Lundberg, Ann E. (Author)
This article examines scientist Clarence King's exploration of primitivism as the locus of connection between matter and imagination, between geological environment and the modern self in his two texts "Systematic Geology" and "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada." It is suggested in this article that King's conflicted selfhood emerges from inconsistencies within the broader cultural narratives he employees in his attempt to construct a coherent identity for both self and nation. King came into his own both as a writer and as one of the nation's pre-eminent geologists in an America changed not only by the violence of the Civil War, but also by an ever-increasing influx of immigrants to an increasingly urban and industrialized America. It was in 1873, when King's geological theories converge his self-expression on the summit of Mount Whitney, the last Sierran peak he would ever climb that King turns to consider a possible model for mountain literature: John Ruskin, who alone re-echoes the dim past in ever-recurring myth-making. King has maintained a remarkable dynamic tension as he carefully balances his scientific and mythic perspectives and in so doing comes face to face with the difficulty that one cannot represent nature in language without self-made myths. King's self-construction partakes of the same processes which was outlined in "Manliness and Civilization". Geologic history, according to King, consists of periods of relative calm, in which the regular processes of dissemination and weathering occur.
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