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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

GREAT OVERLOOKED NOVEL

January 15, 2009 by Scott Timberg


Over the last couple years i covered books, mostly novels, almost exclusively, and there’s no way anyone can read everything. but let me call james howard kunstler’s “world made by hand” my favorite undersung novel of ’08, or something along those lines.

the book is the tale of a little village in upstate new york in a world suspiciously like ours, but after resources have run out almost entirely. the residents have returned to a kind of rustic 19th century simplicity — they homebrew beer, shop for stuff in an elaborate town dump, wish they had electricity, worry about some religious zealots wandering up from down south, etc… alan weisman, who wrote the wonderful/chilling “the world without us,” called it “a poignant, provocatively convincing novel,” which sounds about right.
i can just add that nothing i’ve read captures so well the tone of life after the economic meltdown. it’s not exactly reassuring, but shows how life can and will go on, in ways both better and worse. here is a NYT essay (not by me) on this and its precursor “ecotopia.”
kunstler is a left-leaning social critic (and longtime novelist) and i must say, i had all the reasonable fears of a novel penned by such a fellow. (i mean no disrespect — some of my best friends are lefty social critics.) but i was completely unprepared for how lyrical and gently persuasive the book is — for me certainly more affecting (sorry, cormac mccarthy) than the grim and powerful “the road.”
the author’s earlier books include the acclaimed, “the long emergency,” which is an important jeremiad about the coming collapse of oil, environmental devastation, etc — well written, tirelessly researched, etc, but kind of relentless as a read. this one is like, i dont know, dylan’s john wesley harding record or “music from big pink” or something.
but dont take my word for it — “world made by hand” just came out in paperback.
Photo credit: Grove/Atlantic and Flickr user 8

Filed Under: "green", books

Comments

  1. Okie says

    January 15, 2009 at 5:50 pm

    Sounds like an interesting book with fun futurism, social commentary and language. I’ll add it to my list. 🙂

  2. Scott Timberg says

    January 15, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    indeed… it is the future but it isnt — that’s part of what’s intriguing about the novel….st.

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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