The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry [Paperback]

Wendell Berry (Author), Norman Wirzba (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2003

The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty-one essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. These essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture. Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments? Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality, and happiness of the whole community of creation.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Writer and farmer Berry has long been an inspiration to the contemporary agrarian movement and a guiding light to people who care deeply about the health of their land and their communities. In his numerous books of essays, he has thoughtfully and articulately shown how the current consumer-based, profit-driven industrial society not only destroys our natural world but also increasingly harms our social and personal well-being. The 21 essays in this collection, written over the past two decades, provide both a splendid introduction to Berry's work and a stimulating compendium for those already familiar with it. These are beautifully crafted essays, replete with social criticism, righteous anger, moral guidance, and lyrical wording. Above all, they contain a reverence for the beauty and complexity of our natural world and a call to be good stewards of the earth and our limited resources. Berry states that we do not need to rely on constant technological progress to improve our future: "If we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us." Highly recommended for public and academic libraries. Ilse Heidmann, Olympia, WA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Mr. Berry writes elegantly, effortlessly balancing tragedy and a quiet, sly humor." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; 1 edition (August 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593760078
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760076
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Notes From a Native, April 23, 2003

By 

J.W.K (Nagano, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Hardcover)

Cover to cover this book encompasses twenty-one powerful essays spanning as many years, from "The Unsettling of America" (1977) to "The Whole Horse" (1999). It is basically the backdoor into the house of Berry's thought, the best way to familiarize oneself with his writings without buying all his books. In fact, to date, it is the only such compilation currently available.

For me personally, reading Berry is a kind of sacrament taken with the utmost reverence and joy. Like the bark of an ancient redwood tree, the essays are imbued with scent and deep, earthly texture. This language serves the underlying themes well -- themes of love, work, earth and health. Indeed, many of the essays set out explicitly to reestablish the hidden connections between body and soul, individual and community; the former necessarily connected with the land that created and sustains us. Like hymns to one's sense of place, one reads Berry and is transported back home.

"I came to see myself growing out of the earth like the other animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy of place, which would fall back into it like leaves in the autumn."

Full of common sense, prophetic visions, poetic beauty and cogent analyses of America's cultural crises, these essays will retain their relevance and charm for generations if not millennia to come. At present, I can think of no single author better suited to guide us through these troubled times. Humble, illuminating, honest and profound -- this is one thinker not to be overlooked by anyone concerned with our fate as species and the fate of the planet as a whole. Definitely one of the most important, soul-satisfying books I have ever read.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Savor the wisdom in this book and then take action, May 2, 2004

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Patricia Kramer (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Paperback)

For me the central theme of this book can be illustrated in this quote. " I don't think it is appreciated how much of an outdoor book the Bible is." Berry is a deeply religious man who lives his religion every moment in his deep, deep connections to the land, to all animals, to community,to the growing of food, and to the world as an organic entity.

As wonderful as it is to have Poet Laureates, I wish we also had Philosopher Laureates and that Wendell Berry had that forum. His thoughts are important for the national consciousness.

"The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other. The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life."

Berry advocates watching government closely, nationally but particularly locally. When it comes time to protest, he calls for facts and good arguments, not just slogans and buttons.
"I would rather go before the governement with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied."

These essays span several decades but the ideas are more relevant today than when they were written. The trends and programs, such as GATT and the loss of topsoil and the rise of megafarms, are as bad as he feared but time has proven them even more destructive.

"Restraint - for us, now - above all:the ability to accept and live within limits; to resist changes that are merely novel or fashionable; to resist greed and pride; to resist the temptation to 'solve' problems by ignoring them, accepting them as 'tradeoffs', or bequesthing them to posterity. A good solution, then, must be in harmony with good character, cultural value, and moral law."

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book, August 11, 2005

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Nathan Eanes (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Paperback)

Sometimes, during and after reading a particular book, I feel as though I could not have read anything more appropriate at that time.

The book blows me away with its depth, its insight, or the amazing questions it raises.

The Art of the Commonplace is one of those books, and it may be the best introduction to Wendell Berry a reader can ask for. As a collection of essays over more than twenty years, it covers a wide range of social issues-such as agriculture and the environment, family and marriage, consumerism, and globalism-which is amazing given that all of them relate to agrarian topics.

Berry poses questions that most of us never consider, and I believe that is the main reason Berry is one of the most desperately needed Christian writers in today's America.