Barkskins by Annie Proulx
Two young Frenchmen arrive in America in 1693, and Barkskins follows their descendants as they rise and fall over the course of more than three centuries. However, despite the fact that the story is recounted through the eyes of the families, the novel’s true focus is on the devastation of North America’s forests and the environmental and human costs of that process, particularly for the indigenous peoples whose lives and cultures are upended by it.
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
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Extremely brutal, the characters in Barkskins frequently get killed, wounded, and tortured. This type of violence is nothing new in Proulx’s writing, but in Barkskins it takes on a strength, capturing not only the violence inherent in the colonial process and later capitalism but also the indifference of time and history to individual lives that are repeatedly swept away. In Proulx’s earlier writing, this violence occasionally veered into what felt uncomfortably like misanthropy.
Barkskins’ expansive temporal range also enables it to transcend a human timetable and catch a peek at other, longer horizons. This is a common theme in fiction that addresses climate change. I believe it also represents a need to grasp the geological scale of what is happening around us. On a practical level, it probably reflects the challenges of dramatizing the incremental aspect of climate change. The truth is that whenever we discuss climate change, we also nearly always discuss time, and in order to do so, we need frameworks that go beyond a singular point of view.
Barkskins’ expansive temporal range also enables it to transcend a human timetable and catch a peek at other, longer horizons. This is a common theme in fiction that addresses climate change. I believe it also represents a need to grasp the geological scale of what is happening around us. On a practical level, it probably reflects the challenges of dramatizing the incremental aspect of climate change. The truth is that whenever we discuss climate change, we also nearly always discuss time, and in order to do so, we need frameworks that go beyond a singular point of view.
