And yet I don’t find Kingsnorth’s story overall to be specious. Something indeed is afoot, and it may indeed destroy us. And this is the terrible challenge of Kingsnorth’s book. I might wish for a more compelling account. Yet, being slowly destroyed is itself a state of ambiguity, the definiteness of which is found precisely when it is too late. Something is being unmade, and if we wait till we are certain of the details, the risk taken in delay is complete forfeiture. A human future, whatever may come, may depend on taking definite steps before one has complete confidence.
Finally a review I can get onboard with and that touches what is, to my reading, the heart of much of the hesitancy around Kingsnorth. Carman’s analogy with Poirot’s hesitation is spot-on. (And don’t miss the title of the piece.)
I still think that much of the disappointment is more or less par for the course. For example, given the differences between Kingsnorth and McGilchrist, just in the type of writers and thinkers they are, the contrasts between them that Carman points to are largely ones that I have a hard time imagining not being present.
I have offered two defenses of Kingsnorth, both prompted almost exclusively by what I take to be unfair, dismissive readings and comparisons. I have one more in me, one that very much preceded the other two. And it touches the same question Carmen asks: How much do we believe it? Will we take the train today?
And of course, how do you get more people on that train?
Hopefully I will coalesce its scattered notepad existence soon.