Jayber Crow: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Wendell Berry (Author) "I never put up a barber pole or a sign or even gave my shop a name..." (more)
Key Phrases: bachelor barber, stripping room, trotting track, Port William, Aunt Cordie, Uncle Othy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The questions who and what and how and why are no doubt useful and occasionally even noble in their place. But for Wendell Berry, whose spare and elegant prose has long testified to the rural American values of thrift and frugality, four interrogatives must seem a waste, when one will do. Where is the ultimate qualifier, the sine qua non, for both the author and his characters. Place shapes them and defines them; the winding Kentucky River and the gentle curves of the Kentucky hills find an echo in their lilting speech and brusque affections.

Jayber Crow is another story of the Port William membership, the community whose life--and lives--Berry has unfurled over the course of a half dozen novels. Jayber himself is an orphan, lately returned to the town. And his status as barber and bachelor places him simultaneously at its center and on its margins. A born observer, he hears much, watches carefully, and spends 50 years learning its citizens by heart.

They were rememberers, carrying in their living thoughts all the history that such places as Port William ever have. I listened to them with all my ears, and have tried to remember what they said, though from remembering what I remember I know that much is lost. Things went to the grave with them that will never be known again.

Jayber tells the town's stories tenderly. Gently elegiac, the novel charts the tension between an urge to isolation and an impulse to connectivity, writ both small and large. As the 20th century moves inexorably forward, swallowing in great mechanized gulps rural towns governed by agricultural rhythms, Port William turns in upon itself. And as Jayber admits quietly, "Once a fabric is torn, it is apt to keep tearing. It was coming apart. The old integrity had been broken." Integrity, both whole and shattered, is key to the stories of Burley Coulter, Cecelia Overhold, Troy Chatham, and above all, Athey Keith and his daughter Mattie, to whom Jayber pledges his undying and unrequited love.

Berry's prose, so carefully tuned that you never know it is there, carries us into the very heart of the land itself; his exquisitely constructed sentences suggesting the cyclic rhythms of his agrarian world. Jayber Crow resonates with variations played on themes of change, looping transitions from war into peace, winter into spring, browning flood destruction into greening fields, absence into presence, lost into found. --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly
The role of community in the shaping of character is a recurring theme in the work of poet, essayist and novelist Berry, as evidenced once more in this gratifying novel set in Berry's fictional Port William, Ky. Jayber Crow, town barber from 1937 until 1969, is born in the environs of Port William, but after the deaths of his parents and, later, his guardians, he is sent to an out-of-town orphanage at the age of 10. Returning 13 years later, in the flood year of 1937, the solitary young man goes on to learn the comradely ways of the town. "In modern times much of the doing of the mighty has been the undoing of Port William and its kind," Crow reflectsAa reflection, too, of Berry's often-stated beliefs that salvation must be local, that rootlessness and a fixation on the postindustrial era's bright new toys will destroy us environmentally and economically. Crow earns his living with simple tools; he becomes a church sexton, though he is not unthinkingly pious; and his unrequited love for farmer's wife Mattie Chatham is pure and strong enough to bring him serene faith. In contrast, Mattie's husband, Troy, the novel's villain, disturbs the "patterns and cycles of work" on Mattie's family farm, trumpeting "whatever I see, I want" and using a tractor. The tractor stands for the introduction of new machinery and the unraveling of the fabric of family farming. It is not surprising when Troy cheats on his wife nor does it come as a shock when the Chatham's young daughter becomes a victim of dire chance. Berry's narrative style is deliberately traditional, and the novel's pace is measured and leisurely. Crow's life, which begins as WWI is about to erupt, is emblematic of a century of upheaval, and Berry's anecdotal and episodic tale sounds a challenge to contemporary notions of progress. It is to Berry's credit that a novel so freighted with ideas and ideology manages to project such warmth and luminosity. 12-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582430292
• ISBN-13: 978-1582430294
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #140,024 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps Berry's Greatest, September 24, 2000

By	John Jacob (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book because I like everything that Berry writes, but I wasn't expecting anything too great. A story about a barber in Port William? Seemed a little strange to me, but because it was by Berry, it was worth a read. This book turned out to be a great surprise, true to Jayber Crow's observation that all of the good things in life have come as a surprise. This novel follows the thread of many of the stories we have read about the Port William membership. Many of the familiar characters are here. But it seems that all of the threads of Berry's many works are woven here into a fine and beautiful tapestry. Berry's major themes about stewardship, sense of place, the importance of caring relationships, sense of scale, etc, are all here in a great story of learning, love, and forgiveness. This is a book about much more than just Where. It is also a book about who, what, why, and especially how. Jayber Crow chronicles the changes that modernity and industrialism bring to small town America. Country people were trying to get away from "demanding circumstances." But they "couldn't quite see at the time, or didn't want to know, that it was the demanding circumstances that had kept us together." The changes that are chronicled here apply to urban life as well as rural life. Great neighborhoods and family/neighbor networks were also part of the life of the great pre-industrial cities. A very large part of the answer to modern decay is the restoration of rural life, but we cannot ignore the cities. The question for us is how to follow Jayber and "lay our claim" on a place, rural or urban, and make it "answerable to our lives." Right living, in all of the details laid out by Jayber, is a large part of the answer to modern problems. A barber turns out to be an ingenious stratagem for storytelling and the dispensing of Berry's distilled wisdom. And it is a most unusual and gratifying love story as well!

60 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonders happen here., September 22, 2000

By	G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have read Wendell Berry's nonfiction, but I am a newcomer to his fictional Port William community. Reading this book is like a visit to a simpler life in rural America. Set in 1986, this novel tells the life story of Jayber Crow (1914- ), orphan, doubting preministerial student, bachelor barber, grave digger, church janitor, and progressive pacifist. Although an ordinary man, Jayber is a truly memorable character who, from his later years, reflects upon his life with clarity and poetic insight. "I am a pilgrim," he says, "but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a staight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order" (p. 133).

This book is about many things, but should be read mostly for the sake of experiencing Berry's really fine writing. It is the story of Jayber's unrequitted love for a married woman, Mattie Chatham. It is a fictional memoir about faith, loss, farming, and finding one's place in the world. "I will have to share the fate of this place," Jayber writes about his declining community. "Whatever happens to Port William happens to me" (p. 143). It is also about bearing witness to dying farms and small businesses.

Jayber's memoir is filled with page after page of profound insights. For instance, about growing old and loss he writes: "I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of the loss) found everything, and is ready to go" (p. 353). Examining marriage, Jayber says: "I saw too how a marriage, in bringing two people into each other's presence, must include loneliness and error. I imagined a moment when husband and wife realize that their marriage included their faults, that they do not perfect each other, and that in making their marriage they also fail it and must carry to the grave things they cannot give away (pp. 193-4). About the pace of modern life, he observes: "The people are in an emergency to relax. They come for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above their motors. The look neither left nor right. They can't slow down" (p. 331).

Although somber in tone, Jayber's story reveals that wonders do happen in life. Jayber learns we live our lives with questions, the answers to which must be lived out "perhaps a little at at time" (p. 54), or which may take longer than a lifetime for us to find. "This is a book about Heaven," Jayber explains. "I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see through the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like a reflection of the trees on the water" (p. 351). This book is Berry at his best, and one of the best novels I've read this year.

G. Merritt

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Talisman for the Journey, December 20, 2005

By	J. Tudor (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jayber Crow (Paperback)

"Jayber Crow" is one of the most unusual and profound novels of this last century. On one level, it is a tale of the unfolding life of Jonah Crow, from his youth into his time of looking back upon the span of his life: it is the story of survival, bravery, acceptance. On this level, Jonah, who becomes Jayber, the barber of his beloved Port William, tells of the people of this town with great tenderness: their strengths and their foolishness (along with his own), and we come to know these townspeople and care for them.

Yet on another level, Jayber Crow is a philosophical reflection on the nature of love, God, time, and eternity. As a religious reflection, Wendell Berry, through Jayber, reaches to the core of our faith when he realizes that the only true prayer is "Thy will be done", a prayer that makes him tremble, but also makes him more of a whole person. Indeed, his reflections on the love of God, and the love that comes forth on this planet, is visionary and has the capacity to enlarge and fortify the heart of the reader. Chapter 23, "The Way of Love," is one of the greatest passages I have read. We see a man aching for love and for God, who some nights "in the midst of this loneliness" swings among "the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone." We feel for his struggle and his faith gives us faith.

Concurrent with his longing for God, and his faith, is his love for Mattie. It is the most beautiful and truest portrayl of love I have seen: it is a love that personifies First Corinthians 13. It is a love that wishes only good and finds hope in knowing it has loved: nothing more. It is a love that does not seek for a payback. Again in Chapter 23, Jayber reflects on a true love that breaks the barriers of time, reminiscent of jani johe webster's poem "loving" from "a spider on the wall": "when the skin / on this body / i now call mine / shall become bone / the very bone / shall cry unto your bone / i love you." So it is with Jayber, who writes, "That is why, in marrying one another, we mortals say 'till death.' We must take love to the limit of time, because time cannot limit it. A life cannot limit it. Maybe to have it in your heart all your life in this world, even while it fails here, is to succeed. Maybe that is enough."

Another meaningful comparison between Berry and webster is brought to mind after reading Berry's metaphor of the "the Man in the Well." What happens to a man who, alone for the day in the deep woods, falls into a well? Will he survive? Who is this man in our own lives, and into what wells have we or our loved ones fallen? In webster's prose poem "the weariest river," the narrator's grandmother is locked out of her farm house on a winter's night: again, will she survive, and how? Both metaphors speak to our existential situation, to isolation and to hope.

"Jayber Crow" probes the meaning of life and our relationship to ourseves, to one another, and to God. An amazing comparison is to "Mr. Smith" by Louis Bromfield: the tale of another man, also written in the first person, who struggles with the meaning of life, but with completely different results. Both men recognize the beauty of life and its suffering, and yet the course of each life goes in almost opposite directions.

The image Jayber gives of "the rooms" made by the woods, through sunlight and shadow, is an image that is also a talisman for readers who also seek peace in the midst of life.