Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance

by Bill McKibben Narrated by Danny Campbell

Overview

*“We've got a long history of resistance in Vermont and this book is testimony to that fact.”
-Bernie Sanders

A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel*Radio Free Vermont*follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic.
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As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law.
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In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that's become more popular than ever--seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of 'Ethan Allen Day' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Danny Campbell perfectly captures this audiobook’s protagonist, Vern Barclay, a 72-year-old lifelong Vermonter and accidental freedom fighter. After the protest of a new Wal-Mart takes an unexpected turn, Vern, a former talk-radio host, goes rogue and broadcasts from a secret location as “Radio Free Vermont.” Vern fills the airwaves with talk of secession from the U.S., and his eccentric crew carries out inventive acts of resistance, like the amusingly polite heist of a Coors Beer truck. Campbell’s friendly, raspy voice is ideal for Vern, who is world-weary but ultimately optimistic. There isn’t much vocal variation for other characters, but they’re broadly drawn anyway, and Vern is very much the heart of the story. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

The Barnes & Noble Review

What good can fiction do? Dust jacket patter says it can take us to new places and introduce us to voices we'd otherwise miss. Neuroscientists insist it can help us develop empathy. Kafka famously said it can take an ax to that frozen sea within us. All noble accomplishments, to be sure -- but also abstracted, hard-to- quantify ones. (How much empathy? How many seas?) So what are the concrete things that a novel can accomplish? Can a work of fiction be a meaningful form of activism?

A handful of American novels have roughly answered in the affirmative. There's no solid proof that Abraham Lincoln actually told Harriet Beecher Stowe, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!" upon meeting her, but that story, apocryphal or not, exists because Uncle Tom's Cabin played a critical role in the abolitionist cause. The horrific stockyard scenes in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle helped tighten meat inspection regulations -- though it didn't foment an American socialist uprising, Sinclair's true hope for the book. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath helped prompt congressional hearings on Dust Bowl migrant camps. Edward Abbey's 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, was a totemic work for the environmental movement and a direct inspiration for Earth First!, an infamous group of sand-in-the-gears radicals.

All of those novels, critics agree, are unified by the impact they had. But critics generally agree on another thing, too: They're not especially well written. Exhortations to do things, or earnestly trained spotlights upon a political problem, tend to grate against the matters of careful style and characterization that make for good fiction. Calls to action tend to involve emotional appeals alongside the sober presentation of evidence. That translates to melodrama and reportage -- twin daggers to the heart of a novel.

So while it's a criticism to say that Bill McKibben's debut novel, Radio Free Vermont, is not a very good work of fiction, it's also a way to say that it's a novel that's part of a long lineage. McKibben is a longtime environmental writer and activist who's written a stack of nonfiction books sounding warnings about climate and the influence of money and government upon it; along with Al Gore and Naomi Klein, he's threaded the needle of stating the seriousness of the stakes without being a panic-stricken catastrophist. The very existence of Radio Free Vermont reveals how passionate he is about his cause -- he'd write an epic poem in iambic tetrameter on CO₂ levels if he thought it'd help get his message over. But he's also cognizant of how gently he needs to tread. The plot of his novel involves a Vermont secessionist movement stoked by computer hacking and vandalism (in one scene a Walmart is flooded with sewage). But its center is an avuncular seventy-two-year-old radio host named Vern Barclay, who agitates for radical action with a Keillor-esque calm. "The towns where we knew each other and looked out for each other weren't working so well anymore," he laments on-air, explaining how he got religion on secession.

Vern is assisted in his mission by a young hacker with an encyclopedic knowledge of '60s Soul and R&B; a fellow old-timer who trains wealthy out-of-towners to respect (and escape) the perils of the state's wilderness; and an Iraq vet and former Olympic biathlete Vern once trained. Together, the foursome concoct a series of antics ostensibly designed to promote the secessionist cause but, like the encrappening of the Walmart, mostly manifest themselves as anti-corporate counterprogramming. A Coors truck is waylaid and its contents replaced by local microbrews. Vern hacks a Starbucks PA and talks up locally owned coffee shops. Said biathlete goes off-script during the dedication of a sports arena/concert venue to lament how as a soldier "I felt like I was protecting bigness -- big oil and big companies who made big money running those wars." And, also, that "Nickelback really sucks."

Within such actions, we are meant to believe, are borne the seeds of revolution. (I wrote "C'mon!" a lot in the margins.) To be fair, McKibben means to keep his story light -- it's brief and subtitled A Fable of Resistance. But even by that standard, the story is vapor-thin: Nefarious federals from central casting chase down Vern's cohort, there is much talk about the fate of Social Security benefits in the sovereign nation of Vermont, and its final plot twist is reminiscent of '80s teen dramedies where the school principal is revealed saying something super-duper-mean that got caught on tape. Even Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in his blurb for the book, can't bring himself to wholeheartedly board this train. ("I hope no one secedes, but I also hope . . . ")

Radio Free Vermont's flaws reveal just how pronounced the problem of writing an activist novel in the twenty-first century is. How do you write an optimistic, progressive novel in a literary culture steeped in dystopia, where the prevailing mood is failure and collapse? McKibben has not been alone in this struggle -- the non-dystopian activist novel has had a rough road in recent years. It is either too much a function of the politics of the moment, which gives it a short shelf life. (Consider Frederic C. Rich's 2013 novel, Christian Nation, which imagined a Sarah Palin presidency.) Or it re-litigates the past, which blunts its impact. (Sunil Yapa's 2016 novel, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, which revisits the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, is a prominent recent example.) As evidence of what stokes activism, and what activism demands, they're effective enough works. But as stories about people, with a longer view of the errors of history and their aftereffects, they face the same struggles McKibben does.

One seemingly obvious influence on Radio Free Vermont suggests a way forward, though. The novel's setup strongly evokes The Monkey Wrench Gang, which also involves a quartet of law-flouting radicals who protest the power structure but are mindful not to put anybody in harm's way. Abbey's radicals travel across Utah and Arizona pulling out survey stakes, breaking bulldozers, and blowing up (empty) bridges in the name of slowing down the advance of progress and the rough soles of developers' boots. Story-wise, it's full of the kind of hokum that'd make Mark Twain blush -- impossible escapes, bad puns, sexist banter.

And yet, the driving force of Abbey's outrage -- the wellspring of his activism -- is also evident on the page, because he's never more careful in his prose than when he's writing about the environment that's in peril. "The clouds passed, in phrases and paragraphs, like incomprehensible messages of troubling import, overhead across the forested ridges," he writes in the book. "Above the unscaled cliffs, beyond the uninhabited fields of lonely mesas, followed by their faithful shadows flowing with effortless adaptation over each crack, crevice, crease and crag on the wrinkled skin of the Utahn earth."

Which is to say, we know what these people are blowing up a bridge for. That kind of breather never arrives in Radio Free Vermont, and as such McKibben can't clear a fictional path to move us to upend a trashcan in a Costco. More often, the vista that Vern contemplates is a drier political scene. "The U.S. has worked, not perfectly but perfectly well, for a very long time," he muses. "Trump, true. But we survived Nixon. And Warren Harding. What kind of stunt was it to insist that he'd figured out some better future?" The activist novel will last as long as writers are willing imagine that better future. But it's also a clumsy, difficult genre that transcends itself, if it ever does, when the novelist places us not just in our current predicament but in the just and fair place we imagine we might someday be.

Mark Athitakis is a writer, editor, critic, and blogger who’s spent more than a dozen years in journalism. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, Chicago Sun-Times, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Washington City Paper, and many other publications. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle.

Reviewer: Mark Athitakis

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

In his public appearances, McKibben, a Vermonter and one of the best-known environmentalists of our age, can be an extremely droll and appealing Cassandra. But there's little in his many previous books to suggest he can pull off a novel-length satire…Yet Radio Free Vermont is a charming bit of artisanal resistance lit. It's a bit rough, with the occasional nailhead poking up too high…But what's surprising is how well-crafted the book is overall; how unhokey its folksiness feels, and how true its observations ring…Radio Free Vermont is more than "A Fable of Resistance," as its subtitle says. It's a love letter to the modest, treed-in landscape of Vermont, which Barclay wouldn't trade for all the grandeur of Montana. It's a dirge for the intense cold…It is an elegy for a slower, saner Vermont…and dependable Yankee virtues, like neighborliness and self-reliance and financial prudence.

Publishers Weekly

09/11/2017
Summoning the spirit of Edward Abbey, environmentalist and author McKibben (The End of Nature) makes his fiction debut with this rollicking tale of monkeywrenching and political activism. Proud Vermonter, local ale lover, and radio personality Vern Barclay didn’t mean to become a radical, but when the new owners of his radio station tell him he can’t be critical of big media on his show he pushes back by getting creative with his coverage of the controversial opening of a new Walmart. After things spiral out of control he’s forced to go underground, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing his clever acts of resistance, including hacking into the sound system of a Bennington Starbucks to broadcast a Radio Free Vermont podcast touting the value of buying local. The podcast’s tone quickly becomes revolutionary, and soon Barclay has called for secession to be put on the agenda of town meetings across the state, and Ben and Jerry’s has created a Free Vermont ice cream flavor (made with Vermont milk and maple syrup, of course). Aided by a motley crew of friends and recruits, Barclay’s disruptive hijinks get bigger and crazier (including setting a house on fire) as the authorities close in on him. With a playful and quick-moving plot that belies the seriousness of the book’s environmental and political message, McKibben’s stirring call for recognizing the value and power of smallness in a globalized world makes for a vital and relevant fable. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

Is it a surprise that the debut novel from one of our best-known environmental activists focuses on grassroots resistance? In backwoods Vermont, two radicals use an underground radio show to recruit people interested in seceding from the United States. What follows is a zany, witty, and altogether timely imagination of modern resistors.” – The Millions

"Timely..provoctative entertainment...McKibben's book may well be the lost sequel to Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang..." – Kirkus Reviews

“rollicking…With a playful and quick-moving plot that belies the seriousness of the book’s environmental and political message, McKibben’s stirring call for recognizing the value and power of smallness in a globalized world makes for a vital and relevant fable.”  –Publishers Weekly

“Radio Free Vermont is a charming bit of artisanal resistance lit…what’s surprising is how well-crafted the book is overall; how unhokey its folksiness feels, and how true it’s observations ring.”–Jennifer Senior, The New York Times 


“In a time when smart comedy is essential to survival, McKibben’s shrewdly uproarious and provocative fable of resistance is exhilarating.” –Booklist (starred review)

“Only Bill McKibben could set out to write his first novel and produce an addictive caper loaded with craft beer, contract spies, and chase scenes on cross-country skis! This is James-Bond-meets-A-Prairie-Home-Companion and no one but McKibben could pull it off. He does it with such heart, grace, wisdom and fun that I just couldn't put it down. A story as outrageous as our times.”
–Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
 
"What a delicious pleasure to read Radio Free Vermont - a weird and utterly joyous if sometimes hair-raising romp through the dark Wonderland of life under Trump. Bill McKibben is a brilliant storyteller, and I love this book, which is balm for our troubled times."
–Jay Parini, author of The Last Station
 
“I hope no one secedes, but I also hope that Americans figure out creative ways to resist injustice and create communities where everybody counts.  We've got a long history of resistance in Vermont and this book is testimony to that fact.”
–Bernie Sanders

"A lean, fantastical, swift-kick-in-the-pants of a read, Radio Free Vermont may not save the world — but it succeeds wildly in making the formidable prospect of resistance feel a bit more fun." –NPR.org

"A little comic story with a big political message" –The Washington Post

“In a time when many Americans feel alienated from the machinery of government, [this] is a message worth taking seriously.” –Book Page  

“If busting loose from Washington sounds like a good idea to you, [RFV] makes for fun reading.”  –Oustide

“A stirring reminder of the importance of loving our home, working with the people around us to figure out what we want that home to look like in the future, and then fighting for that vision.”  –The Christian Science Monitor 

“A delightful romp.” –The Buffalo News

“A witty tour de force.” –The Addison County Independent 

Library Journal

★ 09/15/2017
Vern Barclay is an accidental radical. A native of Vermont, he has watched his beloved state slowly transform from a small, neighborly, rural culture to one that values big-box stores, stadiums with retractable roofs, and, horror of horrors, big-name cheap beer. Now in his 70s, facing the end of his career on local talk radio, Vern goes into hiding, branded a terrorist after a subversive stunt at a Walmart goes wild. Vern and his friends spread their message of resistance first through his podcast Radio Free Vermont and then through minor acts of pro-Vermont environmentalism and mischief. Resistance begins to reach toward revolution as Vern struggles with the ethics of his decisions and worries if he might be leading his friends to a new utopia or to jail. Set in the immediate future, complete with references to current politics, the plot feels possible, even probable. Vern and his compatriots are engaging and realistic. VERDICT With great care and humor, debut novelist McKibben's (The End of Nature; Oil and Honey) spirited and thought-provoking modern fable will have readers grappling with the ethical questions of how and when resistance is necessary. [See Prepub Alert, 5/7/17.]—Jennifer Beach, Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Danny Campbell perfectly captures this audiobook’s protagonist, Vern Barclay, a 72-year-old lifelong Vermonter and accidental freedom fighter. After the protest of a new Wal-Mart takes an unexpected turn, Vern, a former talk-radio host, goes rogue and broadcasts from a secret location as “Radio Free Vermont.” Vern fills the airwaves with talk of secession from the U.S., and his eccentric crew carries out inventive acts of resistance, like the amusingly polite heist of a Coors Beer truck. Campbell’s friendly, raspy voice is ideal for Vern, who is world-weary but ultimately optimistic. There isn’t much vocal variation for other characters, but they’re broadly drawn anyway, and Vern is very much the heart of the story. A.T.N. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172197000
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Radio Free Vermont"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Bill McKibben.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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