What Are People For?: Essays [Paperback]

Wendell Berry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0865474370 | ISBN-13: 978-0865474376 | Edition: Uncorrected proof.

In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry, whom The Christian Science Monitor called “the prophetic American voice of our day,” conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. He speaks with sadness of the greedy consumption of this country’s natural resources and the grim consequences Americans must face if current economic practices do not change drastically. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry’s program presents convincing steps for America’s agricultural and cultural survival.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Poet, novelist and critic Berry ( Remembering ) identifies himself as "a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts," thereby indicating the scope of these 22 prodding, opinionated pieces. He touches on literary subjects as well as agrarianism, environmentalism and other political issues, his splendid writing infusing each topic with his sense of its urgency. Wallace Stegner is esteemed as a regionalist who protects the integrity of his literary terrain, unlike the many who write "exploitively, condescendingly, and contemptuously" of their milieus; and Edward Abbey is praised because he "does not simply submit to our criticism, as does any author who publishes; he virtually demands it." Shifting from art to farming in "Economy and Pleasure," Berry notes that, "More and more, we take for granted that work must be destitute of pleasure." In "Waste," he calls our attitude toward garbage the "symbiosis of an unlimited greed at the top and a lazy . . . consumptiveness at the bottom." And in the title essay, he wryly observes that agricultural economists say there are too many farmers--but not too many agricultural economists.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Even Berry's polemics reveal an underlying grace--and a most graceful prose--as he tries to heal the split between us and our work, our localities, and our communities. A poet and a farmer, Berry is a seasoned voice for the Whole Earth Vision--for a retrieval of household economies from a monstrous national economy. Yet while he has been pressing for a revived rural culture for many years, this ideal has been moving ever further out of reach. His grounding in literature eases a large burden of frustration. This book could go into almost any library, particularly those lacking Ber ry's earlier essays.
- Donald Ray, Mercy Coll. Lib., Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press; Uncorrected proof. edition (April 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865474370
• ISBN-13: 978-0865474376
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #733,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gentle voice for common sense, December 17, 2001

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George P. Shadroui (Memphis, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What Are People For?: Essays (Paperback)

Berry hits another homerun in this collection. This Jeffersonian throwback offers us a vision of life far removed from the shopping mall mania that is stripping much of our countryside of its natural beauty. Berry, instead, suggests that a return to basics is the best way to ensure our independence, freedom and quality of life. Berry argues, as did T.S. Eliot, that a wrong attitude toward nature suggests a wrong attitude toward God. He introduces us to men whose greatness lies in being themselves -- a black farmer named Nate Shaw, a Kentucky environmentalist named Harry Caudill, and writer Edward Abby. He explores Huck Finn and A River Runs Through It, he suggests that an education that does not prepare us to take care of ourselves cannot be complete and argues that our educational system prepares us mainly to function as cogs in an industrial society. In short, Berry sustains his claim, made in most of his books, that we need to slow down our lives, rebuild human connections, value the land around us for its intrinsic worth, and cultivate our souls by cultivating our garden, if you will. As a previous reviewer points out, Berry does not fit easily into any political movement of today -- that is because there is no Jeffersonian movement to speak of, the democrats having abandoned local empowerment, the conservatives, too many of them, having embraced corporate power. Berry's is a voice that needs to be heard.

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Berry at his best and most contrary, June 3, 2000

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R. Griffiths "bookchoice" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: What Are People For?: Essays (Paperback)

Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, novelist and literary critic. It is as an essayist of enormous acuity, however, that he has become best known. What Are People For? is an important collection of essays (and two 'poem essays') written between 1975 and 1989. The pieces here range from the literary and reflective - meditations on the work of writers such as Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner, to the empassioned and urgent. 'Why I am not going to buy a computer' is as cogent a rallying call for the neo-luddite movement as could be imagined! Berry is an advocate of the local, the real, the humane, that which is connected to the earth and which knows and loves its place. Essays such as 'Writer and Region', 'The Work of Local Culture' and 'Nature as Measure' display a deep-felt commitment eloquently argued. While Berry writes of the politics of farming, Hemmingway, Twain and Blake are never far away. Berry's aim is to recall his readers to the wasteland corporate, industrialised America is becoming and to offer an alternative vision, one of considerable hope. Too critical to be co-opted into the ranks of the acceptable voices, too contrary and complex to be labelled simply an 'environmentalist', Berry's writing is essential.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If Only More People Listened, February 23, 2002

By 

Okla Elliott (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Are People For?: Essays (Paperback)

I do not agree with everything Berry says in this book, but I must confess that he changed the way I see the world. His lucid dissections of American culture and economical practices, his bottom-up solutions to the problems facing us today, and his unselfish, honest prose convinced me of most of his points. Here is a writer not in it for fame or awards or prestige. Here we have a truly passionate, motivated, moral voice for these hollow times.