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: Don't read it!
Summary: 1 Stars
How I wish I had read the 1-2 star reviews of this book before purchasing. I'm not even done with it and am already planning my trip to Half-Price Books to dump it. I was a big fan of "The Long Emergency," but this fiction effort falls WAY short of the potential to describe the post-peak-oil world.
The author is completely focused on himself... let's see, he (the protagonist) gets to f*** the beautiful minister's wife once a week (plus she's falling in love with him), gets a couple more young women to salivate over him (clean his house and possibly f*** and fall in love with him), gets to be the Hero rescuing a woman and her child from a house fire, is elected mayor (or something) against his will, goes on a posse/rescue mission with a bunch of men... the macho/fantasy/ego trips go on and on.
And, he apparently HATES women, since there are no equals to the men in this book. All the women are projections of the author's narcissistic fantasies.
Worst of all, the writing STINKS! There's nothing descriptive, nothing insightful, nothing even remotely helpful (in case you were planning to prepare for a long emergency). His attempts to tie in some points from "Emergency" are pathetic afterthoughts.
My takeaways? Invest in a power source and stock up on coffee and chocolate. Mmmmm... would have done that anyway without wasting time on this book. Don't buy it. Don't borrow it. This book is a loser.
Book Review: A little disappointed
Summary: 2 Stars
I know J. Kunstler thanks to "the long emergency" which was the first book that made me aware of the problem of resource depletion. I was really looking forward to this novel as a representation of the problems we are sure to have in the future when oil depletion becomes reality, decades from now. I must say I was disappointed at how the novel came out, primarily because it deals with a very simplistic situation, namely one small village in New York State, and a population of simple stereotypes. The dialogue is often very wooden, particularly depressingly stilted is a passage late in the book in which the hero explains to a child about peak oil and the stupidity of people who used oil to drive cars, fly in planes, etc. Something like this would be expected in a tv script like a made for tv drama, not a novel.
The plot is very simple, having to do with a murder and how the village responds to it, again, the narrative is reminiscent of a made for tv movie, with very little subtlety, nuance, philosophical depth, etc.
I must reiterate that I love Kunstler's writing in general, in his nonfiction books on suburbia and the aforementioned long emergency, so I was really surprised with the quality of this novel. Again, I am a peak-oil believer to use the terminology, so I don't doubt that what he depicts will come about-- at some time in the future, I just have a problem with this novel, as a novel.
Book Review: This is a must read!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book clearly presents long-term potentials of the energy crisis, pandemics, food shortages, and nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Can any of us honestly say that those potentials do not exist?
Kunstler also takes a look at group dynamics through distinct social groupings that people fall into in times of desperation. From the plantation overlord, "I'll take care of you in exchange for your freedoms" mentality so prevalent in American politics today, the religious zealot/fanatical group absolutely sure they are right in all things they say and do, the gang mentality marked by extreme violence and degradation, and the small town diverse live and let live mindset, Kunstler shows how these mindsets might interact in a world without government, surviving only through self-sufficiency.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, a book that was required reading in most high schools and colleges was Alas Babylon. Kunstler's book has the feel of an updated version of Frank's book. Just as Alas Babylon offered the opportunity for those of us who were in school through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War an opportunity to think and talk about the events that had the potential to change our lives forever, this book will afford the same opportunity to the current generation.
Buy it. Digest it. Share it.
Book Review: A revenge fantasy for old hippies
Summary: 3 Stars
Few books have scared the bejesus out of me more than Kunstler's The Long Emergency,so I was eager to read his fictional depiction of life after our cheap-oil based economy collapses. Survivors face a grim fate indeed: having to live in a small town with former marketing executives and claims adjusters who somehow now smoke weed in corn cob pipes, play "old time" string music, and use words like "yonder" and "reckon" without irony. A third of the way into the book it struck me that, rather than a dystopia, A World Made By Hand is a utopia for the white male upper middle class aging hippie demographic that shares Kunstler's cultural biases. Union Grove, New York, is a quasi-Amish paradise devoid of African-Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and teenagers with their loud hip hop music, all of whom seem to have been conveniently eliminated by terrorist nuclear attacks on two US cities and a pandemic. The villain is a NASCAR fan in a camouflage t-shirt who misses listening to Charlie Daniels (how gauche!). The women characters don't seem to mind performing chores all day that were done via machine in the twentieth century. I would have preferred a fictional depiction of the slow collapse of civilization when the oil dries up instead but, if Kunstler and other peak-oil doom sayers are correct, we'll soon be living it rather than reading about it.
Book Review: the love scense were atrocious
Summary: 1 Stars
Kuntsler's essays are always pleasurable to read, full of big words, acerbic wit, and insight. This novel isn't one of them. It plods along, creating more yawns than anything I've read in the last ten years. It's only redeeming value is for keeping on the nightstand as a cure for insomnia. The plot and pacing never gets off the ground, and he never develops any of his characters enough for the reader to love them or hate them. The action is really dull, and after slogging thru chapter after chapter, it concludes with the time-worn, supernatural, deus ex machina.
(Boy, was I pissed!)
I don't know if it was by design or default, but World Made by Hand is written at an eight grade level, and the sex scenes are particularly adolescent. I'm not sure this is intended or not, and after reading several such fumblings, I was left wondering if Kuntsler had ever kissed a girl? Of the many "encounters" that we are privy to, none are longer than half a page, and as a reader, I began imagining new plot enhancements: the Russians released some kind of sexual-dysfunction bio-weapon. Now all the males in the post peak-oil world are now suffering from pre-ejaculation, and any hope for a rekindling of our civilization is doomed! Frighting stuff indeed.