View from Above in American Literature

David Rodriguez is Adjunct Assistant Professor in English at Hofstra University, United States. He lives in Helsinki. His previous publications include Narrating Nonhuman Spaces: Form, Story, and Experience Beyond Anthropocentrism (co-edited with Marco Caracciolo and Marlene Marcussen, 2021).

• List of FiguresAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Flights Without Wings 1. Foundations for the View from Above in Literary Fiction: Description, Form and Indeterminacy2. Extent, Built Form and Willa Cather’s Landscapes3. Verticality and Empty Thematics in Paul Bowles's Novels4. ‘Only Scenery’: Scale, Whole-Earth Images and Don DeLillo’s ‘Human Moments in World War III’ Conclusion: On Drone and Satellite Images BibliographyIndex

David Rodriguez ably demonstrates how 'aerial description' at once establishes and transforms the spaces of American literature in the work of Willa Cather, Paul Bowles and Don DeLillo, among others. The result is a superb study of literary cartography, disclosing the power of the imagination to alter the ways we understand our environment and its conditions today.