Will Hoyt‘s Ohio River Journey to the Middle Ages

Host:  John Murdock

Guest:  Will Hoyt

Will Hoyt, author of The Seven Ranges, discusses his journey along the Ohio River into the physical, historical and philosophical interior of the strip-mined region where he lives.  In the book, Hoyt transforms the area’s colorful past into a lament over the loss of an “integrative center” last seen in feudal Europe.  Well read and well spoken, this carpenter joins everything from surveying techniques to Jimmy the Greek into a compelling narrative of despair and hope.

Highlights

2:15   Unhoused Hoyt, Unhoused Ohio

7:00   This book brought to you by Ingram Barge Company

10:00 Big Coal comes to town

14:30 Corporate Power and the 14^th Amendment

21:30 Polarization and the destruction of the medieval inheritance

22:30 The Civil War, then and now, explained

27:00 False opposites

32:15 Power chosen over contemplation

33:00 Make America Medieval (Again?)

37:00 Lightning round begins!

37:30 Jimmy the Greek and the Little Las Vegas

39:30 “Play that Funky Music” (almost)

41:00 Camp meeting revival

42:45 Surveying changes the world

44:00 Wendell Berry gets the Incarnation right and wrong

49:00 Wallace Stegner and the American Inklings

50:30 What’s on the cover?

Resources

Buy the book

Preview of The Seven Ranges from FPR

Hoyt’s FPR articles

“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads

Ingram Barge Company

“Play that Funky Music” by Wild Cherry

And if you need help getting that last song out of your head,

try this very topical one:  “Paradise” by John Prine

 

Also, our thanks as always to Wendell Kimbrough for the use of “The Ballad of Freida the Goose”