The Misanthropocene in California: Susan Straight’s Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights and Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay proposes to label the current moment, characterized by biomass loss and global ecological catastrophe, as “the Misanthropocene,” and it presents two literary examples in which misanthropic attitudes are found. It focuses on Susan Straight’s Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights (1994) and Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted (1996), comparing their representations of California and its characteristic elements such as the jacaranda tree or the state’s symbol, the poppy. Following Kantian discussion of the concept, misanthropy is understood as a negative assessment of (and not an emotional attitude toward) humanity’s moral shortcomings such as racism, greed, or deceitfulness. Finally, the conclusions present the resolution of the misanthropic attitudes in the light of Michael Marder’s vegetal ontology, arguing that while Didion offers a partial solution of the misanthropy she portrays, it is Straight’s novel that suggests a way beyond the impasse of the Misanthropocene by thinking with plants.