Customer Reviews

Wendell Berry: Life and Work (Culture of the Land)

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For those who have the privilege of knowing him as a friend, this book
provides additional personal glimpses into the life of the man and his
passionate friendships, as well as revealing the nature of his work as
understood by his colleagues and associates in the fields of agriculture,
poetry, and the art of the essay. For those who have never met him, nor
perhaps ever heard of him, this gem of a book will give them some of
the essence of what he and his work stand for, and will make them want to
seek out the primary texts for themselves. An entertaining and well-
meant tribute to a man who has not only contributed greatly to American
letters, but has turned the ordinary toward the holy (as it was meant
to be) once again.

I most treasured the personal essays in this book and frankly skimmed or skipped over the more scholarly pieces. What becomes clear in this book is how many people's lives and careers have been influenced by Wendell Berry, the professor, the farmer, the poet, the philosopher, the writer, and the friend. I thank Jason Peters for this book and particularly the essays by Wes Jackson, Barbara Kingsolver, Hayden Carruth, and Gene Logsdon and for the wonderful pictures.

Her is a delightful quote from the essay by Donald Hall, a fellow poet, farmer and teacher.
"Another thing we had in common was good, solid, loving, and companionate marriages. On one of our car trips, I complained over the useless, trivial hyperactivity of my eyes gazing at women, At any conference, or in an airport on the way, I find myself continually checking out the beauty of young women, dwelling on figures and faces. It disturbed me that I wasted time and energy evaluating quarries I would never mine. Wendell agreed explosively, as if he had been waiting for someone to bring up the subject. He suffered from this idle habit himself, and found himself in lecture halls doing inventories of the female audience. One day, he told me, he saw one face that was absolutely perfect and irresistible to him. It was a few seconds before he realized that his eyes had lighted on his wife, Tanya."

As with all things associated with Wendell, this book of gatherings is well worth a reader's time -- peaceable rantings is a pretty good description. The most interesting article in the book is, ironically, Eric Freyvogel's, which more or less eviscerates the rugged individualist stance that does occasionally creep into Berry's world -- in spite of the ever-present language of community.