Book Club Discussion Questions and Guide for Old King by Maxim Loskutoff

1. If you remember the UNABOM ordeal, how did this book interact with your memories? Did it change your ideas or assumptions? If you'd only heard about it, how did the book enrich your knowledge—not just of the events, but of the human themes involved?
2. A motif in the book—particularly for Duane and Jackie—is the microwave oven, a recent addition to American consumer life in the 1970s of the novel. How might this theme reflect the larger theme of technology and our relationship to it?
3. "Before coming to Montana, [Mason had] thought of the West as a dwindling dream, the last slivers of wild country in desperate need of protection. What he'd discovered was immensity. Overwhelming in scope and power" (p. 100). Old King is a novel of the American West. What ideas or connections arise when you view it through that prism? Which Western themes does the book address, and to what effect?
4. "Privacy was sacred in Lincoln, and a man's right to do what he wanted on his own land was fundamental, but a fine line was crossed when it came to anything that might threaten ranchers' livestock" (p. 60). How does Old King dramatize debates about land use, conservation, animal welfare, forestry, development, and government ownership and control of wild land? Which characters stand for which positions, and how do these positions overlap in complicated ways? How do they match stereotypes—or not?
5. Many of the characters are essentially alone, living solitary lives. Some by choice, as an escape, some not. How does the novel treat privacy and independence, values often cherished? Do they have a shadow side?
6. Duane is an inarticulate man—as Jackie thinks, "[a] lost boy trying to make sense of the world" (p. 82). Yet we see him undergo a transformation over the course of the book, acquiring dimension and depth and showing tenderness and flashes of uncanny imagination. How does the novel achieve this? What does Duane learn; how does he grow? How does that color the book's ending?
7. Nicely reinforced by the 1976 Bicentennial backdrop, this is also a book about America in general, with the issues preoccupying the characters still very much raging today. What is it saying or asking about America?
8. To Mason, the story of Everett Ford climbing his tree and refusing to come down, only for his neighbor to chop the tree down with Ford's ax, "represented the valley's twisted, incomprehensible logic" (p. 129). How so? How does this story and image echo elsewhere in the book?
9. "Man's utility was now based on his ability to operate and care for machines. He'd become the tool and they the master" (p. 163). This idea drove Ted down a rabbit hole of anger and killing. It has also never been more relevant, leading some to hail Kaczynski as a dark prophet. Discuss.
10. Jackie is a special and poignant character—funny, wise, and connected to more of the other characters than anyone, yet still haunted and harmed by the darkness in the book. Discuss.
11. "Terribly free" (p. 261)—that phrase caps the author's description of Hudson as he flies from his dirt bike. Does it describe other characters in the novel? What questions does the novel raise about freedom and the gap between its promise and its reality? Does the novel's final paragraph, in which Nep himself wonders if he'd have been "better off" in the freedom of living alone in the forest, connect to this theme?
12. What does the title Old King mean when associated with the tree that Ted named and that Duane finds. Does it stand in opposition to a "New King"? If so, what is that?
13. Did you see yourself in any of the characters? How so?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of W.W. Norton & Company. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.