Down on the Farm & the Alien Body-snatchers' Luxury Submarine

World Made by Hand imagines a near future America where oil and gasoline are unavailable, nuclear bombs have destroyed Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and diseases like the “Mexican Flu” have ravaged the population. People no longer travel farther from home than they can walk; unable to depend on electricity, they farm and scavenge their former homes and buildings for materials to create “by hand” a new life that looks a lot like that of the first colonists and pioneers. The small town of Union Grove has been just getting by for years when a group of suspicious out-of-towners (the New Faith “cult” led by Brother Jobe of Lynchburg, Virginia) arrives and when local laborer Shawn Watling is murdered by a trailerpark tough from the crew of Wayne Karp, who runs the local dump (from which precious supplies are regularly excavated). Soon software-executive-turned-carpenter Robert Earle finds himself elected mayor and sent on a trip down the Hudson to Albany, a city he hasn’t seen in years. 

There’s a thoughtful, matter-of-fact tone to the prose. Kunstler’s characters don’t dodge difficult issues; they think about whether faith is possible in their ravaged world and even explore unconventional connections as they try to find meaning in the lives and survival, but what might be histrionic in a typical postapocalyptic page-turner is contemplative here. The descriptions of how people make a living (what they farm; how they can still get running water but need to keep the system in constant repair; how the doctor invests in growing marijuana and opium poppies; how they make matches and fiddle strings) are fascinating, along with the details of how they incorporate surviving mass-produced luxury items (pen nibs are valued; they can make their own ink) and recycle raw materials such as metals and plastics. A similar attention is given to communal life. In Union Grove, the Congregational church is the center of the community, and live music is mostly hymns or even older dance music. In the trailerpark, public entertainment includes acting out scenes from the Sopranos and old porno films and an acoustic rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

However, despite the seeming tone of open-minded exploration, what comes through eventually is a vision of a future that rejects our present to embrace our past. A Christian fundamentalism runs through the moderate Union Grove townspeople as much as it does the Revelation-quoting New Faith congregation (aside from those like Wayne Karp’s followers or the new mayor of Albany who prefer the rape-and-pillage alternative). Benevolent patriarchy is painted as ideal. Women are either housewives or whores (or, in the case of the New Faith bunch, essentially both) and while sometimes tough, they’re never self-sufficient. Significantly, no one seems to challenge this status quo; there is seemingly not a woman alive who would rather hunt or work wood than tend a kitchen garden and grind cornmeal. (The book talks a lot about “samp”; what’s wrong with “grits?” I ask.) There’s not a person of color, although it’s implied the bandits or “pickers” who rove the country may be non-white. Toward the end of the book, Robert Earle does reflect that, yes, two black men did use to live in the area, but they were killed off by the various disasters so that community didn’t have to actually make a place for them.

There’s the implication, not really explored or explained, that Brother Jobe may have messianic powers, and there’s a problematic scene where Robert Earle is taken to visit New Faith’s obese, drooling seeress. The ending leaves some matters strangely unfinished, while glossing over Robert Earle’s thinking in confronting the trailerpark crew unarmed and wallowing excessively in the results. Overall, however, despite several issues that ruffled my feathers, World Made by Hand tackles a lot worth thinking about – how we find meaning, what makes a community, how we would survive without the technologies and connections we typically take for granted, and whether our current way of life is setting us up for a fall.

Sadly, The Witch of Hebron, the second World Made By Hand novel, plummetts head-first into every pit its predecessor merely skirted. Apparently, the postapocalyptic future will be obsessed with dick. The book opens with two boys fishing on a beautiful October day, then spying on the local hermit jerking off. Although this incident sparks some weak rumors that return later in the novel, it never really plays a signifcant role. Presumably, it’s there to highlight a theme of men (unbound by the distancing technologies and other niceties of modern-day life) finding power by fucking. And killing. But all in a kind of low-key, smalltown way.

The coming of age story of eleven-year-old Jasper, the son of Union Grove’s doctor, is the novel’s most coherent through-line. Running away from home, confronting a crazy outlaw, killing a man, and saving a man’s life are all part of his journey, but of course it just wouldn’t be complete without a night of sex with a thirteen-year-old hooker. Jasper is an interesting character, especially in the beginning when he makes his decision to abandon Union Grove and sets out on his own, before he meets up with bandit Billy Bones.

Other plotlines include relatively incompetent but violent Billy Bones beating to death a lot of characters who should have known better, “plantation” owner Stephen Bullock slicing off the heads of more outlaws (who of course burst all the way into his bedroom and disrespect his wife before meeting any resistance from Bullock or his “employees”) and hanging the rest of the bunch from trees along the public thoroughfare, town preacher Loren getting over his persistent impotence by sleeping with high-class prostitute/witch Barbara Maglie, and Bullock ordering Dr. Copeland to dig up Shawn Watling’s grave and perform an inquest. This last seems egregiously out of place in this novel, where it’s given little attention and doesn’t fit with the other threads: while it continues the concerns of the prequel, apparently to provide an ominous set-up for a third book, the lack of explanation for the time gap and the lack of follow up make this simply an aimless, under-developed interlude. I confess to being a little curious as to whether Robert Earle will be blamed for the murder (in short, what will come of the inciting incident of World Made by Hand), but I don’t think I’m curious enough to try a third Made by Hand book, assuming one’s out yet. Nor does it really seem plausible that Robert hasn’t married Watling’s widow by now, or at least thought about it or talked it over with Loren. While Loren remains a likable guy, the transparent taking-charge-by-becoming-a-patriarch arc (after getting his mojo back following his night with Barbara, he rescues four orphan boys who were going to be sold for “labor or sport” in a nearby township) doesn’t appeal.

The question of whether the supernatural truly exists in this world (Is Barbara Maglie a witch or just skilled with herbs and setting the mood? Is Brother Jobe really superhuman or does he just know a little hypnotism?) could be interesting but is rendered much less so by Kunstler’s clear answer that yes, there really is magic in the world (for example, the grotesque Precious Mother of the New Faith cult seems to able not just to predict the future but to read the past and present as well and as plot-convenient) and the failure of any of the characters to do much more with or about it than rock back on their heels and mutter “I’ll be.” Not even to mention the hermit’s mountain cat visions. Because those seemed so plausible.

***

Maybe we should have glidered in, thinks Edward Blair, before skillfully romancing an employee of the John Hancock Center skyscraper, snagging her set of keys, and breaking into the enemy’s plush headquarters suite. A hallway shootout. A rooftop shootout. The first chapter of The Lives of Tao is like the opening sequence from a Bond movie, and Edward Blair is who Bond would be if he shared his body with an ancient, intelligent alien that has had a hand in shaping human history from Cro Magnon times.

All does not end well for Edward. By Chapter 2, Tao must find a new host, and (with few choices) he lands in the body of Roen Tan, an overweight IT technician much the worse for wear after a night on the town. Soon, Roen is hearing a voice in his head, giving dating advice, helping out on the job, and explaining that Roen is now the host for Tao, Prophus agent and former symbiote of Genghis Khan, Ming Emperor Hongwu, and General Lafayette. The Genjix and Prophus hold differing views on whether conflict spurs human development; ironically, this puts them in conflict. Roen has essentially been conscripted to the secret service, given mere months to get in shape and misson-ready, lest Tao be forcibly “extracted,” a process that will be fatal for Roen. In addition to the fun spy-training scenes (Tao has invented several martial arts over the millennia, so it seems only fitting that Roen should learn the Grand Supreme Fist), some attention is given to questions of free will versus coercion, pacifism versus armed struggle, and ends and means. Also, will Roen ever be able to keep a girlfriend? The working answers to these questions may be found a little too simply, but it’s the spy story that keeps the pages turning as Roen accepts his destiny and the “partners” work to foil Genjix’s Penetra program.

Oh, the submarine? It’s in there, the better to convey the Prophus agents to the Genjix’s former-WWII mountainside bunker headquarters. I wouldn’t want to spoil anything by telling you how the big fight on the helipad turns out.

So far, a few pages into the sequel, I’m delighted by the suggestion that it has two protagonists & that we seem to be dropped, several years later, into an interesting point in their relationship. It may yet degenerate into cliché, but perhaps not; I’m along for the ride …