World Made by Hand: A Novel
by James Howard Kunstler
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Book Reviews of World Made by Hand: A Novel
Book Review: Starts a 5, digresses downward...
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm glad I'm not the only one seeking a salve to "The Road" (which was profound, but terrifying - an absolute 5+ star).
While I did liked some of the messages of the book -- it's important to prepare now for a very possible, if not probable change in lifestyle and know how to "do stuff" -- the book overall is just "eh" for me. I wanted to like it...it started off well.
The first chapters were truly interesting. I couldn't put the thing down. I thought the speech patterns were funny in their mix of old fashioned lingo and modern language. He is great at describing minutae. But....he's not so great describing people or developing their persona. After the halfway point, I struggled to move on. There are too many characters that don't have any depth. The women are Stepford. Why would all the women in this community be so defeated? The only one with a bit of spunk is the widow, Britney; but she is awfully underdeveloped as a character. Why was her marriage bad? He stated that, but didn't go any further. I wanted to know. Why would his best friend just turn the other way as his wife had an affair with him? Lots of couples go through "dry spells" and they don't pass their wife off to their best friend for "weekly visits". That didn't develop plot. It was just stupid. Why did the musical group he belonged to play primarily 19th century music? They would've played classical, pop, modern, jazz, bluegrass, etc...they were products of the 21st century, not 1850.
As mentioned in other reviews, the lack of ammunition was a really big pet peeve of mine. I know people who re-load shells. We lived in a rural hunting community in the great frozen northlands for 3 years -- reloading was very common because it was economical. The equipment is all non-electric. And I would have to assume after the manufactured supplies for re-loading were expended, that people would just figure it out...they've been doing it for millenia. Look at black-powder muskets during Colonial times...those supplies were manufactured in the same type of "culture" as is suggested in this story. Plenty of people in rural upstate New York would be hunters familiar with firearms -- someone would have become the town gunsmith. I also think a barber would have set up shop before the New Faithers arrived. People in Colonial America liked to look good, too, you know. Every western (movie) has a barbershop -- and the wild wild west was a lot wilder than this town. America is very integrated racially, even in small town America. Where were the minorities?
I don't think they would have had to rely on "the general" as much as they did. I think they would have started making almost everything they needed. And if people didn't know how to "do stuff" I can't believe all of the books simply vanished; they would read HOW to do something. Right here in my home, I have books on horticulture, quilting, breakmaking, etc. Go to any craft fair, and you can find many different kinds of handmade soap, candles, jams, dried herbs, for example. Even crafts and hobbies considered frivolous today would prove useful. People just know how to do stuff. Interesting stuff, like weaving clothing, knitting, carpentry, gardening, writing, etc. I make all of my own bread, and know how to make yogurt and fresh cheese; I know how to make a reed basket without any hardware; I have lots of friends who can and preserve produce, dry meats and produce, etc. And we're not even close to being "survivalists!" There is a whole religion (ahem, residing primarily in Utah) that strongly recommends that their members have food on hand for x number of people for x number of months/years -- I have friends involved with this said religion, and they are *ready* for such a future. I just don't think quite as many people would be in the dire straights that the author suggests. *However, I do agree that the people that would be most unprepared and ill-equipped would be residing in large cities, as he suggests. Rural communities would fare much better.
I guess I'm done with my rambling 12:35 am review.
Book Review: "And that is the end of the story..."
Summary: 3 Stars
James Howard Kunstler is best known for nonfiction writing in which he speculates about whether or not "peak oil" has been reached and how an ever-decreasing oil supply might impact society from that point onward. Kunstler's nonfiction paints a gruesome picture of what life will be like when there is no more oil to be had and he places that scenario in the relatively near future. I'm not particularly inclined to agree with what Kunstler has to say in his role of gloom and doom prophet, but I did enjoy World Made by Hand, the novel based upon his predictions of what is to come.
World Made by Hand, and the post-apocalyptic world Kunstler has created within it, can certainly be challenged as to the likelihood that a gradually disappearing oil supply would ever create such a drastic societal change. But if one reads the novel as simply a depiction of one of an infinite number of possible futures for this country, it starts to resemble science fiction and can be a good bit of fun.
The novel is set in Union Grove, New York, a little Adirondack community peopled by survivors of a series of catastrophes that have devastated the United States over the last decade. They have survived a major flu epidemic that seems to have wiped out a huge segment of the population, nuclear explosions in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, and the complete disappearance of the crude oil supply that made their former lifestyle possible. They have created their own little world, one without contact with anyone much more than thirty miles in any direction, and they have settled into a relatively apathetic new existence of making-do and doing-without.
The Union Grove area is already home to three separate groups when what appears to be a fundamentalist Christian sect searching for a new home suddenly appears in town, buys the old high school, and begins to create a new home for itself there. The townspeople themselves are, for the most part, people who had formerly lived a middle-class, white-collar lifestyle. There is also a self-sustaining group living a serf-like existence on a large paternalistic farm where they give up much of their independence in exchange for better food and a few of the luxuries, like electricity, that have disappeared elsewhere in the area. And there is a lawless group, living in trailers and whatever other shelter they can throw together on the edge of town, that is headed up by a ruthless leader determined to take from those weaker than himself whatever he needs or wants.
When conflict and violence threaten the citizens of Union Grove, distrust of outsiders has to be set aside and new alliances formed if any semblance of an orderly society is to survive there. World Made by Hand is the story of good people forced to adapt in ways they never expected to have to adapt, and not all of the changes pertain to their physical lifestyles. They are also challenged to change their whole concept of right and wrong, their willingness to use whatever force is necessary to protect themselves, and the way that they see their place in this diminished world.
Kunstler has created a post-apocalyptic world that still offers hope to those determined to live a moral life under such changed circumstances. His novel maintains a realistic atmosphere throughout until his unfortunate decision near the very end to give it a touch of the supernatural, a change of tone that largely diminishes the novel that it could have been. Whether or not Kunstler was having difficulty finding an ending for his book or not is only something he can answer, but his decision to end it the way he did, with a Cormac-McCarthy-meets-Stephen-King ending, was so jarring to me that I rated the novel a full point lower than I otherwise would have. That said, this one was still a good bit of fun.
Book Review: Slipping through our fingers
Summary: 5 Stars
It's really good. Surprisingly so, given that most attempts at novelisation by people who are basically pundits on an educational/propaganda mission to save the world are dismal artistic failures. But this novel is good, the guy can actually write.
It's a realistic depiction of the post-collapse USA. What collapse, you ask? Not exactly specifically told, but somehow related to Peak Oil, financial ruination, that kind of stuff. He depicts the after-shocks on the ground, rubber-meets-pavement (or I should say, hooves-meet-pavement, I guess).
The world has shrunk into an uneasy Darwinian jostling, local warlordism and gangsterish Machiavellian counterpunching among various ugly power cells, with a bunch of religion leavening the stink, er ... the stew. One civil gentleman tries to hold onto some kind of rational center.
Here's a powerful message from this book (so don't say nobody clued you in time) - Learn a practical trade, something useful, essential to daily life, that requires neither electric power nor high-tech tools or materials. Butcher, baker, candle-stick maker.
Few Interesting Points:
1. Speech style: Everybody's speech pattern has reverted to an oddly folksy kind of 19th century, Mark-Twain-ish patois.
2. Ism's: Not the slightest hint of feminism has survived The Fall. Women are pretty much seen but not heard. And homosexuality seems to perhaps have been swept away by the dreaded plague of "Mexican Flu" maybe? African-American's don't exist in upstate New York, but racial trouble festers elsewhere across the country.
3. Infrastructure: Town in upstate New York benefits very heavily from left-over 19th century infrastructure, most very especially the robustly designed and constructed gravity-fed water ducts. Rest of the country will not have this legacy! *bite nails*
4. Give thanks for (current) hot showers, razors, modern dentistry. No mention is made of the deodorant situation.
Although presented as a disaster scenario, I feel the author secretly has quite a hard-on for the mid 19th century.
Kunstler's depiction of collapsed upper NY state reminds me more than anything of Ishikawa Eisuke's great (Japanese language) novel '2050 Nen ha: Edo Jidai' (Year 2050: Return to the Edo Period), which also gives a local-eye view of a post-collapse, formerly high-tech society. These two novels are very similar, but Kunstler probably didn't model on Ishikawa's earlier work as that is not available in English.
I've read hundreds of apocalypse / post-collapse books, 'The Postman' type of stuff. Some of them, such as Luke Rhinehart's 'Long Voyage Back' or Jean Hegland's 'Into the Forest', are better written, real literature. And some have wilder gripping action, obviously 'Lucifer's Hammer' comes to mind for that. But for poignant realism, to a reader living exactly where and how we are right now, 'World Made By Hand' strikes closest to the heart.
More than anything, this book is sad. It will make you sad. It's a cliche to say that we take everything for granted. We do, but you need that truth rubbed in your face sometimes to revitalize it. This book really does that.
But if you really want to put yourself through an emotional coffee-grinder in the opposite direction, stomp yourself in the gut by reading "The Road" (Cormac McCarthy) immediately prior to "World by Hand". Then you'll feel that Kuntstler's "World", where at least the grass still grows and the rivers still flow, is for all its horrors, a beautiful Elysian Field, direct from the hand of whatever Lord you care to name.
Book Review: Great vignettes, weak plotting
Summary: 4 Stars
Jim Kunstler is a marvelously acute observer of the decline of suburban America. He is above all a moralist, perhaps the greatest of our era, a kind of dyspeptic Voltaire with a hidden sympathy for religious sincerity. He's different from many other "peak oilers" in that his fulminations are driven not so much by techno-anxiety as by a righteous wrath against a postmodern America that is so used to getting something for nothing--huge energy inputs from cheap but finite resources--that its economy and moral fibre have rotted from the inside out. So there he sits in regal isolation in Saratoga Springs, predicting economic and cultural collapse with a certain schadenfreude. And it looks like he's pretty much right.
With this said, one can argue that Kunstler is more a journalist with real stylistic flair than he is an essayist or a novelist. His long essay *The Long Emergency* was, as has been noted elsewhere, marred by a total lack of decent footnotes and bibliography--not to mention index. This is not a mere pedantic quibble: a work of the type he was writing would have much more value if readers can use it as a springboard for further reading. Not to cite sources fully and clearly is perhaps to be expected in a magazine article, but not in an authoritative book. In this novel we have another problem: many intriguing plot strands which are never fully resolved. This is really a picaresque novel, but it signals to us all along that it is a thriller--so we are bound to be disappointed. Brother Jobe's religious collective has some sort of Queen Bee in the middle of it, who apparently is going to try to use our hero to breed more members--or so it seems to be suggested. There is no follow through. There is a kind of feudal plantation on the outside of town--the basis for a war with the townies? The conflict is never developed. There is a horrid torture of our hero's preacher friend by a bunch of ex-bikers on the outside of town (a brillliantly, savagely written scene)--but nothing ever comes of the simmering war (the leader of the band is killed, and the conflict fizzles). Above all, the larger meditation on the necessity of law in a resolutely local, post-centralized world seems promised at a number of points, but never comes through. If Kunstler wants to write a best-seller, he needs to hone his plotting skills (read more Grisham?). If he doesn't care about writing a best-seller, fine, but then he should develop the implicit meditation on the fate of law in a world in which anarchy is as much a threat as a promise. And then he would have to do some serious research, with footnotes...
It's worth noting that many "peak oilers" use the coming economic meltdown as a way of justifying a return to a small, non-hierarchical society--what used to be called "anarchism" (in the good sense). If we can't justify it politically, in an era of prosperity, than we can certainly justify it in practical terms in an era of post-plenty. This is the approach of Bill McKibben and Richard Heinberg. What they're really interested in is the anarchism (small scale, frugal local economy, vibrant community), and peak oil analysis is a useful way of getting there. Kunstler does an interesting variation on this when he stresses the legal and moral complexities of a world that will have to embrace extreme localism because it will have no other choice. The sweet dreams of anarchism à la McKibben are supplemented in Kunstler by an awareness that a local, low-energy world may very well also spawn feudalism and thug rule. This is an invaluable contribution to the debate.
Book Review: where's the gumption?
Summary: 3 Stars
I found the story engaging and enjoyed it, although I agree with the various criticisms below--misogynistic, loose ends in the plot/incomplete development of plot lines, etc. But my biggest problem with the story that Kunstler tells is that I think that he is in some ways too pessimistic. Having read The Long Emergency, as well as numerous other books on peak oil, other resource depletion, global climate change, etc., as well as having made my own observations of our current situation, I have little doubt that times most difficult lie ahead. I also have little doubt that some places will completely fall apart. But not every place, and not places like Kunstler's Union Grove--a small town surrounded by countryside. I can really only speak about where I live, of course--Craftsbury, in rural northern Vermont. I don't see people here collapsing emotionally to the extent that the residents of Kunstler's town do. Those fictional characters show little gumption, little enterprise (with the exception of the ambitious farmer, the scrap collector and his cronies, and the new religious group). Although growing gardens and making music, they mostly seem to have given up. I just don't think that would happen in my town or in other places where the citizenry (although certainly consumers of distantly produced goods) includes a very great number of people who know how to do things, who have serious hard skills, who have lots of common sense, who frequently come together for community projects. I don't think it would take very long here for people to organize work projects that would benefit the community. In fact, I recently wrote down the skills that I know exist among the people in this town, and most of what we would need in order to live decent lives post-petroleum/natural gas/electricity is already here. With a few exceptions, Kunstler's story is hugely lacking in depiction of the skills that exist in small rural communities, and his story could have been much more interesting (and useful) if it had included more of this. I am sure that in my town, cottage industries would spring up almost immediately (and there are already quite a few here). To take just a few examples: where is the small-scale textile manufacturing? In Craftsbury, there at least ten hand looms among various households, as well as spinning wheels and the other equipment necessary to turn animal fiber into clothing. There are potters, and a wood turner. And on and on and on. I suspect that Kunstler is, in fact, unfamiliar with these subsistence skills, and that this accounts for their near absence in his novel. (Another example--one of his characters has turned his hand to making matches, and everyone depends on his matches, imperfect though they are. But anyone can easily learn how to make fires by flint and steel, or by friction with a bow drill or a hand drill--there is, in fact no need for a matchmaker. I expect, however, that Kunstler is unaware of or personally unfamiliar with these older firemaking methods, and so they make no appearance in his story, even though they are the easiest solution to the problem, should matches disappear). So, although I expect that some would for a short time miss the great enterprise of American shopping, I think we'd adjust pretty quickly, and not give up.