Summary

Literature began in stone. Rocks provided the surfaces and styli for externalizing the imagination. Over twelve millennia ago, America’s first writers revealed the human by revealing rock, scraping the surfaces of stone. Humanity’s innermost self—its literary life—was forged in lithic encounter. American writers have been delving into this meeting of mind and rock ever since. Through environmental criticism and the material turn, this lithic encounter continues to reveal new facets of literature, culture, and the nonhuman world. Scholars generally agree that the height of America’s fascination with geology occurred in the mid-1800s. Thus “geology in American literature,” after the middle decades of the 19th century, is cast as a story of declension. But there is another story to tell. The geologic gaze expanded and magnified since its founding as a modern science in the late 1700s, connecting disparate dimensions of the material world into an evermore complex Earth system. This geological gaze moved from continental rocks in the 19th century to the ocean and lab in the 20th century, then rose into the air by the end of the 20th century. As geology expanded, so did its literary dimension, propelling the emergence of environmental writing, climate fiction, and Anthropocene research. Knitting together Earth systems, geology remains a significant force in American literature. In this moment of global lithic encounter, as humans inscribe themselves on the Earth via record heat waves, wildfires, and ever-intensifying hurricanes, few topics are more vital than humanity’s conception of the Earth. As humans think, so they act. The meeting of mind and rock is intimately tied to human existence, both its literary beginnings and existential future. Humanity’s story is thus forever wrapped up in stone’s story, whether in petroglyphs etched into surfaces of stone or pollution carved into the layers of our world.