I have just finished reading, Lydia's Millet most recent novel, Ghost Lights. It's a tremendous book in which, once again, the theme of extinction and the "last days of things" is central. How odd it is then, that Millet chooses to live in Tucson, Arizona.
Don't get me wrong. Tucson is a beautiful place; I will never forget the wonderful time my wife and I had there but undeniably, it too is a place doomed to extinction in the near future (like all large cities of the American southwest. Its population continues to grow, even amid a tremendous water shortage--it is--any environmentalist will attest to this--unsustainable.) Tucson is to American cities what mountain gorillas are to primate species: glorious, captivating, but clearly on the path to extinction.
The great symbol of Tucson is the Saguaro cactus which can only grow in the Sonoran Desert and never very far from Tucson. Here is yet another symbol of nature on the edge, of the "last days of the things." The mighty, heroic Saguaro--one bad winter and they die off in their thousands...
It must be deliberate. Millet lives in Tucson so she can be close to such things, to the Saguaro, to all manner of endangered desert species, and to the citizens of Tucson itself. I salute you Lydia Millet. No doubt you would have joined the orchestra on the last hours of the Titanic.
Don't get me wrong. Tucson is a beautiful place; I will never forget the wonderful time my wife and I had there but undeniably, it too is a place doomed to extinction in the near future (like all large cities of the American southwest. Its population continues to grow, even amid a tremendous water shortage--it is--any environmentalist will attest to this--unsustainable.) Tucson is to American cities what mountain gorillas are to primate species: glorious, captivating, but clearly on the path to extinction.
The great symbol of Tucson is the Saguaro cactus which can only grow in the Sonoran Desert and never very far from Tucson. Here is yet another symbol of nature on the edge, of the "last days of the things." The mighty, heroic Saguaro--one bad winter and they die off in their thousands...
It must be deliberate. Millet lives in Tucson so she can be close to such things, to the Saguaro, to all manner of endangered desert species, and to the citizens of Tucson itself. I salute you Lydia Millet. No doubt you would have joined the orchestra on the last hours of the Titanic.
