Will Hoyt‘s Ohio River Journey to the Middle Ages
Episode description
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 14th 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
Preview of The Seven Ranges from FPR
“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads
“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”