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Reviewed by:
  • Here and There: Reading Pennsylvania’s Working Landscapes by Bill Conlogue
  • Sharon McConnell-Sidorick
Bill Conlogue. Here and There: Reading Pennsylvania’s Working Landscapes (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013). Pp. xviii, 248. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth, $69.95; paper, $29.95.

Many scholars have written about transformations in the United States that have moved the country to a service- and knowledge-based economy, with deindustrialization as a central feature. Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal region is an early example of the economic devastation that has often accompanied this transformation. Bill Conlogue has written a book that examines the economic dislocations visited upon the anthracite region, but gives particular attention to the impact on the local environment caused by the many decades of exploitation of its natural resources, now taking the form of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. But Here and There is a different kind of book. Primarily a work of literary criticism, it is an example of the new discipline of “eco-criticism” with roots in American nature writing that privileges representations of individual interactions with the wild. He uses the device of “narrative scholarship,” interweaving personal stories with history, literature, movies, and plays to give us an intensely personal assessment that “challenges the assumption that literature and local places matter less and less in a world that economists describe as ‘flat,’ politicians insist is ‘globalized,’ and social scientists imagine as a ‘village’” (1). Above all, Conlogue wants us to “pay attention” to the work we do and our stewardship of the land. Certainly a worthy goal.

Here and There takes us on a literary journey. From the poems of Robert Frost to the novel Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, the author seeks to show us how literature has helped him understand his connections to “home.” In the nineteenth century anthracite coal extraction fueled America’s industrial growth. Aided by Pennsylvania politics and courts favoring capital, coal companies mined the land, creating a boom that drew thousands of people to the region. In the process the land was ravaged, rivers polluted, and the [End Page 210] ground itself undermined by the ubiquitous tunneling required for deep coal extraction. When the decline in the anthracite market accelerated rapidly in the 1920s, the region was left not only with severe economic distress, but a pockmarked landscape, mountainous culm heaps, and polluted rivers. Later efforts to draw capital investment resulted in further exploitation as the region became a site for large landfills to service the waste management of the Northeast, especially New York City. Today, northeastern Pennsylvania’s past of resource extraction has come back to haunt it in the guise of the natural gas rush. By 2010 one-quarter of Pennsylvania had been leased for gas drilling, with the state allowing drilling on large blocks of state forest and game lands. The “fracking” boom has brought money to the economically depressed area but, again, endangered the water supply, added to the looming problems of climate change, and continued to undermine the ground itself.

In an introduction and six themed chapters, Conlogue, a professor of English in a small Catholic university, skillfully interweaves historical sketches with literary texts that fit within the themes, examining both how nature gets reproduced in literature and a deeply personal connection to “home” as he understands it. The scion of a farming family from the area, Conlogue also recounts personal reminiscences that he hopes will connect the reader to the broader issues addressed in the monograph. At times sections of chapters are “discontinuous” (a deliberate device of the author’s) and this sometimes makes it difficult to discern the point he is attempting to make. Many sections work well, such as that on factory farms, where the literature reviewed is relevant and admirably critiqued. Through the lens of Don DeLillo’s White Noise we see how easy it is to lose awareness of the processes by which our food gets to our table (88). The abundant and dazzling displays in supermarkets distract us from the dangers, both environmental and health-related, that food animals raised in crowded, antibiotic- and steroid-laden conditions pose. Similarly, the unavoidable advertising...

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