Kunstler to keynote Vermont independence convention
The setting of James Howard Kunstler’s new novel World Made By Hand is the tiny village of Union Grove, New York located near the Vermont border. It’s about life in America after the world’s supply of crude oil has been exhausted. There are no cars, trains, planes, or busses, not to mention big companies, public schools, or colleges and universities. There is virtually no electric power available, maybe thirty minutes a month.
The cohesiveness of the former United States of America has been replaced by a disjoint collection of separate states and towns in which anarchy prevails – a complete breakdown of law and order. Indeed, the very existence of the United States is highly questionable as is the whereabouts of its president, if it still has one. Albany, New York is under the control of competing warlords.
In The Long Emergency Kunstler warned that “the end of the cheap fossil fuel era” would lead to “the most serious challenge to our collective identity, economy, culture, and security since the Civil War.” That “turbulence would be the rule,” that “all bets would be off for politics, economics, and social cohesion,” and that “the Federal Government would be impotent and ineffectual.”
He predicted that American life would become intensely and profoundly local, that we would have to grow a lot more of our food in the regions where we live, and that we would have to reconstruct local economies and local networks of interdependency. We would have no other choice than to simplify, downshift, and decentralize our lives and return to small towns, small businesses, small schools, and small communities.
World Made By Hand is an incredible tale about what life might be like, if Kunstler’s prophecy turns out to be right. The recent price of a barrel of crude oil strongly suggests that he just might be.
Kunstler’s latest novel is the story of how former software executive turned carpenter, Robert Earle, confronts the separation, meaninglessness, powerlessness, and death found in a small town which has been turned upside down by the end of cheap oil. To confound the problems of Union Grove, a radical religious sect from Virginia has moved into the abandoned high school and the town dump serves as headquarters for a bunch of well-armed thugs who terrorize the town from time to time.
Earle is elected mayor and with the help of the leader of the religious sect, Brother Jobe, and his close friend Loren Holder, the Congregational minister, works tirelessly to rebuild some semblance of stability and community in Union Grove. That turns out not to be so easy. There is violence and murder, as well as a couple of hangings and several suicides. The story also includes some poignant, understated sex scenes and sophisticated Christian theology including an event which could be interpreted as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
World Made By Hand is a brilliant, troubling, compelling story about what could happen to America, if we don’t get our act together very soon.
Thomas H. Naylor
April 1, 2008