan Rulfo's novel help to unify the plot and to clarify the desert's "intimate relationship with the sterile...