In Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape (Viking 2021), a sort of world tour guide to wastelands that have reverted to a sort of wildness, Cal Flyn devotes a chapter to Paterson, NJ, that recalls her visit with the editor of Weird New Jersey to the ruins below the Falls where they encounter a lone inhabitant. In the chapter titled “Days of Anarchy” she frames the trip as a Dantean descent into hell with the editor as her Virgil, alluding frequently if somewhat loosely to Williams, and following the chapter up with further adventures down the Passaic, alluding the work of Robert Smithson, and concluding in the vicinity of the Arthur Kill. The book is a lively but somewhat disturbing variation on contemporary wasteland literature. The title “Days of Anarchy” alludes not to any actual Patersonian anarchists or events but to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale—an indication of how free range Flyn’s literary sampling is in pursuit of the post-human. (Stephen Hahn)
Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape
