Can Nostalgia Be a Setting?

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Writing From Nostalgia

It's easy to plan the perfect beach read until a heat dome arrives.Hosho McCreesh reflects on monsoon season in "The Low Grumble of Thunder," one of Issue Four's videopoems. The piece is rich with footage of late-summer monsoon storms over the high desert. Even though the monsoons here in Arizona have been uncannily delayed, the videopoem is powerful enough to remind me of the seasonal storms I took for granted as a kid.In reading through our Walkthrough series, I'm struck, too, by how many authors connect video games to a sense of nostalgia. This week, Tetman Callis reflects on the Reagan-era game Missile Command, and in previous essays, authors have similarly reflected on games like Kingdom Hearts, Read Dead Redemption, and Sonic R. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, inviting reflection and longing and regret. It can dominate writing so strongly that I wonder if nostalgia, itself, is a setting, a plane on which our personas operate, through fiction or nonfiction.It's so powerful that it has come to embody the climate crisis for many of us. Philosopher Glenn Albrecht even coined the term "solastalgia" to describe anxieties about a changing climate, such that we seek solace in the memory of an environment that is no longer with us.Of course, nostalgia can be a trap. If it is a setting, it's not the place we want our characters, or ourselves, to stay in for too long. Like with so many of the essays in our series, the goal is to move forward toward a greater insight, a greater complexity of afterthought. As much as I miss the monsoons, I can't let that stop me from properly grieving the desert, while fighting for the annihilation of the fossil fuel industry on the side. As writers, reflection will only get us so far.

In the meantime, I hope you keep writing. The world needs it.Peace,Keene ShortEditor-in-ChiefAtticus Review

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

WALKTHROUGH 10

AS I COMMAND

by Tetman Callis

READ ON

NEW FROM THE ATTIC

THE VIEW FROM MAINE \\ JULY '23

by Barbara Riddle

"Somehow, we had a farmers’ market with no farmers."

READ ON

ISSUE FOUR SPOTLIGHT

THE LOW GRUMBLE OF THUNDERby Hosho McCreesh 

READ ON

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