A Carpenter’s Life as Told By Houses strikes me as a unique work of craft and writing. What makes it unique to me are the life circumstances, experiences, and perspective of the carpenter who shares his well-thought-out world view and utterly unique history: Larry Haun.
Larry, best known for his articles and books published by Fine Homebuilding magazine and The Taunton Press (who also publishes this book), is considered by many to be a legend. And with a building life that spans 7 decades, he has earned the title. Larry, born on the Nebraska prairie in 1931, was always drawn to tools and thrift, the prairie homes he encountered, and surviving sustainably—in union with nature, rather than in conquest thereof. Fast forward to the 1950s where he and his brothers are faced with a the Southern California building boom that changed—and improved—how homes are built and the forward thinking of Larry the production framer becomes evident; he and his brothers and other framers were part of the re-invention of the home and how we build today.
But A Carpenter’s Life is also a personal memoir. Larry is a deeply peaceful man utterly dedicated to sustainable living, which he describes at length—an ironic perspective from a built-for-speed framer with a brutally difficult and dangerous job. While I liked the book, I did have to cringe a little at some of the intellectual inconsistencies in the book. It is clear he thinks little of big business, for example, which bothers me because while big business has a lot it can improve, it is that very economic driver that has put food on his table; people who don’t have jobs can’t buy new homes, even modest ones. So while I appreciate his invocation for people to listen to their heart songs, people have to go to work at jobs they can do. What’s more, he is a pacifist. And while I hold that to be a noble goal, it is an unrealistic practicality in my view.
Yet, by the end of the book, I was dog-earing pages.
While his musings about bird-song and flowers got a little old, he is right and he expresses his thoughts wonderfully. We are living unsustainably and blindly in many ways as a culture. And we are increasingly divorcing ourselves from our world. As he aptly points out: we need the world; it does not need us. So, in the end, A Carpenter’s Life is a thoughtful, well-written look at nearly a century of homes through the eyes of someone with great vision that points out essential truths and, perhaps most importantly, asks big questions.
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