Weeks 8–9: Lauren Redniss' "Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, and Future"

A two-page spread from Lauren Redniss' Thunder and Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future.

If we've already experienced one sort of expressive leap from Maggie Nelson's Bluets (a very visual book without images) to Claudia Rankine's Citizen (a book full of visual arts and iconic images that also aims to mitigate the divide between the printed page and the moving image at times), then we're going exponentially farther with Lauren Redniss' Thunder and Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future, a book that describes itself as "an uncatagorizable fusion of storytelling and visual art." Elsewhere, Redniss describes herself as an "author of visual non-fiction." That feels more apt than "graphic novelist," though some of the lessons we learned from Scott McCloud will serve us well here.

Thunder and Lightning is Redniss' third book and the follow-up to the much-beloved Radioactive, which told the story of Nobel-winning scientist Marie Curie. Her first book, Century Girl, traced the life of Doris Eaton Travis, the last living showgirl from the Zigfield Follies. In her MacArthur Foundation citation, the common threads linking these disparate projects, as well as the techniques that serve her well:

Lauren Redniss is an artist and writer seamlessly integrating artwork, written text, and design elements in works of visual nonfiction. Redniss undertakes archival research, interviews and reportage, and field expeditions to inform every aspect of a book's creation, from its text, to its format and page layout, to the design of the typeface, to the printing and drawing techniques used for the artwork. Her intimate, idiosyncratic perspective illuminates widely varying subjects.

In Thunder and Lightning this meticulous attention to detail carries over into her self-designed typeface (named Qaneg LR after the Eskimo word for "snow") and the various printmaking and coloring techniques used for the book's many images, which, in and of themselves, are inspired and directly reference naturalist's engravings of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Rather than take well-trod paths through weather phenomena, she offers us chapters focusing on abstract ideas like "chaos," "dominion," "war," "profit," and "pleasure," tying together oblique stories to make for a compelling narrative. We're a nation already torn about over the fundamental question of whether climate change is fact or fiction, along with the grim future prospects it might bring, therefore it's no stretch, especially when taking the historical longview (as Redniss does here), to view Thunder and Lightining as "the year's most political picture book" (as The Telegraph opines).

Here's the breakdown for our four days with the book. We'll also spend a little time towards the end of this segment laying out plans for the workshop sessions we'll begin after Spring Break. Also, please note that there are notes on each chapter starting on page 237, as well as notes on the typeface and printmaking techniques that will be useful foreknowledge in approaching the book:

• Friday, March 3: Ch. 1–3
• Monday, March 6: Ch. 4–7
• Wednesday, March 8: Ch. 8–10
• Friday, March 10: Ch. 11–12

Here are some supplemental resources that might be of interest to you:

• the New York Times offers two reviews of Redniss' book: one by Sadie Stein, the other by Jennifer Schuessler
• Smithsonian considers how Redniss "is rethinking biography": [link]
• Elle agrees, asserting that she "is inventing a new literary genre": [link]
• The Guardian (UK) hails the book as "thrillingly original": [link]
• the aforementioned Telegraph review: [link]

a 2011 TED Talk where Redniss discusses her creative process