A Peak Oil Prophet Imagines Life in America After Wal-Mart

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Author and social critic James Howard Kunstler, known for predicting our post-peak-oil future in nonfiction works such as The Long Emergency, has also brought his forecasts to life through fiction.

His newest novel, World Made By Hand, describes the near future in a small town in upstate New York -- not unlike the place Kunstler himself lives today -- where a chain of global crises has forced the community to fend for itself.

Despite the tragedy and violence that surround his characters, Kunstler says his vision of the future isn't nearly as grim as it might seem. "I resent the idea that I'm an apocalyptarian," he says. "I'm describing changes that we face, but I'm hardly proposing that it's the end of the world. It may be the end of the Wal-Mart experience, it may be the end of see-the-USA-in-your-Chevrolet -- but that ain't the end of the world." Grist recently spoke with Kunstler about prophesying -- and preparing for -- life after Wal-Mart.

Michelle Nijhuis: So you've wrestled with peak oil, climate change, and disease in nonfiction books. Why did you decide to address them in a novel?

James Howard Kunstler: I wanted to present a very vivid experience for readers, so they could feel what it might be like, sense what it might be like, to live in this post-oil world -- a world in which the tyranny of automobiles is over with, and people are living very directly with the planet and each other. The whole issue of farming and food production comes closer to the center of life, with all of its practical requirements and ceremonies. When you're living in that kind of economy, your society tends to follow the seasons, and a lot of the social content of everyday life is geared to planting, harvesting, and tending -- it's very different from the electronically mediated world of cubicle work.

Many of the characters have transitioned from the everyday world we know today -- so they certainly have a vivid memory of what they call the old times, and they're making the necessary adjustments to the new times.

MN: Did you have this world fully imagined from the start, or did it change in the process of writing?

JHK: There were a lot of things I knew about this world I was going to create, but I discovered a lot of things along the way. For example, it became apparent to me fairly early on that my characters would not all be riding bicycles as in some kind of ecotopia, because they would have trouble getting the materials necessary to make them.

I also realized in the first chapters that the fact that the pavement was so broken up on the roads would have a big effect on how people did things and moved around on the landscape. As far as characters, I'd originally thought that the evangelicals would be the bad guys, but they behaved rather valiantly. I also became very fond of their leader, Brother Job, who's kind of a combination of Boss Hogg and Captain Ahab. He's kind of a darkly comic buffoon, with a deep air of mystery about him. I like that.

MN: The world in World Made By Hand is very grim, but there's some beauty in it, too.

JHK: I'd contest the idea that I'm presenting a wholly grim world. It's a world that's very different, a world in which there are quite a few challenges and quite a few losses, but I'm not at all convinced that the people are necessarily more miserable. Their medical care has become much more primitive, and they work harder, but they're working very directly with their neighbors on things that matter to them. Their ceremonies are much more direct and social in nature -- in other words, they party a lot.

They're also continuing to go through a transition. Their way of life is not settled -- they've left behind the world of happy motoring and consumerism and cheese doodles and Pepsi-Cola, but they've entered a world in which the terrain of everyday life is once again very beautiful. Their best friends are no longer made-up characters on TV shows, they're eating food that they've raised themselves and requires some skill to process, and they're making their own music. So what I'm describing is a world of social riches that we've left behind -- left behind in our eagerness to become the slaves of our electronic gadgets.