"Because climate change is an existential problem, it is an essential subject to be worked through in fiction. But it may be that the claustrophobic first-person narrator is not up to the task." https://www.thedriftmag.com/climate-anxiety/

Really interesting to think about this essay alongside @blgtylr 's recent substack about Cusk, Lahiri, "character vapor" novels, and more.

As we relive the Gilded Age now with Climate Apocalypse, maybe late 19th century forms will roar back? A recognition that Berhardian solipsism and loathing is a joke on itself? Maybe, maybe not.

It's a paradox. The novel wants to address the moment but the moment is too terrible, per Morton. So retreat to exhausted subjectivity.

One understanding of the contemporary, as posited by Paul Rabinow, is that all times are happening at the same time in the current contemporary. All novel forms can be contemporary at the same time. Maybe a modernist-19th century hybrid? Is that just postmodernism?