The four seasons of Kunstler's World Made by Hand

I had the pleasure of reading The Harrows of Spring, James Howard Kunstler's final installment in his world made by hand series. The four books align with four seasons in a year in the life of the small Upstate New York farming village of Union Grove after the collapse of modern technoindustrial society.

The books are as follows:

Summer: World Made by Hand
Fall: The Witch of Hebron
Winter: A History of the Future
Spring: The Harrows of Spring

I think the collection would adapt well into a TV miniseries. The characters and storytelling are fairly solid, and four novels could fill a number of television hours. If done well (as much television is lately), I would love to see the preindustrial scenery visualized. With decent acting, it would be lovely to see some of Kunstler's peculiar actor's come to life on the screen.

I usually find myself trying to hold onto my own version of a novel's imagery against the threat of the actual visuals of a film adaption. Maybe I would only want to see my own version of World Made by Hand's imagery adapted to a miniseries.

Empire Falls

So I just watched the HBO miniseries adaption of Richard Russo's empire falls and found it to be freaking great. I think it helped sate a new hunger I have for quality storytelling. I made the mistake of starting to watch the new TV Series American Gothic, which is a little fun but a lot of awful.

In American Gothic, the characters are very poorly developed. The cartoonist looks like a cartoonist. The junky looks like a junky. The guy who ran off to live in the Maine woods looks just like someone who would do that. The main characters of Empire Falls are complex and evoke our curiosity and empathy. These Mainers are a breath of fresh air to me.

The story of Empire Falls is hence driven by these masterfully crafted characters. But the declined Maine mill town of Empire Falls is a finely crafted layer in the story too. The town's textile mill was the community's source of prosperity before it closed and residents continue to mourn its loss and fantasize about it reopening a generation later.

The American rust belt is not limited to the Midwest. To be sure, Boston, New York City, and some smaller pockets of the Northeast are very prosperous. But the region is also peppered with post-industrial cities that continue to struggle. Examples include Lawrence, Fitchburg, and Lowell, Massachusetts; Biddeford and Skowhegan, Maine; and Rochester, and Buffalo, New York. Buffalo, in fact, is in about as bad shape as Detroit.

I'd be interested in other stories with a backdrop of deindustrialization. It is an big part of the story of late Twentieth Century America and it needs to be told. It is certainly part of Maine's story.