The revenge of the lawn: The awful agency of uncontained plant life in Ward Moore’s Greener than you think and Thomas Disch’s the genocides

Abstract

During the Cold War, the suburban lawn became the symbol of American affluence. At the same time, anxiety about global overpopulation prompted efforts to explore the possibilities of turning non-arable land into farmland. These two contrasting conceptualizations-both based on the human need to control and maintain plant life-replicate narratives of Cold War containment, order, and normalcy. Horror stories from this period feature unmanageable plant life that exists for its own proliferation and violates, with its undisciplined abundance, the strictures of Cold War conformity. Through readings of Ward Moore’s Greener Than You Think (1947) and Thomas Disch’s The Genocides (1965), this chapter explores how plants that escape the disciplining mechanisms of Cold War society represent the fragility of American containment by disrupting the primacy of American progress, power, and control.