A Review of Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

I gakked this from Hal­vard John­son on Face­book. Not the meth, the review, dummy.

Let's hope it's theft he doesn't mind. It is the NY Times after all.

Pub­lished: July 1, 2009 

Think glob­al­ly, suf­fer local­ly. This could be the moral of “Meth­land,” Nick Reding’s unnerv­ing inves­tiga­tive account of two grue­some years in the life of Oel­wein, Iowa, a rail­road and meat­pack­ing town of sev­er­al thou­sand whipped by a metham­phet­a­mine-laced pan­ic whose ori­gins lie out­side the place itself, in forces almost too great to com­pre­hend and too piti­less to bear. The rav­ages of meth, or “crank,” on Oel­wein and count­less for­sak­en locales much like it are shown to be mere­ly super­fi­cial symp­toms of a vaster social demen­tia caused by, among oth­er things, the iron domin­ion of cor­po­rate agri­cul­ture and the slow melt­ing of vil­lages and fam­i­lies into the world­wide finan­cial stew.

More from the Times

This is hap­pen­ing as well in the Twin Tiers, the area where I grew up, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Brad­ford Coun­ty PA, whose coun­ty seat, Newsweek claimed a few years ago, is yet anoth­er Meth Val­ley.

They're EVERYWHERE, folks! Gitch­er own.

This entry was posted in bradford county, halvard johnson, meth valleys, oelwein iowa, twin tiers, walter kirn. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to A Review of Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

  1. Rusty says:

    I always fig­ured NASCAR dri­vers were pret­ty clean, despite the stereo­type. Who would want to dri­ve all hopped up? I don't under­stand why peo­ple don't take this shit seri­ous­ly, either. In the case of my home coun­ties, I might have a bet­ter idea: zero zilch zip nada to do. Drinks, drugs, four­wheel­ing, hunt­ing. That's it.

  2. Media Mentions says:

    Now that you've men­tioned meth, here's some­thing you may want to know: http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=X6TBRKHJEML6&preview=article&linkid=fb76c108-8152–4507-ac0e-f96e8a88c8e1&pdaffid=ZVFwBG5jk4Kvl9OaBJc5%2bg%3d%3dI can't believe peo­ple still take this stuff…MediaMentions

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