"Geophilia, or the Love of Stone" in the latest Continent.

by J J Cohen

The new issue of Continent.​ is out -- and contains a modified excerpt from the first chapter of my book Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman ("Geophilia, or The Love of Stone"). You can access the essay in a web version or a nice PDF by following this link.

I'm very happy to support Continent. The dream child of those young in the field, it's the kind of exuberant, all-things-are-possible endeavor that I wish we saw more of in scholarly circles.

And, speaking of interesting forums created by bright young minds, I was also honored recently to have been interviewed by Schlock Magazine. You'll see that in the interchange I express some anxieties I have about Stone, especially this one:

Everything I write has a deep personal investment, even the book on stone I just finished. I think readers are going to be a little surprised – and, I predict, annoyed – that the book is so personal. It’s about deep time, geological force, the Anthropocene, fossils, medieval lapidaries, materialism, and Stonehenge. But it’s also about wandering the world, mostly with my family, and it’s about being Jewish, and a parent, and grieving for loss, and catastrophe. It’s a melancholy book, trying to stay hopeful but limned with despair.