We perhaps should tread wearily engaged in our easy lives, unconcerned by the hard life that people of earlier years had to endure. Robert’s wife dies of encephalitis; his daughter of the Mexican flue outbreak that all but wiped out the town’s younger generation. His son left home to see the new world, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Robert finds solace in his job as town carpenter, trout fishing the nearby creek, playing fiddle during year-round rehearsals for the annual Christmas carol service and attending Sunday church ( a lively affair with preaching and hymns). He dreams of one day owning his own home.
Based on what I’ve described so far, you may have concluded that the novel is set in the Old West or primitive Colonial New England. It isn’t. Kunstler’s book is set in the town of Union Grove, New York- in the future. The world that this story is predicated upon is what it might look like not so many years from now. If you are getting the vibe of doom prepper —don’t. Our acquaintance with the community of Union Grove has an eerie feel of a ghost town, filled with abandoned houses, paved roads reverting to dirt and the ruins of strip malls now overgrown with shrubbery. The malls were long ago scavenged for their raw materials during a period known as the Great Collection. Farming, religion, barter and trade shape this strange new world where there are hints that the temperature, weather and seasons may be approaching levels unprecedented in human history altogether.
The story unfolds over one eventful Summer. Kunstler makes Robert a relatable, sympathetic character, capable, inquisitive, personable and wise. He is the glue that holds his community and the story of the novel. The two most prominent people in the community are Stephen Bullock, a wealthy enterprising plantation owner with a legion of serf-like labourers and Wayne Karp, owner of the town’s general supply, a man with a shady past, destined to become the novel’s central villain. Karp’s general supply has all the essentials needed for some use… pipes, nails, screws, containers and other practical wares that his gang of ruffians continually extract from the town’s long defunct landfill. Enter into the story Brother Jobe, leader of a fellowship called the New Faith Brotherhood Church of Jesus with his contingent of seventy-three followers who left Dixieland fleeing to Union Grove from the “Cowboys and Indians”-style of racial fighting that’s engulfed their home in Pennsylvania.
A trade ship belonging to Bullock disappears and Robert with several Brother Jobes’ men undertake a journey to Albany to investigate.
The 40-mile trip, which in today’s terms translates to less than an hour’s drive on the Interstate Highway, takes them nearly a week round trip on horseback, passing desolate slums that used to be thriving towns and suburbs. New York City is washed up, inundated Everglades, Philadelphia’s racial strife and the new president lives in Minneapolis.
The fictional future realised in this novel is hardly some one-note vision of doom and gloom. Kunstler balances the bad with descriptions of idyllic natural settings and boisterous small-town festivities with a sense of empathy and compassion towards ones fellows and with some wacky humour, to boot. While the novel’s setting may take place in the future, its subject matter is timeless. Its an easy read despite its dystopian flow in a world stripped of of its modern comforts, ravaged by terrorism, epidemics and economic upheavals après global warming. The author explores themes of local and sustainable living, a sort of “enlightened Ninteenth Century”.
I found the book a cautionary fiction, an impassioned and invigorating tale despite its nostalgia of a time long lost and a past that favoured patriarchy. A return to Feudalism isn’t in my top draw of possible scenarios. Its a yarn woven from elements of SF, the Western and even magical realism. Its highly detailed and engaging, coming off as more of a treatise on how to survive an apocalypse than what happens to the people afterwards.
James Howard Kunstler’s novel WORLD MADE BY HAND was first published in the United States in 2008.
