by Len Lear

Miles Orvell, a long-time resident of Chestnut Hill, has been a professor at Temple University for over 50 years, where he teaches American literature, among other subjects. He has published ten academic books and was editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies for ten years, “which was like a long journey in a spaceship to another planet – planet Earth.”

But Orvell has now decided to swim in water that is beyond his control and has just published his first novel, Death in the Age of Climate Change, which he has been working on for three years.

“After I finished ‘Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction’ (Oxford, 2021),” he explained last week, “I wanted to try something completely different. When I first started publishing academic books, my Aunt Bertha would always ask me, slightly confused, ‘When are you going to write a novel?’ My mother agreed. It took me 50 years to finally write a book that they might have read (long after her death, unfortunately).

“I’m not sure why so many academics, especially English professors, write crime novels, but maybe it’s about solving mysteries. And don’t forget that it’s one of the few jobs that starts with a death threat: publish or perish,” he said. “When I started,Climate change“After I finished the book on ruins, I became obsessed with post-apocalyptic scenarios and it seemed inevitable to write something about climate change. Obviously, it’s what we’ve all been thinking about for years.”

Climate Change is made up of three connected stories, and each one is about Trevelyan, a humanities scholar who can’t contain his Hitchcock-like curiosity. He needed a partner in his crimes – in solving crimes, that is – and in the first story he meets the detective Naomi Tanaka. In the next two stories, things develop between them.

The whole book is very much inspired by Philadelphia, and particularly Chestnut Hill and Center City, Orville said. The first story, “The Dome,” was born out of a tennis racket someone left in Orville’s school office, and involves the idea that the solution to our problems is to escape them. In this case, the super-rich are offered a way out of climate catastrophe by being able to buy a share in one of the self-sufficient, artificial communities – they’re giant plastic domes – being built by a wealthy entrepreneur who lives in a mansion in Chestnut Hill.

The second story, “The Stone,” begins with a copy of the Lenape Stone. An author, Henry Mercer, wrote a book about the real stone, and that led Orvell to incorporate Fonthill Castle, his home, into the story. Another major inspiration for “The Stone” was the giant statue of Chief Teedyuscung in Wissahickon Valley Park. In the final story, “The Battery,” Orvell incorporated the Franklin Institute, the Art Museum, and North Philadelphia into a story about a revolutionary new battery for electric vehicles and about neighborhood renewal.

“You could say that climate change is one broad theme in this book and the other is science,” said Orvell. “University departments are fascinating subcultures and I took the opportunity to step back and write, sometimes satirically, about academic routines and eccentricities. No two departments are the same, but they usually fall somewhere between happy families and ruthless corporations.”

Orvell, a Chestnut Hill resident for 35 years, earned his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1964 and his Ph.D. in English and American literature from Harvard University in 1970. He came to Temple University in 1969, at age 25, to take his first job after graduating. Fifty-five years later, he is still at Temple University. He is no longer actively teaching, but since his retirement he occasionally gives lectures and supervises some doctoral students. “I miss teaching,” he said, “but it’s nice to have more time!”

Orvell serves on two committees of the Chestnut Hill Conservancy, the Historic District Advisory Committee and the Collections Committee. “I got involved with the Conservancy, a great organization, over 12 years ago,” he said, “when I wrote a book called ‘The Death and Life of Main Street,’ which included a section on Chestnut Hill. This community is a balancing act between continuity and change, and I tried to talk about that topic last year in a slide presentation at the Venetian Club for the Conservancy called ‘Sustaining Main Street: Chestnut Hill in the 21st Century.'”

In his time away from writing and researching, Orvell cycles down Forbidden Drive several times a week, “although these days it’s almost a forbidden pleasure due to construction on the riverbed at the end of Valley Green Road. Thanks to my electric bike, I can ride back up the hill without having a heart attack.”

Orvell also enjoys playing music “for my own enjoyment and probably to the annoyance of the neighbors. I started playing wind instruments as a teenager, starting with the saxophone, and I still play. Over the years I’ve gone back in time, to earlier instruments like the baroque recorder and the Scottish bagpipes. I have a very basic panpipe set. It’s very hard, like learning Greek.”

Miles Orvell can be contacted at [email protected]. Len Lear can be reached at [email protected].