Dramas of Solitude

Randall Roorda is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

"…this study opens up lines of inquiry that promise fruitful future scholarship and is, in itself, an enormous contribution to contemporary ecocriticism and the future of nature writing in general education." — Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment"Roorda's extended discussion of key nature writings provides a fresh interpretive perspective that illuminates these writers' visions in exciting and intellectually engaging ways. Roorda's careful, close readings and intellectual engagement prompt readers to revisit these texts from new and significant critical angles. The author's insightful discussions of the ethical dimensions of nature writing is fascinating." — John S. Lofty, author of Time to Write: The Influence of Time and Culture on Learning to Write"Besides the exquisite writing, it is quite interesting to see a piece that prompts a creative discourse about the way we have displaced nature to the periphery of culture through our inability to think of nature as the 'place' wherein culture resides." — Mary Abascal-Hildebrand, University of San Francisco

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Genre and Narrative in Nature Writing A House with Two DoorsFixing the GenreSolitude as Story 2 Going Out, Going In: Narrative Logic in Thoreau's "Ktaadn" First There Was No StoryExemplar and ParadigmWhat "Ktaadn" Is AboutThree Ways of ReadingSelf Writing and Self WrittenLosing the HumanBefore the BeginningThe Cutting-Room Floor"Where Away Does the Summit Bear?" 3 The Subject of The Desert Negotiating "The Approach"Cactus as CrossVersions of Van DykeA Story of Reading 4 Familiar Mysteries: The Exemplary Wendell Berry Day One: Pace, Presence, and MelancholyDay Two: Afoot in the WoodsA Language of Meaning and ValueBerry's Exemplary Character: Some Social Uses of Solitude 5 Sites and Senses of Writing in Nature The Scene of the Solitary WriterThe Nature Writer's Estate: "Writing" and "Living"Beyond Doors: Writing on SiteTranscription and EntrenchmentThe Cabin as the Windowed Site of WritingLooking Up 6 Writer or Rhapsode? Iconic Metaphors for Literate Identity John Muir: Nature Writing's "Natural"The Mission to EnticeThe Bread ProblemThe Instruments of Literacy and "Indigen Wisdom"Nature Savant and Literate Indigen 7 Keeping It Simple: Reinvention and Recovery of Nature in General Education Retreat Scenarios in Student WritingCyborgs and Solos Notes Works Cited Index