The Guardian Book Blog looks at apocalyptic fiction in its slight and whimsical way. An unnecessary survey is used, less than convincingly, to argue that current fictional apocalypses based on environmental disasters, are used to promote the theme that “we are all to blame”.
Today, of course, the big fear is environmental. And this seems to have had a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) effect on our bards of the apocalypse. Put simply, the difference between the current threat and older ones is this: we are all, personally, to blame. Almost everyone (especially in the well-read west) is doing their bit to make the world a warmer place, and thus we are all implicated in the calamity that will this time surely spell the End. Previously, we could blame naive scientists or tyrant villains, world leaders or fickle fate; and though there is an argument for collective culpability in the Bible (in which case, we've come full circle), it did at least offer us the option of throwing our hands up at a cruel and vengeful God. Now we're all directly responsible and I think the bleakness of recent books reflects this.
It is not clear to me that environmental concerns have suggested a trend towards bleakness and shared responsibility. Such 'green' readings tell us more about the blogger than about the books. The anti-humanism supporting this reading is hardly inferred:
In these three very different books, greater spiritual redemption is seen as a hollow illusion. The moments of warmth are fleeting and individual. The world seems better off without us.
Yes, the cold mudball in The Road is so attractive. With The Road, the setting is almost magical in its realism: a contrivance to reflect the psychology of suffering in its crucified family.
Of more interest is the representation of the end: once swift and universal, now slow and decaying, like age. The tempo of the apocalypse has slowed with the aging of the baby boomer.