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The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry Paperback – August 5, 2003

by Wendell Berry (Author), Norman Wirzba (Editor)

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"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him." ―The Washington Post Book World

The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes―an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography―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.

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"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him."

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Counterpoint; 1 edition (August 5, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1593760078
ISBN-13: 978-1593760076
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 43 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #68,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #53 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Rural
- #166 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Anthologies
- #347 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Essays

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Karl JanssenTop Contributor: Fantasy Books

Visionary thinking from a latter-day Thoreau

July 21, 2011

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I had never read Wendell Berry before, and this book has provided me with a very comprehensive introduction to his thought. Berry advocates abandoning the present resource exploitative global industrial economy in favor of local economies and a more responsible, ethical treatment of the Earth. He is against "free trade" and the free market economy, because it strengthens corporations and eliminates farmers. He is a strong proponent of sustainable agriculture, but he mostly avoids discussing the science here and concentrates rather on the ethics of land use and food production. He's a confessed Luddite, in that he detests technology when it replaces human labor. He's also a devout Christian, but offers a unique interpretation of the Bible that sounds an awful lot like Pantheism. He believes we should place more emphasis on marriage, family, and community life, and replace our meaningless occupations with meaningful vocations. Berry's main argument is that for the sake of a little money and ease we have ceded too much of our decision-making responsibility to the corporations and the government, thereby giving up our personal freedom and becoming passive bystanders rather than active participants in the world in which we live.

Though I don't agree with Berry on every issue, I found his writings very enlightening and in some cases mind-blowing. Berry is a brilliant diagnostician. I doubt there's a writer alive who can better enunciate the ills of modern society. Unfortunately, this collection doesn't prescribe a clear course of treatment. Berry proposes we take up organic gardening and invest in local food--good first steps, indeed--but that hardly seems sufficient to overthrow a status quo that's existed since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Much of Berry's agrarianism seems to harken back to a time when the population of the world was one tenth if not one hundredth of what it is today, yet he's against birth control. On an Earth full to bursting, how practical are his dreams of a quasi-Amish society?

Most of the faults of this book are editorial rather than authorial. The collection is relentlessly repetitive, with the same points being hammered home again and again. Berry states his case so elegantly and eloquently, do we really need to be beat over the head with it? When I first started reading the book I was excited by Berry's ideas; by the end I just wanted to get it over with. For this reason, I would recommend taking a break between essays.

The Kindle file, inexplicably, has no table of contents. There is a bibliographic list of essays in the very back of the book, but you have to hunt for it, and it's not interactive. It's also difficult to tell when exactly some of these pieces were written. Some essays begin with a date, some end with a date, others are simply undated.

Whether you're a liberal or a conservative, a Christian or a freethinker, you will find much food for thought in this collection of essays. If you care about the world in which we live, then Berry's perspective is worth a listen.

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Amazonfan

Still haven't found what I'm looking for..

August 16, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I suppose I was expecting Aldo Leopold from an area closer to me. The book is fine if that your taste run to the flowery but I found it a little stilted and hard to keep my interest. It just wasn't my cup of tea, doesn't mean it isn't an excellent book. Berry has a lot of insight but coming from an area so close to where I live, I expected him to be a little more concise.

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J.W.K

Notes From a Native

April 23, 2003

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

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.

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