Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. Tech, community, video games, and whatever else is next.

March 22, 2021: Paul Kingsnorth, author, "Alexandria"

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Tonight: Paul Kingsnorth, author, "Alexandria"

Links:

• Alexandria: A Novel, by Paul Kingsnorth

• paulkingsnorth.net, Paul's official website

• Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, an essay by Paul Kingsnorth in Orion Magazine (2012)

• Dark Ecology, an essay by Paul Kingsnorth in Orion Magazine (2012)

• 'We imagine how it feels to be a character, why can't we imagine how the land feels?', Paul Kingsnorth writing about books in The Guardian (2016) - mentioning authors Robert Graves (The White Goddess), Thomas Hardy, Emily Bronte, Ursula Le Guin, DH Lawrence (The Plumed Serpent), Ben Myers, Daisy Johnson, and poet Robinson Jeffers - as well as Golding and Garner, listed below

• Life Versus the Machine, an essay by Paul Kingsnorth in Orion Magazine (2018), mentioning Aldo Leopold and his book A Sand County Almanac

• Short video documentary on Paul Kingsnorth (2018)

• The Myth of Progress: An Interview with Paul Kingsnorth (Emergence Magazine, Aug 22, 2018)

• Rod Dreher interviews Paul Kingsnorth about Alexandria (The American Conservative, Oct 23, 2020), which prompted this this followup piece (Oct 27, 2020)

• The black-pilled laureate of modern Britain (review of Alexandria by Aris Roussinos in The Washington Examiner, Nov 12, 2020)

• The Dark Mountain Project, which Paul co-founded, most recently writing Four Lessons from the Garden (Dec 2, 2020)

Authors mentioned in Paul's Techtonic interview:

• Ivan Illich, author of Tools for Conviviality

• Leopold Kohr (see Paul's mention of Kohr in this 2011 Guardian piece)

• E.F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful

• Jacques Ellul, author of The Technological Society

• Lewis Mumford, author of Technics and Civilization

• Neil Postman, author, Technopoly

• Jerry Mander, author, In the Absence of the Sacred

• William Golding, author of Pincher Martin (though of course Golding is better known for Lord of the Flies)

• Alan Garner. Kingsnorth recommends Garner's Strandloper (apparently based on a true story of an ancestor of Garner's who went to Australia and lived with aboriginal people there), his young adult novel The Owl Service, or his children's novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

Closing words from Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

...(from "Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]"). Ferlinghetti, who died last month, founded San Francisco's City Lights bookstore.)

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