Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Nathaniel Rich and Elizabeth Kolbert discuss cli-fi on stage at the New York Public Library lecture series a few years ago.......

Subject:  listen video re Nathaniel Rich | Elizabeth Kolbert discuss CLI FI and SOME MAN IN TAIWAN at 45.35 into NYPL video:

  http://www.nypl.org/node/261377
  Nathaniel Rich | Elizabeth Kolbert discuss cli-fi

ELIZABETH KOLBERT: What do you feel about the whole cli-fi, is it?
 NATHANIEL RICH: There's a new term called "cli-fi" that I started tohear ....(laughter) .....after my book came out if you're not familiar with it,there's a man in Taiwan who invented it and is its biggest promoter. I'm surprised you haven't heard from him.
 ELIZABETH KOLBERT: I know, I know.
FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE: NATHANIEL RICH: And yeah and the novel got wrapped up in the>>> discussion of this genre, there was like an NPR story that I think>>> started. So the idea is fiction about the climate and I think there's>>> very little good fiction about the environment.

There are a couple of>>> examples that come to mind. I think Ian McEwan's book Solar is very>>> good as an example of it's not didactic, it's not preachy, and it's>>> about sort of a convincing story about these issues.

And there's a>>> good T. C. Boyle novel, Friend of the Earth, Barbara Kingsolver has>>> written about it, and some other. J. G. Ballard, I guess it's his>>> first or second novel, The Drowned World is a good early example, but>>> there's very little. And I would say even--I love Boyle and I love>>> McEwan, but I would say--and I love those books but they're not their>>> best books, those writers' best books, and I think there's a real>>> opening there, but I think, yeah, but I do have a wariness about--like,>>> anything, whenever anything crystallizes into a genre it's going to>>> have its clichés and its forms and I think if you want to do original>>> work, you have to resist that.

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