In a critical review of Martin Puchner’s Literature for a Changing Planet, I discuss the resonance of Gilgamesh in a time of climate crisis. Far from the celebration of resource extraction that Puchner sees in the epic, Gilgamesh is a complex meditation on environmental devastation, with an important lesson for modern readers: to combat climate change effectively, we must learn to zigzag in our minds between the global scale on which the change is unfolding and the local scale on which we can act.
“Climate Change: From Gilgamesh to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” The Marginalia Review of Books (22 April 2022). Link.