'Old King' Novel Explores Current Meaning of Ted Kaczynski's 'Unabomber'

When Ted Kaczynski committed suicide in federal prison last June, a confusing chapter in the history of American domestic terrorism closed. Unlike fascists, white supremacists, and anti-government conspirators, Kacyzinski embraced just principles: protecting the environment and confronting the destructive role of technology. “[T]“Threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE,” he wrote in a 35,000 word manifesto which was published in the New York Times and the Washington Post in 1995. “They are not the result of chance, but are IMPOSED on him by other people whose decisions he, as an individual, cannot influence.”

He wasn't wrong. But the newspapers only published his words on the recommendation of the FBI and the attorney general of the United States to prevent him from doing more damage, beyond what was possible. three people he had murdered and had wounded nearly two dozen with mail bombs.

Maxim Loskutoff's second novel, “The Old King,” is an attempt to analyze Kaczynski's contradictions, to recognize the prophetic elements of the manifesto while emphasizing that it is the product of a sociopath. That's good material for a novel, even by Dostoevsky, although Loskutoff is not trying to offer a “Karamazov”-style philosophical tale. Rather, “Old King” is a more modest blend of police procedurals and outdoor tales.

Set largely in the Montana wilderness where Kaczynski took refuge, the novel explores the line where independence strays so far from empathy that it becomes toxic. Loskutoff writes beautifully about nature: “Old King” refers to an enormous tree towering over the Montana landscape. But nature alone, he observes, can also be threatening and confusing.

Before Kaczynski claims the novel's setting, Loskutoff introduces a cast of characters who evoke his crisis in miniature. In 1976, Duane is a young father who has just left his marriage and his home in Utah to move to Lincoln, Montana, for work. He is not especially skilled and nature alienates him at first. (“The branches rustled, they approached him and offered him their failures”). But he soon gets a logging job and meets the locals: Mason, a forest ranger; Hutch, owner of an ad hoc animal rescue; the Carter family, a clan of ill-tempered separatists; and Jackie, Mason's ex and a restaurant waitress. Upon settling in, Duane gives Jackie a microwave that he liberated from her broken marriage, a small symbol of both warm domesticity and cold technology.

In fact, it is likely that no other microwave in the history of American literature has been asked to carry so much metaphorical weight. Even without stopping at the device, it's clear that everyone in the area is trying to discover how far they can balance nature's capacities for wonder and alienation. Mason, the forest ranger, is the most sophisticated thinker on the subject and questions whether his job is to preserve the environment or help accelerate the land rush: “By arresting the poachers and putting the old trappers out of business, I would clear the path for the rich. tourists to build second homes… his contracting teams killed animals by the dozen with bulldozers, and the cement they poured left no way for the trees to grow back.”

Maxim Loskutoff, author of “The Old King.”

(Cinna Cuddie)

As the narrative progresses into the 1980s, Mason becomes increasingly concerned with the irony of his work. Meanwhile, Duane recognizes the healthy fear that the environment instills in him: upon seeing a grizzly bear, he falls into a “deep, wild panic, as if he had come here to be devoured, having finally crossed the line between civilization and his dreams.” . “Both answers qualify as a kind of savage intelligence. By contrast, Kaczynski, a brilliant mathematician before becoming the Unabomber, comes off as a crazier, dumber guy: “The bear was the first real killer he encountered. He wanted to be a killer.” ”.

There is an unwritten law that literary fiction set in the high plains must be solid and simple: sentences firm as fence posts, commas driven in as cleanly as barn nails. Kent Haruf's novels exemplify the form, but the sensibility runs through the books of Thomas McGuane, Marilynne Robinson, Peter Heller, Ivan Doig, and more. Loskutoff, who set his novel “Ruthie Fear” and his short story collection “Come West and See” at least partly in Montana, has mastered his own version of the form. He deftly captures how the setting is both charming and scary, and although his scenes sound familiar: bar fights! dangerous animals! – focuses more on what worries its characters than on exaggerating some myth of gruff arrogance.

Still, the straightforward approach means some characters lack depth. Jackie, the waitress, rarely rises above the trope of the straight-talking Western woman who has done wrong and can't find a good man. The problem is more serious in the case of Kaczynski. Luskatoff introduces a postal inspector, Nep, who attempts to hunt down the Unabomber and understands the threat he poses to America's sense of identity, then and now. (“Race riots, serial killers, murders, superfund sites. America’s great ship sinking with all the lights on.”) But Nep is basically a stock detective, and Kaczynski little more than an angry narcissist who mocks everyone around him as fools. His contempt for humanity is clear. But then why was he worried about that?

For Loskutoff's purposes, Kaczynski serves less as a character than as a warning. The Unabomber was more than a '90s headliner; His past is closer to our present than we think. When a Montana local tells Mason about a brutal act of violence that occurred in the 1920s, Mason ignores him: “That was fifty years ago.” The man scoffs: “Do you think that's a long time?”

Mark Athitakis is a Phoenix writer and author of “The New Midwest.”