
Title
Pocket Apocalypse: American Survivalist Fiction from Walden to The Incredible Shrinking Man
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Considers America’s cultural fixation on apocalypse in the face of material change, drawing connections between apocalyptic and millennialist thinking. Briefly discusses “The Big Two-Hearted River” within the context of Thoreau’s survivalist text, Walden (1854), noting similarities with physical description and experiential perspective. Draws attention to Nick’s use of the opposing adjectives good and tragic in relation to humankind’s apocalyptic condition.
Published in
Imagining Apocalypse: Studies in Cultural Crisis
Date
2000
Pages
118-135
Citation
Slusser, George. “Pocket Apocalypse: American Survivalist Fiction from Walden to The Incredible Shrinking Man.” In Imagining Apocalypse: Studies in Cultural Crisis, edited by David Seed, 118-35. New York: Macmillan, 2000.