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.
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