[RdSnt]

It's actually far to utopian, it skips over the initial chaos of the collapse. Which means the context is distorted to reflect a fantasy outcome. As Kunstler has said though, it is a fictional novel.

[Schadenfreude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrairieMule', 'I')'m on chapter 2 and this is one real downer. Very hard core.

[syrac818]

Kunstler is garbage.

The fact that the dude is taken even semi-seriously by people on this board is what's the real downer. He's made a pretty solid amount of cash off his own brand of doomerism, and it's always the same thing -

I'm not that talented of a writer, but I can take pessimism and whining to a whole new level.

Fuck him. And fuck Savinar too. Both of them have been owned on their projections of life with $100+ oil.

[TheDude]

Where'd the original reviews Topic on WMBH go?

[Hagakure_Leofman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('syrac818', 'K')unstler is garbage.

[johhnytrash]

I liked it. I didn't think the plot was very deep. But it was entertaining. I liked how there were aspects to the post-oil world that I didn't consider, like how some 'burgs will do better then others and people going insane. I'm not looking forward to everyone talking about Jesus all the time, but Mr. K made it seem like peak oil would be tolerable... if you survive the die-off.

[Schadenfreude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hagakure_Leofman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('syrac818', 'K')unstler is garbage.

[DomusAlbion]

On the level of great literature as Schadenfreude has spoken to, Kunstler's work is not great. It is, however, an easy, relaxing read about a possible post peak oil future. Not doomer porn, not too exciting yet it does discuss a small piece of the problem and gets the ideas out into the public market.

Who knows; some people might opt out of the big city rat race because they read the book.

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Schadenfreude', 'H')is narrow focus of the small town activities of a small group of people merely serves to screen out the larger world (conveniently for Kunstler) because to include the larger world would have required a larger, more comprehensive story with a larger total vision and larger, more complex set of events. A larger vision is something that Kunstler did not demonstrate in this novel.

[alecifel]

I'm not overly fond of JHK, given his snooty anti-southern bent and tendency towards gross bigotry. He's also a doomer of the first class, a linear-thinking wilderness crank casting projections based on second hand knowledge. I don't know how working for "Rolling Stone" qualifies one to sell so many books on energy and architecture. The man has no interdisciplinary studies skills (neither do many economists, geologists, or cornucopians for that matter). And sitting still long enough for an interview for "End of Suburbia" really isn't enough to qualify one as an "expert".

But the novel was entertaining. Poorly written but so are a lot of other books. I think it's worth reading. And Jim's opinions are worth the same as anyone else's, even though they're often insulting. Can't fault a Yankee - they don't know any better! The important thing is he is out there drawing attention to this issue, which is one thing doomers are good for. They get attention. Then people research this a little more and get a better understanding. 6 billion people aren't going to die tomorrow and we're not going back to horses and carts (couldn't feed them if we tried). But maybe somewhere along the line they'll trade their McMansion for an Earthship, buy from the farmer's market and ride a bike to work.

At first I was annoyed with the tangents that didn't get followed up on. Then I realized the book is written first person, non-omiscient. He's telling a story from one person's point of view. So naturally, there are things that just go out of sight. And I think the blank you draw throughout the book is there on purpose. It's meant to invoke a sense of confusion and loss that is appropriate for the setting.

So one (and maybe a half) thumb up. Every Yankee has his day!

NJA

[Lumpy]

I am a doomer. This is not the be-all, end-all book about peak oil.
But it was a good read, with a sense of hope ... which I share, in spite of my belief that things are coming faster than most people (even most people on this board) expect.

Lumpy

[Hagakure_Leofman]

Who would have thought there were some many 'intellectual' literary critics on peakoil dot com

Next thing we'll be discussing Roland Barthes "Death of the Author" essay or perhaps Jacques Derrida and we'll be deconstructing Kunstler for our intellection sense of smug superiority. Gimme a break.

Horses for courses.

What do you want? A novel about peak oil written by shakespeare!

Jesus Christ.

[Graeme]

It is a vision of the world after peak oil that I also object to.

A dark shade of green

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'J')ames Howard Kunstler, author of the cranky anti-sprawl manifesto Geography of Nowhere and the alarmist peak-oil diatribe The Long Emergency, is, as Paul Greenberg pointed out in an April article in The New York Times Book Review, an environmentalist obsessed with a secular Armageddon. His latest book, published in February, is World Made by Hand. The novel describes one glorious summer in the life of a man in a small, upstate New York town after oil shortages, climate change and nuclear war have destroyed the world. Like Alan Weisman's The World Without Us --Weisman imagined how nonhuman nature might retake the globe after a total extinction of Homo sapiens -- Kunstler shows a fascination with environmental destruction that verges on wishful thinking. Why can't the world just collapse already? Then "we" --or, at least, those of us with taste, discretion and true environmental feeling -- could get on with the business of remaking it … without all those pesky extra people around.

[PrairieMule]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DomusAlbion', 'O')n the level of great literature as Schadenfreude has spoken to, Kunstler's work is not great. It is, however, an easy, relaxing read about a possible post peak oil future. Not doomer porn, not too exciting yet it does discuss a small piece of the problem and gets the ideas out into the public market.

Who knows; some people might opt out of the big city rat race because they read the book.

[PrairieMule]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '
')
nationalpost

[ReducedToZero]

Im currently about half done with the fairly easy "science fiction" World Made By Hand by James Kunstler, a story about the Post Peak World from a fiction perspective. Im opening this thread to discuss the book with anyone who has read it. Please reply and tell me what you thought about the book.

[satjeet]

I just finished this novel. A couple of friends read it and I borrowed a copy. Don't think I would advise someone to actually buy it - especially in hardback. Kunstler is at his best when he's just flat out ranting and he's not a "great" novelist. And others fault his scenario of a near term collapse accelerated by nuclear strikes on LA and DC. Others have trashed him for making his first-person hero improbably successful with the town and with the women.

But all that put to one side, I found it a good "read", a pot boiler. He's written nine other novels and I would say he's at the journeyman level of novel writing - where he's probably going to stay. He also paints (watercolors?) and it shows in this novel. I enjoyed the nature painting.

He makes the hero a fiddler - does Kunstler play an instrument as well as everything else? I don't know. I did start to wonder just how much this was all about him or does he see the narrator as a fictional creation. One question I had that was unanswered in the book - is the hero/narrator bald?

[zeke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', '[')size=200]But is it a doomer porn?[/size]

[ReducedToZero]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zeke', '
')
Where I feel the book is somewhat weak, is that Kunstler was a bit heavy-handed, or "checklist-ish," if you will about hitting all of the aspects of peak oil which he trumpets in his other work. Things like, no more "easy motoring" and "suburbs" and "houses not worth living in" etc.

At times, it felt as though he'd taken bullet points from The Long Emergency, and then wove that into a novel.

zeke