Review of World Made By Hand

I finished James Kunstler's latest novel, World Made by Hand, a few weeks ago and have been meaning to post about it for some time now. (By the way, Jenny, it's headed your way soon because I'm sure you have about as much time on your hands to read it as I did.)

It wasn't a fabulous book. It wasn't a very well-written book. It wasn't a very compelling book either character or plot wise. What it was ... was a kind of neurosis feeding train wreck, like I can't stop reading because I have some bizarre fascination with how this person imagines the end of the world as we know it. That morbid fascination, combined with a kind of residual school-assignment compulsion to read it because of what it represents for this historical moment got me through the entire novel in about a month. Kunstler should be praised for his short chapters, though, because it made it nice and easy to pick up and put down with short snippets of time... in large part because reading more than one chapter at a time was downright torturous.

One of the first things students are taught in literature classes is not to equate the narrator with the author of a story. Unless of course, the novel is a roman a clef, or story with a key to its autobiographical nature. Is World Made by Hand autobiographical? Of course not, but the aging protagonist who turns out to be Jewish in almost an after-thought kind of way in the novel's bizarre religious twist ending and who seems to be the most fuckable guy in town does tend to lead one to the conclusion that Kunstler enjoys fantasizing about himself in different apocalyptic scenarios. The unfortunate part of all this is that he lets us in on those fantasies.

World Made by Hand is a pedantic novel, a kind of Pilgrim's Progress of the peak oil era. And like many novels whose primary purpose is to teach a lesson, the prose is stilted, the characters cardboard, and the conclusion is downright ludicrous. Kunstler takes pains to paint his protagonist, Robert Earle, as a kind of moral golden boy, a reluctant messiah aided by the newly arrived Brother Jobe and his New Faith congregation. Kunstler's world made by hand moves in mysterious ways, and the supernatural twist the New Faithers represent reads as a cheap theatrical ending. Kunstler plunks down his deus ex machina in the middle of a small town New York high school turned cult compound in the form of a "queen bee," an immense woman fond of tea cakes, prone to seizures, and with a penchant for yellow satin mu-mus. Queen bee dribbles spit up food and pours forth a prophecy, declaring Robert "the chosen one":

I'm annointing you, son, on behalf of you know who. Don't be thick. Take the responsibility, or be goddamned.

Indeed, Robert is chosen by nearly every female character in the novel, not just queen bee, including his best friend's wife, a newly widowed mother young enough to be his daughter, and a New Faith floozy who tries to seduce him at a hoe down at Brother Jobe's suggestion.

Although Robert, unlike his best friend, is able to consummate his relationships, he remains oddly impotent throughout the book. He is curiously unable to act in any of the crucial moments of the book, passively allowing events to play out around him and push him into reaction. Indeed, the New Faithers and the plantation owner, Stephen Bullock, are the primary movers of the novel, and it's only through their energy and input that Robert accomplishes anything at all. Ultimately, queen bee's vengeful justice enacted through Brother Jobe is what provides closure for the novel's overarching plot line.

The novel fails, too, on the level of either a how-to book for surviving in a post-peak world or as a chronicle of the peak collapse. The details for either are left so vague as to offer little useful information though one definite take-away message is to save your marijuana seeds if you have any. I imagine there are some folks out there who might find that comforting....


*Editing to add that Sharon Astyk over at Casaubon's Book is hosting a post-apocalyptic book club if that's your cup of tea: reading list. Me, I'll stick on the bright and shiny side of life.