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Add to NewsvineTwo great tastes that taste great together: Reihan Salam reviews James Howard Kunstler's postapocalyptic novel. Excerpt:
Which leads me to Mr. Kunstler's superb new novel, "World Made by Hand" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 336 pages, $24). Mr. Kunstler may be a self-righteous, bileful economic ignoramus, but he's nevertheless managed to write an extraordinary, suspenseful, deeply affecting yarn that very successfully weaves together elements of science fiction, the Western, and even magical realism. Any lover of genre fiction will find much to like, despite the fact that the novel is ultimately veiled propaganda for the cause of abandoning and perhaps incinerating America's postwar suburbs.The world in question is our own, in a near future where — you guessed it! — the oil runs out. Now, Mr. Kunstler the pulp novelist could have had a pair of gorgeous Brazilian supermodels rescue America by bringing sexy back to the importation of sugarcane-based ethanol but, being Mr. Kunstler the wild-eyed polemicist, he instead posits rather less plausibly that an infelicitous combination of catastrophes — Peak Oil, a war in the Holy Land, a couple of global pandemics, a couple of catastrophic terrorist attacks, and runaway climate change — finally does America in.
Oooooh! Is the hero a passive-aggressive Birkenstocked artisanal butter maker and late-night blogger who lives in an Arts & Crafts bungalow and, and ...
Actually, not, and it seems from Reihan's review that the hero, or heroes, are old-fashioned Stoical traditionalists. He concludes:
"World Made by Hand" is, in the end, a brief for humility, for the simple recognition that all our technological achievements are very fragile ones indeed. Though Mr. Kunstler reaches this conclusion for reasons that are utterly daft, his novel can also be understood as an exercise in imaginative empathy: The parlous, fearful nature of life in this American nightmare is a living, breathing fact for people in lawless, poverty-stricken parts of the globe. So read this book.
You got it, Reihan. Definitely going on my reading list. But you knew I'd say that. Here's the book's website. Whoever heard of a book that had a trailer?
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I've read the book and it is very good. If you're a fan of JHK's non-fiction, such as "The Geography of Nowhere", you'll like this as well. I'm not sure how realistic the scenario is, but it does get you thinking about an America with a much lower standard of living than we're accustomed to. I finished it about two weeks ago, but I still think of it almost every day, especially as our country's economic woes continue to increase.
Also, the "trailer" is a bit odd to promote a book, but the interview clip on the website is pretty informative. The story would definitely make a great film.
Posted by: PhilaRyan | March 5, 2008 10:17 PM
Major Wootton is right, of course, in that one shouldn't condemn a book unread. I was too sarcastic earlier--but I was trying to make a serious point which I would still assert. Science fiction--or speculative fiction, to broaden the parameters a bit--has its own set of protocols for story-telling and reading. As well, there's a dialogue of ideas that takes place without the community and the canon. When mainstream writers jump in without having paid any heed to this ongoing development of ideas over the years, they do miss out on a lot and often fail to be as original as they'd like to believe. Imagine a mainstream novelist who decided to write a novel in the form of e-mails, and proudly introduced this as a a cool new form of his own devising, without reference to any previous practitioners of the epistolary novel, and you'll get an inkling.
Generally, what they end up doing is writing a novel that uses science-fictional tropes, but comes to mundane conclusions. This usually involves an ending that is a reversion to or reassertion of the status quo, rather than the more classic SF ending, which involves an opening out to a bigger universe, or a ratification of radical change. Mundane readers find this reassuring. SF fans find it frustrating. Usually the so-called "SF novel" written by a mainstream writer gets the science or the speculation wrong in some important way, as well. This can be brushed aside as a mere technicality by mundane readers, but to SF readers, it is taken as a sign of bad faith on the part of the author, and diminishes the pleasure of reading like a fly in the soup.
Having said all that, of course, there's no reason to assume Kunstler did these things. I'm impressed to see on his website that he's written six other novels. Good for him. Some of them sound interesting, too. I read the sample chapter of this one, and I'm not tremendously impressed. Questions already arise. Like, why have they all started talking like nineteenth-century hicks when not one generation has passed? And, why is Bullock the only guy with a still? How likely is that, I ask you! Etc. etc. Kunstler's statement that he used to report on fringe religious groups gives me some hope that Brother Jobe won't be just another pasteboard preacher stereotype . . . but not a lot . . . (Nehemiah Scudder, anyone?)
And I have to disagree with you, Major, that "The Road" and "Never Let Me Go" are "some of the best SF." Not! I'd say they're "some of the best fiction written by mainstream writers using SF ideas to advance their mainstream agendas"--but that is to damn with faint praise indeed.
Posted by: sigaliris | March 6, 2008 9:35 AM
sigaliris:
"Kunstler's statement that he used to report on fringe religious groups gives me some hope that Brother Jobe won't be just another pasteboard preacher stereotype... but not a lot..."
He's really not. He's actually a very interesting character. And there are a lot of other stills around, too, not to mention wine, beer and cider operations. Don't you worry about that! As to the language, that very criticism did come to my mind from time to time, but I reminded myself that I don't live in upstate New York (or rural Virginia, where Brother Jobe is from), so I'm not an expert on how they talk nowadays. Are you?
I hope you give the book a chance. I also hope you don't read everything through what appears to me to be a rather narrow filter of what constitutes "good" sf. I've always thought that one of the best features of the sf scene was a lack of the sort of formalist elitism one sees in "serious" realistic literature. But perhaps I'm just a benighted mundane reader, and there really are only a limited number of ways an sf story can legitimately end. Even so, I think this book meets the criteria you offer.
Posted by: Ethan C. | March 6, 2008 6:47 PM
I've always thought that one of the best features of the sf scene was a lack of the sort of formalist elitism one sees in "serious" realistic literature.
I agree with you there, Ethan! And the enthusiasm of readers is always a good recommendation. I may have to give this one a try. : )
Posted by: sigaliris | March 6, 2008 9:44 PM
I just finished it, and it's pretty good. (Yes, the protagonist lives in an Arts & Crafts bungalow; but no, there's no blogging.) It starts a few years after the 'fall,' and doesn't go into great detail about what happened. It sounds like there were a couple terrorist bombs in big cities, followed by interruption of oil imports. He uses a bit of cheat by having a major flu epidemic kill off what sounds like half of the population soon after that, which is an awfully big coincidence. He never really explains what happened to the town council, or why the only policeman is a drunk who doesn't want the job, and so on.
Still, realistic or not, it's a good story, enough so that I'm looking forward to reading more of his books. As long as we're listing novels in the "everything goes to Hell in a handbasket" genre, Stephen King's "The Stand" is another good one.
Posted by: Aaron Baugher | March 7, 2008 3:20 PM
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