Twain died in 1910, too soon to discover that his joke turned out to be borderline prophetic. After maintaining its centrality in Western literature for millennia, weather, while by no means vanishing entirely, faded in importance in the twentieth century. Only in our own time are we seeing it return in significant ways to our stories—thanks, as it happens, to the same forces that drove it away in the first place.
See also: The Cli-Fi Report.
A well- known Canadian novelist saw your New Yorker link today and read the article online. She then sent me a brief tweet with her characteristic 76 year old wit -- "Interesting! Canadians ALWAYS write about the weather."
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ReplyDeleteCorrection: what she actually said was "Canadians ALWAYS do the weather."
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