James Howard Kunstler, a novelist and journalist, has written glum and pessimistic non-fiction books about peak oil and urban decay. The Long Emergency (2005), his most recent work of non-fiction, described a post-oil world of dramatically reduced living standards.
In The Long Emergency Kunstler displayed great intellectual energy mixed with a sharp wit. He employs many of those qualities with this acerbic satire.
Homemaking Queen's World Turns Sour
Maggie Darling is perhaps not the type of novel you would expect from an author who writes so extensively on oil depletion and energy issues. The cover even has a rave from Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell.
The novel concerns itself with homemaking and style queen, Maggie Darling. Many reviewers of the novel have commented that Maggie Darling is loosely based on Martha Stewart. Superficially, perhaps so. The Maggie Darling character does create a publishing and DVD empire out of all important skills like housekeeping, stylish party giving and simple yet chic cooking. One of her cook books is called 'Five Minute Feasts'.
Yet there's much more to Maggie Darling than simply being a spoof on Martha Stewart Maggie is more like someone who's come to the end of her tether with the more unsavory aspects of modern life. She's trying to maintain a decent and sophisticated house and hearth, while everything outside her door is frequently reaching new levels of obscenity.
Kunstler's Sophisticated Writing Style
Kunstler writes with an amazing eye for detail. Furnishings, designer home wares, food delicacies and all the accoutrements of fine living are described with breathtaking ease, as though Kunstler had a previous job writing copy for glossy home living publications.
Behind all this fine living and savoir faire, however, there lays a menacing tone of cultural, aesthetic and moral degradation, which builds up slowly through the novel. A stream of nasty events mount - robberies, hideous murders, stupid, random acts of violence - until the climax, where Maggie learns her ex-husband is a multiple murderer, her son part of a violent gang that does robberies for kicks and her best friend a dead beat drug addict.
The solution to these woes? Maggie calls in a private army to clean up the mess that government agencies wont, and then takes up with her handsome, educated gardener. He at least seems decent and level headed.
Themes of Decay in Maggie Darling
The basic theme of the novel is that American society and morals are going to hell in a hand basket. All of the glittering professionals that Maggie Darling rubs shoulders with - publishers, photographers, stock brokers, Hollywood actors - turn out to be depraved beings with next to zero morals. Or worse. Many are close to being fully fledged psychopaths of extraordinary selfishness.
While much of Maggie Darling is a soufflé like entertainment, with perfectly kept houses, tasteful parties, and sophisticated company, by end of novel the reader is left with an overwhelming feeling of menace and irrevocable social decay.
This is the genius of Maggie Darling, to slowly turn down the elegant veil of affluent America to reveal a very rotten core amongst its upper echelons.
Chris Saliba - Chris Saliba is a freelance writer. Read more of his workplace articles at chrissalibafreelancewriter.blogspot.com
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