The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays by Wendell Berry

Bufkinite@evpl — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:19:00 GMT

Wendell Berry is by now surely the “elder statesman” of living responsibly in a sustainable fashion, with strong local allegiances to a place in every sense of the word: the local ecology, culture, community, and people. He seems to be aware of the fact that, if not a statesman, he certainly qualifies as “elder,” being now well into his seventy-fourth year, and he frequently mentions his elderly status in passing in these essays:

"I know well that I am hardly the first aging man to look back on his youth as 'a better time,' and perhaps I am sufficiently aware of the dangers. It is true nevertheless that in my lifetime I have witnessed a lot of destruction. And I can’t say that I believe this destruction has been compensated by any of the gains we designate as 'progress.'"

He also honors his elderly status in a way he hasn’t in his previous 16 books of essays: the third and final section of this book gives the stage to two younger writers in the same agrarian and communitarian vein: Daniel Kemmis and Courtney White.

Berry's writing continues to develop its plainsong character, saying what he thinks clearly in words so carefully chosen that he makes it look easy. It is nothing short of astounding that he can put such deep thought into such straightforward language. Here's a two-sentence example:

"We have to have a sort of pity for the CEO of a polluting corporation who desires wealth, healthy children, and a vacation in the restorative purity of nature. And surely we have to extend the same pity to those who are sure that 'it takes a village to raise a child' but forget that it takes a local culture and a local economy to raise a village."

Moreover, the brevity he began to develop in essays that appeared in Home Economics (an out-of-print gem which EVPL unfortunately does not have) has matured as well. The essay “Contempt for Small Places” runs less than two pages, and “Rugged Individualism,” and “We Have Begun,” both run less than three pages.

You would be mistaken to the point of foolishness however, if you assumed that he wasn’t saying very much. The book is divided into three sections, which I think of loosely as “essays about the political situation,” “essays about the cultural situation,” and “essays about how we bring the two into harmony.”

Highly, highly recommended.

My Land is Dying, by Harry Caudill

Bufkinite@evpl — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:38:00 GMT

Why review a 38 year old book? When I spotted this book, I remembered the name Harry Caudill because of his book Night Comes to the Cumberlands. I read that book after reading a chapter about Harry Caudill in a book of essays by Wendell Berry called What Are People For?

Now, I've been an admirer of Wendell Berry for years, and enjoy his writing - and his thoughts - immensely. Like Berry, Caudill (1922-1990) was a person who willingly tied his life to a place - the Kentucky Cumberlands - and he spent his life living and working in that place, and protecting what he found valuable in it. What he found valuable, it turns out, was the landscape, the people, and the culture that the two - put together - formed.

Published in 1971, My Land is Dying is a detailing of the history the exploitation of the Cumberlands' resources - first the virgin forest that blanketed the region, later the coal, and always the people. He details how the collusion of state government with business interests first disenfranchised, then impoverished, and finally drove from the land the vast majority of the inhabitants of the land. Caudill knows what he's talking about; he was a lawyer, and a good one. But he defended the defenseless, and saw time & again how victories at the local level would be reversed by higher level courts in the capital of Frankfort. His narrative of this slow, inexorable death is accompanied by pictures that show the devastation, and he spends time talking about people. Not in the abstract, but real folks with real names, like the widow Ollie Combs, who was arrested on her own land when she delayed miners by laying down in front of bulldozers.

Written 38 years ago, this book's message should be read more urgently today, both because the stakes are higher, and the truths that it speaks are undiminished: "No nation was ever more abundantly endowed with natural beauty than ours. Yet it is clear from this continuing record that no nation has been more heedless of its legacy. And no chapter of that record is uglier or more threatening than the chapter that continues to be written by the mining interests, whether below or on the surface of the land."

This book may be old, but it deserves to be widely read.

Books Blog : reviews, environmentalism, Wendell Berry

The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays by Wendell Berry

My Land is Dying, by Harry Caudill