For the birds:Nell Zink's and Jonathan Franzen's environmentalist fiction

This article discusses two novels by Nell Zink and Jonathan Franzen that serve as compelling examples of an environmentally-engaged branch of U.S.-American literature, which has emerged roughly since the millennial turn. More generally, it emphasizes literary responses to the increasing endangerment of the natural environment due to various human interventions including its overuse or even downright destruction. Notably, both novels highlighted here have in common a deep appreciation of birds, which have played an ambiguous role as harbingers of an uncertain future at least since biblical times, a symbolism underlying both works, as well. And yet, they present rather different storylines focusing on the uneasy relationship between humans and non-human animals, at times shown to be on a collision course (Zink); at others, well-meaning individuals create a sanctuary for an imperiled avian species but further degrade the natural habitat in the process (Franzen). Above and beyond their differences, both novels negotiate the chances of survival in an era now known as the An-thropocene, where finally all species appear endangered somehow.