The KunstlerCast: Conversations with James Howard Kunstler

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The KunstlerCast: Conversations with James Howard Kunstler

by Duncan Crary (Goodreads Author)

4.17 of 5 stars 4.17 · rating details · 23 ratings · 8 reviews

James Howard Kunstler has been described as "one of the most outrageous commentators on the American built environment." An outspoken critic of suburban sprawl, Kunstler is often controversial and always provocative. The KunstlerCast is based on the popular weekly podcast of the same name, which features Kunstler in dialogue with author Duncan Crary, offering a personal wi...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published November 15th 2011 by New Society Publishers (first published September 6th 2011)

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Feb 16, 2012 Owen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: interviews, cities, new, urbanism, development, peak, oil, suburbs

This book provides an excellent overview of James Kunstler and his work, particularly in connecting his earlier work on suburbs and urban planning with his later work on peak oil and impending economic reduction. The interview method works very well here. It's not used here to interrogate Kunstler, but to draw out and organize his thinking in ways that Duncan's listeners (and readers) can easily consume and digest. It's really a very low key and friendly sort of discussion, which I personally li...more

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Nov 09, 2011 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am jealous of hell of author Duncan Crary. Might as well admit it right up front.

In my 25 years in radio, I interviewed Jim Kunstler maybe a dozen times, usually short chats to get a sound bite for a news story about local development issues in the Albany/Saratoga Springs/Glens Falls, New York area that I spent my entire radio career broadcasting in and around. A couple of times I did longer interviews with Kunstler, the author of a number of brilliant books about culture and cultural collapse...more I am jealous of hell of author Duncan Crary. Might as well admit it right up front.

In my 25 years in radio, I interviewed Jim Kunstler maybe a dozen times, usually short chats to get a sound bite for a news story about local development issues in the Albany/Saratoga Springs/Glens Falls, New York area that I spent my entire radio career broadcasting in and around. A couple of times I did longer interviews with Kunstler, the author of a number of brilliant books about culture and cultural collapse, including the non-fiction landmarks The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency, and a pair of hugely entertaining and thought-provoking novels, World Made by Hand and The Witch of Hebron. A year ago, I profiled his appearance at a local book fair. I admit it, I enjoy reading Kunstler’s writing, and I enjoy picking his brain every chance I get. But Crary is the visionary broadcaster who got the idea to sit down with him week-in and week-out for a wildly entertaining and informative podcast, The KunstlerCast.

In Crary’s deceptively compact new book of the same name, you’ll find the ultimate primer to everything Kunstler, as the author has mined scores of the duo’s podcasts to create an indispensable document of James Howard Kunstler’s personal history, philosophy, observations and predictions.

Crary doesn’t put on kid gloves in their interviews, for example tackling head-on the popular perception that Kunstler was wrong about Y2K (he wasn’t; it could have been a global catastrophe, but because it was a comprehensible, solvable problem, the disaster was averted). There are even a few passages where the pair don’t seem quite simpatico on some issue or other, and Kunstler’s bristling fairly electrifies the page. He’s a crusty curmudgeon, as readers of his weekly Clusterfuck Nation blog no doubt are aware, but Kunstler’s sharp edges are greatly mitigated by the fact that he is a blunt, no-bullshit observer of our times and our culture, and the book nicely encapsulates just why I’ve held JHK in very high esteem over the past couple of decades.

Readers new to Kunstler will come away with a much better picture of his place in our culture. He is frequently dismissed as a “doom-and-gloom naysayer,” but it’s impossible to come away from these discussions with Crary without understanding in full that Kunstler believes once we get past the long emergency we are now fully engaged in, we could come out of it on the other side with a better world, operating at a more human scale, with smarter priorities and strategies for living. In fact, we have no choice, if the human race is to continue. The Happy Motoring Era, as Kunstler calls the past century-plus of cheap energy and cheaper lifestyles, is now racing so quickly to its conclusion that we are all dizzy from the ride and no longer able to deny that we see where this is all going. There can be imagined no better map and guide than The KunstlerCast book. Stick one in your go-bag and take it on the road with you in your inevitable post-apocalyptic trek through the wasteland that was once America. Let it keep you company as you Occupy your hometown. Put it on the shelves with the rest of your intelligent, forward-looking and wickedly funny books. But whatever you do, buy it and read it. You’re lost without it.(less)

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Dec 27, 2011 Stephen Caulfield rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Internet is now the home of much of the intellectual content we make use of every day. This may have all kinds of implications, not all of them good. In the particular case of podcasting there is a lot of wonderful material out there, particularly the alternative, non-mainstream, non-status quo voices. The KunstlerCast, a weekly offering featuring James Howard Kunstler, an American public intellectual and social critic with a powerful angle on all things suburban, is a terrific example of th...more The Internet is now the home of much of the intellectual content we make use of every day. This may have all kinds of implications, not all of them good. In the particular case of podcasting there is a lot of wonderful material out there, particularly the alternative, non-mainstream, non-status quo voices. The KunstlerCast, a weekly offering featuring James Howard Kunstler, an American public intellectual and social critic with a powerful angle on all things suburban, is a terrific example of the upside of the Internet.

Almost from the first show we’ve been listening to the KunstlerCast and loving it. We cherish the chance to have the goodness on paper. The dry humour and conversational enjoyability tops off a tasty demolition job on the American automotive/suburban complex. Each week, host Duncan Crary sets up Jim Kunstler with a topical angle on where the hell life in North America is going with all its consumer culture, the ageing strip malls, its massive energy requirements, car dependence, suburban cul-de-sac houses by the zillion, its completely whacked economics and increasingly questionable popular culture. It’s rarely ever pretty.

Now, there’s a book based on the podcasts. It may help bring the wit and wisdom out to a wider audience and preserve it for the future. Both truly worthy things!

You get eight side-bar loaded chapters on “the tragic comedy of urban sprawl.” There’s also notes and an index and a set of quirky title headers by comic artist Ken Avidor. The latter appear to have been created in an archaic style with a hollow cylinder held in the hand which transfers a sort of wet toner to paper allowing the artist to stain a picture onto the paper by themselves without a computer at all. Imagine that! One more thing to recommend this three hundred page gem of Duncan Crary’s. Exactly the type of thing one could read on a local light rail vehicle, or a Euro-styled high speed train, gawd, even a kinda-medium speed train would do the trick.

The conversational tone and good naturedness of the Kunstlercast and the book often belie the serious nature of the topics at hand. Above all, Kunstler calls for a renewed and closer relationship with reality in America, a country that’s been acting like a demented rock star for decades now, squandering its wealth and talent on decadent insanities like brutalist city halls, starchitecture and megamalls.

This is like talking with friends, intellectual cousins. When I was reading KunstlerCast it felt a bit like David Byrne’s 2009 book Bicycle Diairies wherein the artist riffs on his bike-based explorations of some of the world’s major cities. No sooner had this thought occurred to me than I came across a line in which Crary makes a reference to the Talking Heads song Nothing But Flowers.

I don’t know about you but I love little moments of cross connection between ideas and feelings like that. They are kind of like the feeling one gets in the kind of public place that Kunstler and Crary advocate, the healthy, walkable, finely detailed, organic, cohesive, localized and self-respecting communities that have become too hard to find but which we better learn to rediscover. Anybody who remotely cares about where this continent is going or ever wondered if there was something wrong with the way we inhabit our world here needs this book.

My particular interest is poverty in the suburbs. I read Kunstler's book The Geography of Nowhere a number of years ago and find that to understand the emerging new frontier of poverty you need to understand as much as you can about suburbia.
Cheers,
Stephen
http://suburban-poverty.com/
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Feb 02, 2012 George Matthew rated it 4 of 5 stars

A nice short read and introduction to Kunstler and his cause for me. The was my first Kindle book, and the formatting on'it seemed weird, I don't know if it was because of the publisher, or that it was on the Kindle. It does spark an interest for me to read some Kunstler now.

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Feb 11, 2012 Matthieutc rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great book going over a lot of the themes from James Howard Kunstler's body of work.

A recommended read for anyone interested in the future of suburbia and American cities.

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Feb 04, 2013 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Even though I've listened to almost every episode of the KunstlerCast, this book was still fun to read. I'm not sure though how this would read to someone who's never listened to the podcast before or listened to a talk by James Howard Kunstler. While these transcripts are informative and entertaining, I think the real magic of JHK is in his delivery. Hearing him compare Americans to baluchitheriums or referring to tattoo and hiphop culture as a culture of insecure, violent clowns is the reason...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Charles Marohn rated it 4 of 5 stars

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/20...

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Mar 18, 2013 Bob Loftin rated it 4 of 5 stars

A great read, and wonderful capstone to a great podcast.

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Mar 29, 2013 Joe marked it as to-read

Jan 01, 2013 Jeff Valluzzi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dec 05, 2012 Matthew Mayer rated it 4 of 5 stars

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Shelves: non-fiction

Oct 26, 2012 Peter marked it as to-read

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