Unveiling Truths Amid Chaos: Ed Simon’s Radical Take on Writing in the Apocalypse
In writing for protest, Simon relies heavily on Roy Scranton’s work, particularly We’re Doomed. Now What?: Essays on War and Climate Change. Aside from making me think I really ought to read Scranton’s book, Simon uses it as an excellent example for writing as protest. Scranton is scathing in his defenestration of current responses — or lack thereof — to the Anthropocene and its perils. “For Scranton, grappling with the Anthropocene isn’t like faddish Darwinian criticism or the digital humanities; it entails asking what it means to live nearing the end of days….” Simon quotes Frederic Jameson, who wrote it is “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” I would argue that David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth, which Simon touches on briefly in writing for meaning, is also a protest book. It outlines in great detail exactly what will happen to the world with climate change. While some say Wallace-Wells over exaggerated, he can point to one or more scientific papers that inform every idea that appears in his book. And it isn’t pretty.
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