The Nature Book

Using a collage of passages from hundreds of English-language novels, Comitta (Airport Novella) assembles an immersive exhibition of nature writing. A Genesis-like opening sets the tone: “Since the beginning, time was a form of sustenance,” where “seasons passed with dream-like slowness.” Soon, nonhuman characters emerge, with narratives of horses, a beaver, birds, and a mountain lion. There are exhausting storms, briny lightless depths, the cold of outer space, steaming jungles, massive mountain ranges, and burning deserts. Comitta’s “literary supercut,” as they call their project in a preface, encourages readers to meditate on the relationship between the English language and the natural world—night is “gloomy,” an owl is “sobbing,” there is “no way to draw any beauty” from a storm, and the howling of wolves is “cold and beggarly.” Though none of the passages are directly attributed, some are so recognizable they break the spell, as in the many lines from Moby-Dick (“The whale broke water within two ship’s lengths.... Shrouded in a thin, drooping veil of mist, it hovered for a moment in the rain- bowed air”), while others feel anachronistic (“The moon came back white as cocaine”). Overall, though, Comitta’s literary experiment pulls the reader along with gorgeous language and animal protagonists worth rooting for. (Mar.)