A World Lost

A World Lost by Wendell Berry, 151 pages

Andy Catlett was nine years old when his favorite uncle and namesake was shot and killed.  The murder left a void in little Andy's life, family, and community, a powerful absence strongly felt but unspoken.  As the decades pass and Andy becomes a man, he explores this loss in many dimensions, even as he gradually comes to recognize that he will never really know why his uncle died.

A World Lost is short, powerful, and mysterious.  Mysterious not because it is a whodunnit - the identity of Uncle Andrew's killer is never in doubt - but because it touches on deeper mysteries, mysteries involving the human person and the nature of sin.  Berry does not try to solve these mysteries, he tries to understand them, and that begins with accepting that they cannot be solved.  Who Uncle Andrew was is ultimately a question just as unanswerable - and infinitely more wonderful - as the questions surrounding his murder.

Unsettling of America

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry, 223 pages

In this early work, Wendell Berry decries what he sees as the continuing colonization of the North American continent, concentrating on the colonization of the rural by the urban.  This colonization is carried out by technocratic elites who reduce everything to economics, ignoring the human, social, and environmental costs of their policies.  Although Berry's subject is agriculture, his theme is over-specialization and fragmentation, a feature of modern life that of itself tends to transform all human interaction - even "charity" - into forms of money-exchange.  The alternative, he insists, must be the invention (or recovery) of an economics, a politics, a philosophy, and even a theology of limits.

This was always intended as an argumentative work, a new salvo in an ongoing debate.  Now it is a mostly forgotten volley in a debate that has moved on, but its echoes can, perhaps, still be heard in the hills.  While it is explicitly tied to the particular time and place in which it was composed and published, with considerable space taken up by criticism of academic and political figures in power or in fashion in the late '70s, the underlying principles are hardly outdated, and what it has lost in ripped-from-the-headlines relevance is compensated for by what it has gained in historical value.

Jayber Crow

Jayber Crow: A Novel: The Life Story of Jayber Crow, Barber, of the Port William Membership, as Written by Himself by Wendell Berry, 363 pages

For decades Jonah Crow (aka J Crow, aka J Bird, aka Jayber) was the barber in the small town of Port William, Kentucky.  As he himself says, a barber is a magnet for stories, especially in the kind of small town where his shop serves as one of the few social spaces.  In addition, Jayber served for years as the church custodian and gravedigger, giving him even more opportunities to know the people of the town, and to share in their living and dying.  He is, however, also something of an outsider, being both an orphan, raised and educated elsewhere, and a lifelong bachelor.  The novel is the story of how he comes to understand his own living and dying through the trials and travails, virtues and vices of those around him.

Jayber Crow, the novel, is as charming and unpretentious as its protagonist, likewise it is just as patient and unexpectedly deep - unexpected, at least, for those unfamiliar with Berry's other work.  For those who do know Berry, his usual themes are masterfully elaborated here - love of neighbor and care for the earth, the importance of community and sense of place, the reality of a cosmic order and the sacredness of work.

Sabbaths

Sabbaths by Wendell Berry, 96 pages

Sabbaths, a collection of poems written between 1978 and 1986, continues Berry's familiar pastoral themes with an emphasis on rest, patience, and the sacredness of the world,

     The world as it was given for love's sake

     The world by love and loving work revealed.

As might be expected with works composed over the better part of a decade, the quality is somewhat uneven.  This validates the author's observation that, in the writing of a poem as in the culture of a field as in the nature of a man

     Wrong was easy; gravity helped it.

     Right is difficult and long.

And the first step, in art as in labor as in life, is to

     ... pray for clarity to see,

     not raw sources, symbols, worded powers,

     but fellow presences, independent, called

     out of nothing by no word of ours,

     blessed, here with us.

The Country of Marriage

The Country of Marriage by Wendell Berry, 53 pages

 

This short collection of poems has the usual Wendell Berry hallmarks - sense of place, reverence for man and nature, concern for the connections between people and places and sadness at their disappearance.  The quality of the poems is uneven, but there are a few genuine gems, especially "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" and "The Gathering".  None of the poems seem labored or overstay their welcome.

 

At turns wise, moving, and occasionally even beautiful, Berry's poetry is definitely worth reading.

The Way of Ignorance

The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays by Wendell Berry, 180 pages

 

In the course of a career spanning over half a century, Wendell Berry has established himself as an outstanding novelist, poet, and essayist, all while running a small farm in rural Kentucky.  An heir of the Southern Agrarian movement, Berry has consistently explored the nature of community, the relationship between man and the environment, the importance of place, and the distortions of nature (both human and non-) produced by modern society.

Like many of his works, the essays that comprise The Way of Ignorance are concerned mainly with form and limit, of informed localism against modernist uniformity.  The essays serve as a summons to humility against arrogant ignorance, a reminder that there will not, in fact, "always be more."

For those who have read Berry's nonfiction before, there's little new here.  The collection is ten years old, and some of the essays are already somewhat dated by a bit of breathlessness or faddishness.  Berry is definitely worth reading, but most of his work (such as Life Is a Miracle and What Matters?) is superior to this.