The following is a transcript of KunstlerCast #3: World Made By Hand. You can listen to and subscribe to this weekly audio program at KunstlerCast.com.
[Musical Intro]
Duncan Crary (as host): You’re listening to the KunslterCast, a program about the tragic comedy of suburban sprawl. I’m Duncan Crary.
Each week I bring you another conversation with James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency.
Today’s topic is World Made By Hand.
Duncan Crary (interview): Jim, thanks for joining us for another installment of the KunstlerCast.
James Howard Kunstler: Nice to be here, Duncan.
Duncan Crary: Your latest novel, World Made By Hand, has been published by Atlantic Monthly Press. I understand you want to share a little bit about that book with us today.
James Howard Kunstler: Yes. I will read a little bit. But, let me tell you a little bit about it first.
When I finished The Long Emergency, which was a nonfiction book, I wanted to write a novel depicting vividly what it was like to live in a post-oil future in America. Of course, I know my own part of the world best, so it’s set in Washington County, New York, which is that little piece of land between the Hudson River and the Vermont border. It’s set in a small town.
The story opens and a group of Christian evangelicals has moved to this little town of Union Grove from the Sun Belt, which is very disorderly down there and a lot of bad things are happening. This group called “The New Faith Brotherhood” has moved to Union Grove and bought the high school — which is no longer being used — and they’ve moved in.
In this scene, the head of that group — an interesting character named Brother Jobe — is being introduced to a landholder in Union Grove. His name is Steven Bullock. He has assembled a huge plantation composed of all the small farms that were around him over the last several years, as his neighbors have gone out of business, died off, or met with misfortune.
He has become a local lord of the manor. Brother Jobe is being introduced by the protagonist of the book, Robert Earle, who is a carpenter and has worked for Mr. Bullock over time.
I’m going to read a little of this chapter:
Excerpt from World Made By Hand, by James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press 2008. Read by the author.
Bullock poured us each a generous sample of his whiskey from a cask in the rear, where many barrels were racked [portion not read out loud: into jade-green pony glasses made there on the premises, too. Brother Jobe tossed his dram straight back, said it was “fit for all occasions and all weathers,” and Bullock refilled his glass. I had not been there for a while, but it seemed that everything was coming up at Bullock’s establishment whereas everything in our town was running down. You could understand the allure of the place].
We proceeded to the horse breeding barn. Bullock was raising big Hanovers for the cart and saddle, and Percherons for freight loads. Brother Jobe said he favored a mule in the field, that it was the coming thing with all the hotter weather. Bullock said he hadn’t seen a jackass in Washington County that was worth breeding a mare to. Brother Jobe said he had just such a one and would lend it over.
“Have you tried oxen?” Bullock said. “They’re peachy in the woodlot and behind the plow.”“I don’t know the first thing about an ox,” Brother Jobe said. “We’re all about mules where we come from.”
“I’ll tell you something about an ox,” Bullock said. “You can eat him when he’s past his prime for work.”
“That makes sense, I suppose,” Brother Jobe said. “I confess, I never tried to eat a mule either in or out of its prime.”
Bullock refilled our glasses. He said he admired Brother Jobe’s team of blacks, but the latter said that the sire had been left back in Virginia.
“We’re miserably short of new blood,” Bullock said.
“You’re welcome to try our stallion. He’s a liver-chestnut, fifteen-and-a-half hands Morgan. Maybe some time we can swap out.”
They were in excellent spirits by the time we strolled through the orchard to the beginning of Bullock’s extensive fields. The corn seemed to go on forever, but we crossed a hedgerow over a stile and came to what Bullock really wanted to show.
“Why, iddin that sweet sorghum?” Brother Jobe said. It was not a crop plant that I recognized.
“You are correct, sir,” Bullock said. “With the maple borers killing our sugar trees, and mites on our bees, we’re a bit hard up for sweetening lately.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Well, it’s this heat, you know.”
“We always had sorghum syrup on Momma’s table.”
“It’ll be a new thing here, but our people will like it, won’t they Robert?”
“I suppose they will, Stephen,” I said, not really knowing.
“It beats heck out of blackstrap molasses, I’ll tell you,” Brother Jobe said. “Milder.”
“It’s got a flavor all its own,” Bullock said.
“My point exactly,” Brother Jobe said.
The two of them seemed to be getting on like boon companions. It made me a little sick to see it, or maybe it was just the heat and the whiskey.
We made our way around the extensive property, down grassy lanes between fields of one crop and another. The corn was knee-high and lush. The buckwheat was in flower. From his years in Japan, Bullock was fond of soba noodles made from the grain. He was particularly proud of his experiments with spelt, an antique precursor of our common wheats and apparently immune to the rust disease that lurked in our soils. It did not have the gluten content of modern wheat, he said, but it was better than rye.
Copyright © James Howard Kunstler 2008
James Howard Kunstler (speaking): OK, I’m going to jump ahead a little bit. It’s the same scene but a few minutes later.
Excerpt from World Made By Hand, by James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press 2008. Read by the author.
We followed the road along the extensive hay fields and oat fields where they raised animal feeds, and came, at last, to the collection of little cottages that Bullock had erected over the years for his people. It really amounted to a village, but of a kind that had not been seen in America for a very long time. The cottages were deployed along a picturesque little main street with a few narrow lanes off it. There were about thirty buildings in all. This main street lacked shops or places of business because the only business there was Bullock’s business. There was a commissary building, where his people could get their household needs. I didn’t even know if they used money in it, or whether Bullock’s people even got paid. Two new cottages were under construction, meaning I supposed that more people were joining up. This, too, seemed to pique Brother Jobe’s interest.
“What do you call the place?” he said.
“Metropolis,” Bullock said.
“Ain’t that were Superman lived?” Brother Jobe said.
Bullock grinned and winked at me, and Brother Jobe grinned, too, back at Bullock. It was grins all around.
“We just call it the New Village,” Bullock said.
“I like that,” Brother Jobe said. “It’s plain and to the point.”
“Maybe when I’m dead they’ll name it after me. Bullocktown.”
“They ought to.”
“Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, though, does it?”
“There’s worse. Near us back in Virginia was a little burg name of Chugwater. And another one called Stinktown. Well, that was more like a nickname for Stickleyville.”
One larger structure stood out at the center of things, and that was the meeting hall, offset from a little grassy square at the end of the main street. Bullock’s people all generally took a mid-day meal together there and schooled the few children that they had managed to produce. It was a plain but dignified clapboard building, with large light-gathering windows, and a cupola on top for additional light. All the buildings were whitewashed.
“Is this your church?” Brother Jobe said.
“Sometimes,” Bullock said.
“Where do you stand on religion, if I might ask?” Brother Jobe said.
“[We’re] not against it.”
“But you don’t minister to them.”
“Beyond my competence.”
“Maybe you’re unnecessarily modest.”
“Well, I’m not Superman. After all.”
Copyright © James Howard Kunstler 2008
Duncan Crary: [chuckle] That was great! I wasn’t expecting it to be funny.
James Howard Kunstler: Well, one of the elements of this book is actually that it contains a certain amount of comedy. This character Brother Jobe I’ve created is especially interesting.
I originally imagined that these southern evangelicals were going to be kind of dark villainous characters, and that Brother Jobe would be the chief villain, but as he came on stage, he started doing things that were more and more amusing.
And I liked having him around. And I decided I didn’t want to make him a villain after all. And if anything, he ended up being kind of quasi-crypto supernatural. But he’s not the bad guy in the piece.
And for me this is going to be an interesting element is that the evangelicals do play a large part in this book. One of the funny things about it is that their constantly proselytizing everybody that they meet, right? And they’re always failing.
Duncan Crary: [laughs]
James Howard Kunstler: Every time they come on to somebody about “Have you found Jesus?” the characters usually say things like, “Well, I really don’t have time for that crap.” And they dismiss the whole thing.
So they’re not particularly good at that, but they do have a lot of skill. They do even have a lot of good intentions. And so they’ve been set up an opposition to the rest of the community in this strange situation.
Duncan Crary: Well, in The Long Emergency, one of your predictions is that one of the only corporations that’s going to survive in the post-cheap fuel era is the Church, correct?
James Howard Kunstler: Well, yeah, and I was speaking in sort of — as an extreme case. But in the story of World Made By Hand, the townspeople in this little town in upstate New York, their activities really do center around the congregational church, which is a very mainstream, not very dogmatic, not very weird kind of church.
And the minister who is the best friend of the protagonist, the minister’s name is Lauren Holder, and he’s a middle aged man who’s going through a lot of — he’s being challenged in his faith.
He’s an interesting character. One of the weird things about it is, he’s one of the few characters who even curses in the book. I kind of decided as a policy that there was going to be less cursing in this book than in most contemporary novels.
Because I decided that in the future we would have different attitudes about it and that would be a distinction between this society in the future and how we behave now, where everybody is using bad language all the time.
But the church has become the center of the community’s activities in the absence of regular jobs. There are no corporations left. They’re not reporting at nine o’clock in the morning to some building to give their life structure.
Even the schools are basically defunct. The little school that’s going on is basically a form of church schooling or home-schooling. And probably the most important activity around this “church thing” is that the people in town have to make their own music.
It’s very important to them; it’s one of the few adhesives that holds their collective life together.
Duncan Crary: Kurt Vonnegut talked about that once. I don’t know, I can’t remember exactly what he said but it was something like — Every little clan, every little tribe, had the talented singer, the talented act of talents of performer. But once, TV and radio and mass media came out they just weren’t as good. Nobody watched them anymore. They really lost their role in society.
James Howard Kunstler: Well, it became professionalized and canned. In World Made By Hand, there are no longer any canned entertainments.
Duncan Crary: One of my favorite science fiction books about the future is H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. I know that’s an obvious one, but what I really love about it is that, in H. G. Wells’ future, there is no technology. Everything is run down and reverted back to a more natural state in a way.
There’s this other thing with Morlocks and stuff but when we envision a future, a lot of it we think of flying cars and all that stuff. And your book takes it a whole other direction.
James Howard Kunstler: The mentality of the 20th century, especially in sci-fi literature, was always this idea that there was going to be more of everything, and everything would become more complex. In fact, the whole Long Emergency is largely about the failures of complexity and the collapse of complexity, and the diminishing returns of technology and how we got ourselves in trouble with that.
I chose the title World Made By Hand, very carefully because what’s happened is we have reverted to some quasi-medieval existence. Although with a whole lot of recognizably American culture, landmarks, and hallmarks and earmarks.
Duncan Crary: Well here’s something I’ve noticed about these “Apocalypse” movies like Mad Max. You know these future — Do you notice that even in Mad Max they’re all driving cars?
James Howard Kunstler: Absolutely!
Duncan Crary: [laughing]
James Howard Kunstler: One of the queerest things about that, and people are always imagining that my version of the future is like Mad Max, which couldn’t be more wrong. Yes, Mad Max is a car chase.
Duncan Crary: Even Kevin Costner’s Water World, there’s no land left but they’re still driving jet skis.
James Howard Kunstler: Yeah, and it’s hilarious. In World Made By Hand, there’s really only one car in the whole book, and it’s moving under rather peculiar, pathetic, and tragic circumstances. And it’s not on stage very long before it stops running.
And in fact, the whole automobile thing is over. And indeed, the electricity has flickered out. These people are not getting radio or TV. They barely even know what’s going on in the United States. Somewhere out there is a president named Harvey Albright.
Duncan Crary: Where is he, in Minnesota?
James Howard Kunstler: Yeah, he’s in Minneapolis because Washington’s been bombed. But they have no idea how he got elected or what he’s doing. For all practical purposes, life is all about what happens in their county, and not much beyond that.
Duncan Crary: Well, thanks for talking with us about World Made By Hand. Everyone go out there and buy a copy. Thanks a lot Jim.
James Howard Kunstler: Yeah, it’s a ripping yarn.
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Duncan Crary: [laughing] Thanks a lot.
Listener Caller: This is David Reese. I’m in Waltham Massachusetts. I’ve just listened to the first two KunstlerCasts. I think this is just a great addition and I will eagerly look forward each week to a new KunstlerCast. Thanks very much for having them.
Duncan Crary (as host): You’ve been listening to the KunstlerCast featuring James Howard Kunstler. To leave a listener comment, call toll free at 866-924-9499.
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You can download episodes of this program and read transcripts at KunstlerCast.com.
I’m your host, Duncan Crary. Thanks for listening.
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