Nine Ways of Looking at Earthquakes Through Literature

"Earthquakes," notes the Los Angeles Times, "are the expression of a living planet, the earth's way of re-inventingitself. But while this knowledge may be consoling in the abstract, it's not very useful in the face of a catastrophe such as last week's quake and tsunami in Japan. At these times, we need real consolation: food and water, emergency services and rescue ... and, David L. Ulin suggests, literature. Ulin is the author of "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith."