A dystopian novel, set in our Tri-state area

SALISBURY — James Howard Kuntsler doesn’t have a high opinion of suburbia, automobiles or technology.

He has written extensively on the subjects in nonfiction books, notably 2005’s “The Long Emergency” and 2012’s “Too Much Magic.”

And he has used his ideas in a series of novels depicting a future in which America has collapsed in the wake of the end of oil as the dominant source of energy.

Kunstler spoke at The White Hart on Thursday, Aug. 11, as part of a series sponsored by the inn, Oblong Books and the Scoville Memorial Library.

He began by noting that oil executives who retired in the late 1990s wrote memoirs or articles detailing the end of oil as the primary source of energy (a concept called “peak oil,” which continues to cause controversy).

By 2008, he continued, the “deformity we introduced into economic life” had become apparent. Today, we have a situation in which an oil price of more than $75 per barrel “destroys economies” and a price under $75 “destroys oil companies.”

“That’s the quandary,” he said. “There’s no sweet spot.”

He said the country can try to “paper it over” and “borrow from the future,” but only for a while.

“A lot of the deformities express themselves politically, as in this circus election.”

“Things will get a lot stranger as we move toward November.”

The four novels — “World Made by Hand” (2008), “The Witch of Hebron” (2010), “A History of the Future” (2014) and the latest, “The Harrows of Spring” — are about “post-economic-collapse America.”

In this scenario, there are entities such as the Berkshire People’s Republic, the Foxfire Republic in the middle South, and “a remnant of the federal government on an island in Lake Huron.”

In “The Harrows of Spring,” the fictional town of Union Grove, N.Y., is “invaded by social justice warriors from Great Barrington, affecting to represent the Berkshire People’s Republic.”

Also in town is an evangelical Christian group from Virginia, called the New Faith Brotherhood Covenant Church of Jesus.

The group includes a seer, known as the Queen Bee, who can see things from a “temporal and geographical remove.”

In an excerpt, Kunstler read how the Queen Bee almost dies, and after an encounter with “you-know-who” returns to Union Grove miraculously transformed.

During the question period, Kunstler was asked why he allowed the Union Grove Congregational Church to remain.

“There’s lots of stuff still in place,” he replied, referring to the future America. “The car showrooms are gone, and suburban houses are abandoned, but a lot of infrastructure is still there.”

He said he had several agendas in writing the novels.

“I wanted the reader to get a sense of what it’s like in a post-technological society. 

“And also to get a sense that the human project will go on, that there will be joy and meaning in our lives.”

The reader will understand, perhaps, “the benefits of having let go of a lot of crap in our lives — especially the tyranny of the automobile.

“I wanted people to get comfortable with that world, and understand the mentality of people let down by technology and modernity.”

He was asked if he is related to radical attorney William Kunstler.

“Not at all,” he said. “I got asked that a lot, in the 60s. I used to tell them I was related to Eldridge Cleaver.”