One of the novels, called Songs of the Dead: This novel continues the trajectory set forth in Derrick Jensen’s immensely popular and highly acclaimed books A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe.

Jensen is known for his beautiful writing, fiercely intelligent philosophy and politics—he’s been compared to both Foucault and Mumford—the range and depth of emotion his work evokes in his readers, his ability (as a reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly put it) to both break and mend readers’ hearts, his strikingly creative use of form, his skill at seamlessly (and shockingly) interweaving seemingly disparate narratives, his capacity to keep readers turning pages, and his ability to tell a very good story.

Readers around the world have grown to recognize and relate to Jensen’s distinctive style in which he explores a theme through a tapestry of deeply moving stories and provocative analyses, all centered around a unifying narrative. Oftentimes this central narrative has been deeply personal.

Part of what sets Songs of the Dead apart from Jensen’s previous works is that in this case the central narrative around which all other stories and analyses revolve is fictional. The primary story involves a character named Derrick, superficially (but only superficially) based on the author. Derrick begins to “fall through time”: he can be somewhere and suddenly he will see what was happening at this place ten minutes or a hundred years ago, or what will happen in this place fifteen years from now. It’s not like Back to the Future, where someone must go into the past to make sure the present doesn’t change. He can’t affect what he sees in the past, he can only see and learn from it. He can see the land’s memories, and through them perhaps change the future. And one of the memories he sees is of a woman being struck, then kidnapped. He begins to try to help this woman, and learns she was murdered by a serial killer. Before long, in one of the episodes of falling through time, he sees this serial killer dumping his own body, and the body of his girlfriend. Their first response is to flee, but soon they grow to understand that there is a reason the land has been opening up its memories to him, and realize they must return to their home and stop this killer, even at the possible cost of their own lives.

As readers have come to expect from Jensen’s work, this book is multidimensional, and feels a bit like traveling beneath the earth among tree roots, as they twist their way into soil, rock, river beds and accompany fish, insects, discarded tires, cellophane wrappers, animal minds, history, and human instinct on a strange and interlocking journey. This book explores gender relations, how to keep passion alive in a relationship, how and why the various plots to assassinate Hitler failed, how parasites such as rabies raise the question of “who’s in charge?”, where dreams come from, the causes and effects of misogyny and genocide, environmental collapse and reasons this culture is killing the planet, and what it would mean if the God of the Old Testament were real, and as nasty as He seems. The book also reaches back to our collective childhoods, to the reality of magic in life, and explores how nature has spoken with us and how we must remember and renew these conversations.

This is one of his best books.

The other novel, called Lives Less Valuable: What are sane and appropriate responses to outrageously destructive behavior? 

This question is at the center of Jensen’s novel, Lives Less Valuable. The novel brings together four primary characters: Malia, a longtime environmental activist who has lost faith in the possibility of systemic reform; Dennis, her co-worker, who believes that if enough people just have the right information, they will know what to do; Eddie, a young street thug haunted by the loss of his little sister to leukemia; and Larry Gordon, CEO and primary stockholder of Vexcorp, a corporation that manufactures bulk industrial chemicals. 

Early in the book, Malia is mugged by Eddie and his two friends. In her anger at being attacked by the people she works to protect, she compares them to executives at Vexcorp, and says, “Why do you think I’m here? Do I look like I belong in this neighborhood? People are dying. And you, you’re big enough to beat me up. What are you gonna do, take my money and cure cancer?” In that moment, Eddie is not impressed, but in the weeks that follow, he thinks about what she said. Late one night he comes to her workplace, with something to say: “We talk about Vexcorp like it was real, like it’s a person, but it’s not. It’s nothing. It don’t exist except we make believe. So I got to thinking there’s got to be somebody pulling strings. And the ones pulling strings don’t fight face to face. They’re punks.” And, he says, there is only one way to deal with punks.

He has a plan. In fact he’s already begun it: “We drove up there. . . . He’s in the trunk.” He has kidnapped Larry Gordon.

Malia, torn between her personal code of nonviolence and the revolutionary activity she has convinced herself is necessary, must now choose. Should she help Eddie? Should she help Larry Gordon? To choose the former is to not only cross the line into violence but to possibly destroy her own life. To choose the latter is to make clear where her real loyalty lies. As Eddie says to her: “This is not real to you. You think this is a big fucking video game. Somebody dies and you put another quarter in and you get another person. You don’t feel pain. You don’t feel loss. What do you care? They’re just fucking quarters. Well, I got news for you. People feel pain, and then they die. I saw my sister go through pain, and then I saw her die. My sister. It’s not your family that’s dying. If it was, you would know what to do right now.”

Later, Larry Gordon attempts to convince Eddie, Malia, and Eddie’s friends to spare his life. He is a father, he says, an honest man imprisoned by the wealth and position he inherited. Further, Vexcorp is not only vital to the economy, but is no worse than any other corporation. He asks Eddie: “What are you going to do, kill all of us? There were twelve members on that board. And then what? Are you going to go company to company?”

Enter Dennis, returning unannounced and unaware to the office. Now his loyalties get tested. Whom does he protect? Whose interests does he promote? Does he call the police? He tells Eddie that democracy does not include taking the law into one’s own hands. Eddie responds: “Whose hands should we leave it in? Yours? Gordon’s?”

This book does not pretend to provide any single answer to the question of appropriate resistance, promising instead an unflinching exploration of the complex territory surrounding responsibility, resistance, despair, and ultimately, agency.