World Made By Hand by James Kunstler

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 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 129

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?