How did one week go by?

OK, let's see -- it has been quite a week in my world and while reading is happening thinking much beyond the reading I have been doing for my class is not happening (that is The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, one of my favorite books, ever).  But I also finished the truly dreadful Witch of Hebron by James Kunstler and am dipping in and out of the T.C. Boyle short story collection Wild Child (bought for the title story, which was disappointing -- on the other hand the stroy "1300 rats" was pretty much just what you would want out of a story with that title).  So, Kunstler.  He is the author of the beautifully titled World Made by Hand.  Can a book be good if the only good thing about it is the title?  (More below on the title.)  Kunstler (peak oil man of The Long Emergency, nonfiction),  imagines life post oil, post nameless war and post various diseases, in a small town along the Hudson river north of Albany, NY.  Without oil, gasoline, electricity, communications systems and essentially every other means of modern comfort (which seems to include egalitarian gender relations) the people of Union Grove face many difficulties: the crazed and violent gang of thugs that scavenge, fail to apprecaite hard work, but allow Kunstler to offer up some pretty disgusting punishments; the disappearance of some men who went to trade in Albany; and the arrival of a quasi cult like christian group that has been moving north after facing worse difficulties in the southeastern US.  Oh I can't even go on with its silly plot.  So the Witch of Hebron continues the celebration of the simple life, of men who fish and hunt and treat their women well and women who...well, other than the witch, women who pretty much stay off the page unles their buxom boutnies are being discussed.  Kunstler, I suspect, fanstasizes of being a medieval lord -- and it is as tiresome as it sounds.

But the title -- he captures simply in a title the important feature of life post-apocalypse: that it (like life post state of nature) must be made by hand -- not because we eat slow and love our goods handmade -- but because we understand that politics, organized living together, can only be made 'by hand.'  Not by god, not by superiors, but by us.  Sadly he has ruined a perfectly good title with two novels of nonsense.

TV!

Ok, I interrupt my focus on books for a post on television.  One of my people, who is a fan of all things girls-in-the-past, has been watching the Waltons.  What a great show.  Two things I have noticed in the three episodes we have seen thus far (season 1, so long ago). First off there are elderly people in the show -- not only that, those people have actual lives: hopes and dreams -- they get angry and sad and happy.  They live lives that are rich in themselves and not simply as appendages to some other, younger, better folk.  And when I started thinking about this I wondered -- where are the elderly people on TV -- not as jokes or occasional side kicks -- but just ordinary people, who happen to be over 70?  Second thing -- the adults in this show get to have children and yet not be fully absorbed at all times by those children.  Children are shushed and shooed away and real conversations happen between real adults (ok, on TV) -- relationships are explored and, again, people get mad and talk about why they are mad and their anger is just a part of adult life -- not a tragedy, but a normal response to stress or uncertainty.  I will, I am sure, have other observations over the next few weeks (it could take us months to get through all of the seasons!).  I had tried the Waltons once before and we started with a stretch of tragedy episodes: appendicitis and Mama got polio -- my people dislikes the tragedy shows -- but this time we are on a good run of ordinary tales of people in the world (or as some who know me might note: earnest and dreary ordinary tales of people in the world.  And do I love anything more than earnest and dreary from my forms of art?  I do not.).

Now we are getting somewhere

Ok, I think I have found it: Julie Bertagna, Exodus (1st book), Zenith (second book), Aurora (forthcoming, 3rd book) -- premise -- global climate change, an island in (or what is left of) Scotland, a small community that finally recognizes that their island will not survive one more winter of rising seas.  A girl who finds record on the internet of new cities that were created above the water.  So will people follow Mara's recommendation that the islanders set out crowded into boats to find these cities in the sky?  They will (although part of what makes these books so good is that there is lots of questioning about why anyone would pay attention to a 15 year old).  But what awaits them at the city is not what anyone expected.  This postapocalyptic text eventually presents six different postapocalyptic communities -- five different responses to living in a world that is mostly under water.  These communities run the gamut of socio-political arrangements, and differing responses to these radically changing conditions.  Mara creates what is (or will be by the third book) a new community with representatives from most of the others presented.  It is not yet fully clear what shape the new community will take.  But the collection of people include a group who have lived for the last 50 years on islands underneath the far reaching stabiliazation beams of those who live in the sky, abandoned and almost feral children who are beginning to be born with webbed feet, one other survivor of Mara's home island, a boy who lived his life on a collection of lashed together ships and oil riggers, and the virtual memory/interaction of/with a boy who lives in the city in the sky.  There are children, infants and adults.  There is considerable disagreement about what to do and where to go and how to live.  And the conditions under which they live are certainly challenging.  So what the final book should have is a set of principles for how this disparate group can come together and live in such a way that they will not simply begin the next cycle of humans destroying the earth. 

Am now working on the sequel to James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand -- which, despite its most excellent title, was truly awful.  The sequel is so far proving to be equally medieval fantasy.  And so far no takers for reading The Years of Rice and Salt together.  (784 pages but you can get a  used copy for only one penny!)

What I want out of my postapocalyptic tale....

...is not what I got in Sigrid Nunez's Salvation City.  (Just a moment of self-congratualtion -- that would be my first successful blog link -- thank you to Alison for telling me how.)  Salavation City is a town in southern Indiana that has suffered less from the impact of a world-wide flu pandemic.  Cole is rescued from an orphanage by Preacher Wyatt and comes to live in his evangelical home after both of Cole's parents have died from the flu.  The book seems to want to pose the liberal atheism of Cole's parents against the warm evangelicalism (with some dark under-roots) of the Wyatt's.  But in all the book is disappointing.  First off, don't tell me this is about a world post-flu pandemic and then give me virtually no details about what has happened in this new world (one mention of an emaciated President (female!) 10 days after surviving her own bout of flu) -- but no discussion at all on the impact this pandemic has on government services, democratic values, transportation systems, food distribution or any of the other postapocalyptic details I seek.  The people of Salavation City seem to be waiting for the rapture and their doing better from the pandemic itself is either because they are nicer to each other or because they are isolated.  Cole seems less interested in their religion (although he tries) and similalry distanced from the memory of parents that did not seem so great anyway (is this just the truthful voice of a young teen ?  I was wholly unconvinced when he expressed sadness over their deaths because he quite convincingly describes his parents as distant, demanding, cold and isolated).  Eventually other things happen -- but nothing so interesting to report here....

I am now reading (actually re-reading, but it took me 125 pages to figure this out) Sharp North.  It starts out quite well in a small community in a northern woods somewhere responsible for a system of electricity generators.  There is certainly mystery and drowning cities and plans for revising the world (both the world we are in and the one we have lost).  But it too is still not quite what I want.

So what do I want: an event, survivors, a system for thinking through how to live not just for next week but for the next years and generations.  With enough potential threats to keep thinngs moving along -- but no zombies and no cannibals.  I want an explanation of how to rebuild and I want evidence that such a rebuilding makes sense.  And I want this from a protagonist who is not particulalry heroic in a world where being strong and smart may not be the key to survival.  So reader....any suggestions?

Worldbuilding

So I have finished Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi.  I have had WindUp Girl on my bookshelf for awhile now (I got through the first few chapters last semester and then the hectic semester schedule and my inability to read more than 2-3 pages without falling asleep meant it sits there still).  But this was a good return to his writing.  I taught the story "The People of Sand and Slag" last spring and let's just say that he has an incredible eye for describing dystopian futures.  Ship Breaker is set on a drowned gulf coast and the main characters work at stripping the rusting hulk like remains of container ships, oil tankers and the like.  Nailer, the protagnoist, works light crew -- meaning that he climbs into tiny spaces to pull out copper wiring , helping to produce bits of salvage brought in by other memebers of his crew to meet their daily quota. 

I liked the first half best, which detailed Nailer's life, his work, his abusive, drug-addicted father, the "half-men" -- genetic mixes of humans, dogs, tigers -- bred to protect those who pay the shipbreakers for their dead end work.  Nailer's greatest hope is either to make it to heavy crew (unlikely for his size) or to make his own "lucky strike" -- to happen on some pocket of oil or stash of salvage large enough to establish him as a dealer in salvage and not just a scrapper for salvage.  The second half takes up Nailer's possible lucky strike and love interest a "swank" whose gleaming white clipper ship wrecks near Nailer's beach during a "city-killer," a massive category 6 (8?) hurricane.

The upshot for me:  great worldbuilding, excellent dystopian details (you can't swim in oil -- true?  who knows, but visions of drowning in oil were very clearly outlined), and a satisfying ending.  An added plus -- good musings on the meaning of family and the meaning of obligation and promise. So now I will return to Wind Up Girl at some point (but still, still I want to reread The Years of Rice and Salt -- any takers?